Celebrating 20 Years of IP Excellence

Patent

USPTO’s Novel Initiative – EQPI

Recently, the USPTO announced two new programs under the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI) that are designed to improve the quality of Patent Prosecution in the United States. This program will add more detail to the record of each U.S. patent application. According to the PTO Director Michelle K Lee “Patents of the highest quality can help to stimulate and promote efficient licensing, research and development, and future innovation without resorting to needless high-cost court proceedings.  Through correctness and clarity,…

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Social Media and Intel (Part IX): Select Publicity Rights Cases

This post provides short briefs of two publicity rights cases, which provide insights about publicity rights on social media. A previous post on the subject covered a couple of other cases. Ranveer Singh and Slippers Just before the movie Kill Dil, a Bollywood film starring Ranveer Singh, Govinda and others was released, a company by the name 'Yo Custom Freak' uploaded a Facebook image of slippers. The phrase 'Kill Dil' was written on the slippers and Ranveer Singh's photograph was…

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Intellepedia - IP News Updates

US-ITC versus Clear

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently passed a decision against an order of the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) which sought to block the import of digital data that violated patents. The decision was passed on 10th November this year, in the case of ClearCorrect Operating, LLC, ClearCorrect Pakistan (Private), Ltd., v. International Trade Commission and Align Technology, Inc. Align Technology is a multinational medical device company based out of San Jose, California.  Align Technology…

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Infringement Analysis of SEPs

Standards are important for the purposes of compatibility and inter operability of components/devices and products. Technical standards mainly decide the interoperability in operation. These standards are mainly defined and set by a competent body such as an SDO (Standards Development Organization), even though there is no universally set standard used to qualify a patent as an essential patent. The process of qualifying and determining a patent as a standard essential patent(SEP) may depend on many factors, such as the type…

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Patent trolls – Lesson No. 1

  Patent trolls are organizations that aggressively defend patent libraries without manufacturing products of their own, which is why they are often referred to as Non Practicing Entities (NPEs) or Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs). These NPEs hardly contribute to research and development through innovation since they are rarely the original innovators. Moreover, the NPEs own patent libraries by buying inventions and patents cheaply from individual inventors and small entities who are not seeking to enforce them and licence the acquired patent…

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Social Media and IP (Part VIII): Select Patent Cases

Yahoo V. Facebook In 2012, Yahoo sued Facebook claiming infringement of ten of its patents relating to methods and systems of advertising on Social Media. The suit was filed after Facebook announced its plans to go for IPO. Yahoo did the same thing to Google and acquired substantial amount of shares in the bargain. In response, Facebook countersued Yahoo for infringement of its patents. The suit was settled within four months of its initial filing, in July, 2012. As a…

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The image depicts the logo of Google. This image is relevant as the post is about Google Street View. To read the post click here.

Trademark Infringement on E-Commerce platforms: Google AdWord case

Google is the world’s most famous search engine. Google's mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The major portion of Google's profit is through its highly successful program AdWords, which provides advertisers advertising space for related searches. AdWords is a program that helps companies to advertise and promote their products or services on Google’s websites. The program works by providing highly relevant ads and suggestions to third party users when they enter keywords…

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Technological Protection Measures

  The Copyright Act, 1957 went through a major change in 2012. The amendment harmonised the copyright law with the “Internet Treaties”- the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), making it capable of facing challenges posed by digital technologies. The Copyright Act, 2012 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Act’) added new Sections, 65A and 65B, for protection against dodging of technological measures and protection of rights management information respectively. The provision under Section 65A sets out…

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Trademark Infringement on Ecommerce Platforms- Royal Enfield v. ebay.in

This post will discuss another trademark infringement case in the ecommerce market in India. Recently, in October this year, Eicher Motors Ltd, which manufactures and sells the Royal Enfield bike, filed an infringement suit against Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh, for infringing their trademark ENFIELD, ROYAL ENFIELD and BULLET. The suit filed before the Delhi High Court, also claimed infringement of copyright of the logos and the website of Eicher Motors Ltd. Eicher alleged that Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh were…

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The image is the logo of Amazon. The post is about the invalidity of single click patents. Click on image to view post.

Multi Time Machine, Inc. v. Amazon

One can always see a lot of advertisements, while performing a google search or just about any search on other search engines. Advertisements, and more recently, keyword advertising are a major source of revenue generation for search engines. The case that we are about to discuss, is something that nobody ever anticipated to happen. Multi Time Machine Inc, (MTM) manufactures watches, specifically special ops watches and high-end tactical watches. It sells them on its own website and through its various…

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