27 August 2019

Sticky

Patent News Bulletin: Indian Patent Statistics and Industrial Design Statistics

These statistics have been compiled from the official journal of the patents and designs office published weekly on Fridays. These statistics are presented to you by the Patent attorneys and experts of BananaIP Counsels, India’s leading Patent Firm. Indian Patent Statistics A total of 732 patent applications have been published in the 34th issue of the Patent Journal, 2019. Out of the 732 applications published in the journal, 98 applications account for early publications while 643 applications account for ordinary publications or publications occurring after the 18 – month period. A total of 535 applications have been granted last week as compared...

21 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Patent Trolls – Threat to Innovation and its Users!

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

This image depicts a Monkey standing with a stick and trying to describe what Patent Troll is with the basic definitions written in the Background. This image is relevant as USPTO has granted a Patent for a method of Patent Trolling. Click on the image for more information

This post was first published on February 11th, 2014. We are familiar with Patent Trolling strategies adopted by companies as a means to financial gain and to gain market advantage over competitors. Normally, in such cases, one company would use its portfolio of active patents to sue other companies which seem to infringe on their patent rights. This may trigger a litigation procedure in courts or get settled outside the court, at the expense of a huge amount of money. In an interesting case, things went from bad to worse when a company decided to sue the end users of certain...

20 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Is it Legal to Reverse Engineer the Engineered?

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Copyrights, Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law, Patents

This image depicts the word Engineer written in the reverse way. This image is relevant as the issue here is whether is it legal to reverse engineer the engineered. Click on the image for more information

This post was first published on September 24, 2014.

Shoppers would agree with me when I say that while purchasing something, I need to feel a connect with it. Once I have found that connection, a feeling of possession sets in and I know that the article, which until recently was only lying in a shop somewhere, is now mine. This feeling of possession of an inanimate article may lead us to believe that anything can be done to it, which would legally be termed as personal property rights. These include the right to take the product apart, measure it, subject it to testing and so on. A question now arises – Can we Reverse Engineer and use something that has been engineered by someone else?

The controversy between Atari and Nintendo lays down most of the pre-Digital Millennium Copyright Act framework for the legal analysis of Reverse Engineering. In the late 1980s, the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a major player in the video games market. The security mechanism on the NES, called 10-NES, prevented games from running on the system unless they contained a special chip and software. This security mechanism was used by Nintendo to push game developers into licensing contracts.

19 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Patent News Bulletin: Indian Patent Statistics, Interesting Inventions, 3-day training program on IP strategy and more IP news

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Patents

“Patent News Bulletin: Indian Patent Statistics, Indian Design Statistics, Interesting Inventions, NI-SME to organize a 3-day training program on IP strategy, NRDC facilitates the commercialization of two technologies developed by NIOT, New MoU enables patents registered in South Korea to be recognized in Cambodia and more and more” presented to you by the Patent attorneys and experts of BananaIP Counsels, India’s leading Patent Firm. Indian Patent Statistics A total of 422 patent applications have been published in the 33rd issue of the Patent Journal, 2019. Out of the 422 applications published in the journal, 169 applications account for early publications while 253 applications...

15 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Intellectual Property Protection for Computer Programs – Part III

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Copyrights, Intellectual Property, Patents

This post was published on September 01, 2014.

In continuation to the previous post in this series, we will today be looking into copyright protection of computer software. As discussed in the previous post, Copyright Law came as an answer to the protection of computer programs at a time when the importance of Trade Secret Law for the same was dwindling.

A computer program, being composed of source codes can be brought under the ambit of literary works in Copyright Law. The basic principle governing Copyright Law is the idea / expression dichotomy. As per this principle, Copyright Law only protects the expression of ideas and not the ideas per se. While talking about the principle of the idea / expression dichotomy, it should be admitted that there has always been a lack of clarity regarding what constitutes an idea and what constitutes an expression. This inherent lack of clarity in Copyright Law combined with the complexity of a computer program prevents Copyright Law from being an effective system of protection.

15 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Sound CAPTCHA – Patents for the Blind 3

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

This image depicts Sound Captcha written over it with a red color background. This image is relevant as A patent granted to Towson University was granted this patent to validate captcha for blind person using their voice. Click on this image for more information

This post was published on September 01, 2014.

