Intellectual Property Expert Group
Intellectual Property Expert Group
The patent prosecution highway (PPH) is a set of initiatives for providing accelerated patent prosecution procedures by sharing information between offices that have entered into an agreement under the PPH. At present, there are a variety of PPH bi-lateral agreements…
By naming former Google IP Chief Michelle Lee Deputy Director the Obama administration has tipped the patent scales in favor of tech businesses with special interests. In the absence of a named Director for over a year, naming Michelle Lee…
As we noted in a previous item (“Reselling products in the USA, Part II: ‘First Sale’ doctrine in patent,” March 22, 2013), American patent law features a doctrine of “exhaustion,” also sometimes (apparently interchangeably) called “first sale.” If you own…
Over the last couple of years we witnessed an increasing interest in patent assets as the IP asset class and what it means for innovation, for R&D, for IP professionals and the financial sector but also for those that treat…
From IP52.org. IP52 is a new movement, started by CropLife International and dedicated to changing the way we look at the world around us by better understanding the role of IP in our lives. Each week, IP52 releases new resources…
In a very competitive environment, where pricing for agricultural products has been in a downward trend, producers of agri-food and agricultural products are looking how to add value thus escaping the “commodity curse”. Products with a strong traditional origin or…
For quite some time, publishers, notably in the UK, have found a smart way of making big money out of lawyers and IP professional’s vanity. Legal 500, Super Lawyers, The Best Lawyers in America, Chambers and Partners, to name a…
As most patent practitioners know, the appellate court for United States patent cases, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, reviews decisions on how patent claims should be construed without any deference to the district court, and has the…
Last week Douglas Engelbart died, 88 years old, the American who invented the computer mouse, or “X ,Y position indicator for a display system” as it was called in his 1970 patent. Like many other famous inventors he did not…
To invent means to produce or contrive something previously unknown by the use of ingenuity or imagination. An inventor is therefore someone who invents, someone who devises some new process, appliance, machine, or article. When a new product appears, the…
“Exhaustion,” also known as the “first sale doctrine,” has been the subject of two Supreme Court cases this term: Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (copyright), which was decided on March 19, 2013, and Bowman v. Monsanto (patent), which was…
Now European Patent with unitary effect finally got the final blessing, it is time look into some of the details of the EU Regulation “Implementing Enhanced Cooperation in the area of the Creation of Unitary Patent Protection” 1257/2012 (UnitaryPatent Regulation…
On 19 February 2013, officials from 24 European Member States signed the Unified Patent Court agreement establishing a Unified Patent Court (“UPC Agreement).[1] When you read this, Bulgaria will probably have signed as well. Poland and Spain did not sign…
As research has shown, owners have an incentive to exaggerate the valuation of their property. This is true for all kind of property but is it also true for intellectual property? People are reluctant to part with their property, and…
U.S. men seeking a generic version of Viagra (sildenafil citrate) – the first and the most popular prescription drug for Erectile Dysfunction (ED) – are going to have to wait for a few more years. Viagra’s patent, originally scheduled to…
Market failures, troubled access to medicine, impediments to free flow of information, copyright overextension, digital right protection, overkill and patents stifling rather than stimulating innovation are just a few of the disparaging themes around intellectual property. The main drives behind…
IPR illiteracy, a flavor of nationalism and an inkling for demagogy makes a toxic combination. We recall an incident in 2007-2008 when Indonesia made a big international fuss when it delivered a strain of Bird Flu virus (H5N1) to the…
It looks as if the discussion never ends. Yes we paying again attention to the patent that should be a “unitary” patent. Well not unifying, that’s for sure. Politicians may give the impression they reached a “compromise” but the fact…
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This is clear to me from the reaction I sometimes get when I tell computer scientists that I am a patent attorney specialising in computer patents. Frequently the response is, “But you…
At a secondhand bookstore in Palo Alto, California (the location is relevant, as shall be seen below), I once paid US$5 for the first volume of Jean-Yves Tadié’s biography of Marcel Proust from the Éditions Gallimard “Collection Folio,” a book…