The post below gives the statistics of patent filings, grants and revenue generated in India in the past decade.
Intellectual Property is an essential component for the development of a country. Intellectual property rights confer exclusive rights on creators and inventors who contribute to the betterment of the society through their creations in different fields of knowledge. The Intellectual Property systems not only boost the collective knowledge of the society but also escalate its dissemination. In the past few decades, the…
Google is again in the news for its patents wars. With every leading company wanting to satisfy its customers by providing the best street view mapping software, Google too hasn’t left any stone unturned. Google was sued by Vederi in 2010, alleging that Google’s “Street View” infringed claims of related patents, which concerns ways of creating images of a geographical area that can be navigated by computer.
Google Street View has already been the subject of a number of lawsuits. …
Under Section 39 of the Indian Patents Act, 1970, an Indian resident is required to file his invention first in India, and only after a period of six weeks from the date of filing, a filing could be done for the same invention outside India. Alternatively, the Indian resident could file Form-25 with prescribed fee, requesting the Controller for a Foreign Filing License (FFL), and can go ahead with such filling after obtaining the license . If the invention is proved to be relevant…
Chapter VI of the Patent Rules, 2003 deals with Opposition proceedings. Rule 55 states that opposition by representation against the grant of a patent be duly field via Form 7 and sent to the Controller in duplicate. Rule 57 lays down rule regarding filing of a written statement of opposition and evidence.
By the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 a dichotomy was inserted for the first time in the Patents Act with effect from January 1, 2005 by providing for “opposition…
Does the Intellectual Property Regime play a role in promoting creativity? As stated by most governments, the objective of patent, copyright, design and other laws is to promote the progress of inventive activity and creativity. Are these laws actually achieving their stated objective? While most of us would like to believe that they are, no empirical study has been able to conclusively prove so far that IP laws actually promote creativity. The logical question that follows would be whether we…
Here is the next post in the series of Student Blog Contest. This post is authored by Neerja Gurnani.
I recently went to the Burger King outlet that has been causing immense amounts of hype in Indian teenagers, stood in queue, got a burger, and eagerly bit into it, expecting my mind to be blown. Instead, I was greeted with a very familiar taste – that of a McDonald’s burger. This led me to ask, can taste be patented?
Recipes…
Apple, known for suing other high profile companies, gets a taste of its own medicine. Apple Inc. has been ordered to pay US$ 532.9 Mn after a federal jury in Texas found that its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by patent licensing firm, Smartflash LLC.
To market and commoditize his patents, Patrick Racz, in the early 2000s established Smartflash. As a non-practicing entity, the firm operates solely through patent licensing and litigation. Smartflash, a Texas-based patent licensing company, sued Apple…
In the late 1860s, Margaret Knight was working in a paper bag plant in Massachusetts, USA. The paper bags of the time were conical in shape, with the bag tapering towards the bottom. She felt that a bag with a rectangular shape and a flat bottom could fit more items. So, she designed a model of a machine for automatically cutting, folding and gluing paper bags with a rectangular shape and a flat bottom. She approached a machine shop to…
Chinese security software developer, Kingsoft, together in the partnership with the mobile phone maker, Xiaomi, Beijing Zhigu Technology Consulting Services (an entity controlled by Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun) and a few others, has launched a USD 35 Mn fund to support Intellectual Property related investments. Kingsoft announced that the investment vehicle managed by Beijing Zhigu Technology Consulting Services will have a 10-year term, without disclosing other specific details.
It is widely speculated that the fund has been formed as an…
The Courts have often engaged in discussion of the legal non-obvious inquiry, only with respect to evaluating whether it was obvious to combine certain elements and not with respect to the ultimate question of evaluating the level of advance over prior art or identifying the quantum of advance necessary to achieve non-obviousness.
In the context of combining prior art, the Court explained the need to consider market demand, design incentives, and other market forces that might lead to combinations or variations…