IP NEWS (JULY/2008):

 

            THE TRIPS (Treaty of Intellectual Property Rights Related to Commerce):

Our country Brazil signed the TRIPS. This International Treaty protect many areas of technology, it means the science in practicing, but the TRIPS not consider patents of invention as: a) against the public order or morality, inclusively to protect the life and human health, animal and plant or to avoid serious prejudice to environment; b) methods of diagnose, treatment and surgery, animal or human; c) animals that are not  microorganisms; d) plants that are not microorganisms, but to variety of plants should be a specification of protection system; e) biological process essentially to produce animals and plants, except process not

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The marking of products or services that use industrial property rights (such as patents or registered trademarks), so third parties may be aware of the existence of such intangible assets, provides the right holders with certain benefits. The marking is not an actual obligation, given that failure to mark a product is not illegal by itself nor harms any third party's rights.

Marking a product with the indication of an industrial property right may prevent or discourage third parties from infringing the intellectual property right associated to a product or service. If, in spite of the marking, a third party infringes the patent or trademark right, the measures available for the right holder are also stronger.

There are certain rules about the marking of products provided in the Mexican

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During prosecution in the USPTO, it may be prudent to consider citing to the MPEP when support for a legal proposition is required.  The practicalities of today’s USPTO tend to make this resource far more persuasive than court decisions.  

First, only a fraction of the PTO’s examining corps are attorneys. Few Examiners have the legal training to comfortably and confidently interpret case law; it is probably a foreign process to many of them. Consequently, many Examiners tend to discount court decisions and take the default position that if a decision had merit, the Office would have supplied guidance on its application in the MPEP (or another official publication).

Second, and related to the first point, it can be difficult and time consuming for Examiners to look up and to analyze

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In a recently decided matter of Rolic AG et al vs The Controller General of Patents and The Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs in respect of a national phase patent application in India, in the First Examination Report (FER) the Indian Patent Office had raised objections including (i) invention as claimed lacked in novelty for instance see International Preliminary Examination Report and documents cited therein and (ii) invention as claimed lacked in inventive merit for instance see International Preliminary Examination Report and documents cited therein.

The Applicants filed their response to the Examination Report within the prescribed timeline and submitted documents with amended claims explaining the invention and clarifying how the invention under the amended claims were

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In August 2007 the USPTO has issued revisions to some of its rules that allow the PTO to implements limits in continuation applications and claims number. The Plaintiffs (Tafas) brought suit against the PTO and challenged the validity of the revised rules.

 

On April 2008, the District Court has finally issued its Summary Judgment in the case in favor of the Plaintiffs stating that the PTO has stepped out of its authorities.

 

In its appeal to the CAFC, the USPTO asked the Federal Circuit to answer the following points:

 

• 1. Whether the USPTO's revised rules are within the PTO's statutory rulemaking authority;
• 2. Whether the revised rules stand in conflict with the Patent Act; and
• 3. Whether the PTO must provide public notice and comment for its rule revisions.

 

We shall surely continue

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Prof. John F. Duffy analyses at Patently-O the probable position of the USPTO towards software patents as presented in a series of cases. Specifically, patentable subject matter must result in a physical transformation of an article that is tied to a particular machine. A general purpose computer may probably not be regarded as a particular machine, and data structures and numbers (e.g. webpage rankings) may probably neither be regarded as articles nor as being physically transformed. Well – some news for the software industry.

The analysis is recommended as being not only thorough but also quite easy to read.

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As cleantech develops as an industry, so do cleantech related patents. The Cleantech Group at Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C, publishes a quarterly growth index 

of patents in the field of clean energy. Patents in the field are primarily related to fuel cells and secondarily to wind, sold and hybrid electrical energy in a similar weight, the former are the only field characterized by a continuous growth in patent numbers. Overall the study  includes over 200 US patents per quarter which is quite small. It is important to keep in mind that the current state of the cleantech field may better mirrored by the numbers of patent applications, however these are not published till 18 months after filing, and prosecution may take at least a time period that is similar in duration. The index

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The usual time limit for entering National Phase in INDIA based on a PCT International Application is Thirty One  months form the priority date.However, it is not that all National Phase applications filed in India have to wait for Thirty One months from priority to be taken up for Examination.In case any Applicant desires to proceed faster with the examination of the National Phase in India for a faster grant, there is a special provision for filing an Express Request for Examination by paying additional fees alongwith the National Phase entry in India by filing of which the Indian Patent Office will initiate examination of the aplication in India without waiting for the Thirty One month timeline to be over.Thus there is definite provision for expediting the grant in India of the

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Section 221 Bis of the Mexican Industrial Property Law (IPL) provides that the owner of a patent or registered trademark (there are no common-law rights in Mexico) is entitled to claim from the infringer as damages and/or lost of profits at least 40% of the retail price of each infringing product sold by the defendant. The reason of such stipulation is not only to provide monetary relief to the right holder but also to punish the infringer.

Further, section 221 of the IPL states that the right to file a damages claim is independent from the administrative penalties that the Mexican Patent and Trademark Office (MPTO) may impose to the infringer of the corresponding patent or registered trademark.

For some years, the federal courts of appeals ruled that sections 221 and 221 Bis of the IPL

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[Originally published at Russian Patents Blog ]

Last week we simultaneously (the same day) received similar inquires from two separate people - one came from the US and another from Spain. These inquires brought my attention to the fact that we forgot to mention this kind of service at our site - gotta fix it, but meanwhile I decided to put up a short post on this matter.

So, the inquiries were like these:

I wish to enter my PCT patent with your firm on Russia. I have 2 PCT patents. You can give nformation (prices at reasonable cost and others) about your office ,so I can enter my PCT nto Russia with your Firm.

and 2nd one:

I need to do a PCT national stage filing in your country by July 27, 2008 (the 31 month priority date), for application PCT/US2006/062***. If this is something you can do

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