At one point, access to technology, especially the Internet, was only a dream for the visually disabled. For a long time, online tools were not accessible owing to either the lack of availability or high cost. But today, popular screen reading software applications like Job Access With Speech (JAWS) and open source screen reading software applications like NVDA are available for free. These applications allow a blind person to access a computer and perform several of its functions without the need of a screen!

Accessing the Internet was initially not very easy, but as days passed several modules were added to screen readers, and now, almost 50% of the Internet, especially the text based part, is accessible to the blind. Among the accessible websites, one common roadblock encountered by the visually disabled is the CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA, Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a method used to prevent automated programs from accessing secure websites. CAPTCHA normally displays an image, the data in which must be manually entered into another text box to authenticate a human user. Though Google’s RE-CAPTCHA provides an audio alternative, its success rate is less than 50%. I used this several times, and succeeded only once.

14 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

James Cameron: Revolution of Underwater Cinematography

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

This image depicts world renowned Movie Director James Cameron holding a Camera. This image is relevant as he has earn accolades for his Underwater Cinematography. Click on the image for more information

This post was published on September 04, 2014.

A movie, a series of pictures, combined with sound effects and the lighting, is entertainment to people and business to its makers. But a truly good movie is something that touches people at their deepest emotions and leave an impression. When I think of a film director who has given audience some of the best films, one person that strikes my mind is James Francis Cameron.

Some of his works include Titanic, Aliens, Rambo: First Blood Part II and so on. After Titanic, he began working on a project that took almost 10 years to make. The movie is none other than Avatar, which took the film industry by storm, and he received nominations in three Academy Award Categories.

12 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Indian Patent Statistics Interesting Inventions, Patent Dispute Settlement, Patent License Agreement and more

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

Patent News Bulletin: Indian Patent Statistics, Indian Design Statistics, Interesting Inventions, Sony & Fujifilm settle patent dispute, OPPO signs patent license agreements with Intel and Ericsson and more” presented to you by the Patent attorneys and experts of BananaIP Counsels, India’s leading Patent Firm. Indian Patent Statistics A total of 1360 patent applications have been published in the 32nd issue of the Patent Journal, 2019. Out of the 1360 applications published in the journal, 158 applications account for early publications while 1202 applications account for ordinary publications or publications occurring after the 18 – month period. A total of 438 applications have been...

08 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Patent Invalidation in the US: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

This post was first published on July 18, 2014.

After studying citations from patents that were invalidated by US Judges, researchers from the London School of Economics commented, “Patent invalidation has a significant impact on cumulative innovation in the fields of computers and communications, electronics and medical instruments (including biotechnology). We find no such effect in fields involving drugs, chemicals or mechanical technologies.” Let us now take a look at why this discrepancy exists.

What is patent invalidation?

The Patents Act outlines circumstances under which a granted patent can be revoked on certain grounds.

Who is affected by this and how has this come to be?

Start-ups seem especially vulnerable to bad patent policy because they may not have the legal or the economic negotiating power to deal with big business. The researchers commented that when large patentees are involved, bargaining breakdown occurs and small ﬁrms are normally less capable of resolving disputes cooperatively, without resorting to the involvement of courts.

07 August 2019

0 Cmnts

Sticky

Claim Drafting – Transitional Phrases

Posted by BananaIP Reporter

in Intellectual Property, Patents

This post was first published on July 17, 2014.

A transitional phrase is a part of the claim that connects the preamble and the body. The Transitional phrase determines as to whether a claim is “Open” “Partially Open” or “Closed.”

Open Claim

An Open claim includes additional unrecited elements i.e., if a claim, which is Open, recites elements A, B, C and D, then an article which includes elements A, B, C, D and E infringes the Open claim irrespective of the fact that the article has an extra element E which is not recited in the Open claim.

The term “comprising” in a claim makes the claim Open.

In, Gillette Co. v. Energizer Holdings, Inc., 405 F.3d 1367 (Fed. Cir 2005), a famous and much talked about case, the claim at issue recited “A safety razor blade unit comprising a guard, a cap, and a group of first, second and third blades. ” The accused infringing product included four blades. The court said that the word “comprising” makes the claim Open and hence, the scope of the claim encompasses all safety razors satisfying the elements set forth in the claim thus concluding that the accused product infringed the claim.

Patents

SOME OF OUR CLIENTS