The U.S. Court of Appeals issued a decision on the case between software giant Microsoft and the Canadian company i4i Inc.
This case concerning a claim by i4i Inc., that Microsoft infringed its patent for a software format XML.
According to the court decision Microsoft must stop selling Word and any other Office 2007 products, which contain the form XML. Moreover, U.S. giant must pay compensation amounting to 290 million dollars.
This means for Microsoft, in order to continue the sale of the Word in the future, should remove the options for storage in formats. XML,. DOCX, or. DOCM, which contain XML.

Intellectual Property Planet

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The U.S. Court of Appeals issued a decision on the case between software giant Microsoft and the Canadian company i4i Inc.
This case concerning a claim by i4i Inc., that Microsoft infringed its patent for a software format XML.
According to the court decision Microsoft must stop selling Word and any other Office 2007 products, which contain the form XML. Moreover, U.S. giant must pay compensation amounting to 290 million dollars.
This means for Microsoft, in order to continue the sale of the Word in the future, should remove the options for storage in formats. XML,. DOCX, or. DOCM, which contain XML.

Intellectual Property Planet

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Interested about intellectual property related blog posts or looking for some specific topic, but don't have time enough to check your rss feed reader or browse all those magnificent patent, trademark, etc blogs?

No problem, now you can search within more than 300 blogs by using IPE's blogroll search .

Try it, and you will find lot of interesting topics. And if you like it, you can this search engine to your blog or website. The code is available here .

The full list of included intellectual property blogs is available at blogroll of IPEstonia .

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I'd like to draw your attention to Dennis Crouch's latest posting on Patenly O, presenting an actual estimation of waiting times for a first USPTO Office Action .

I don't know if the statistics refer to all US Applications, i.e. including those filed as a PCT National Phase. As far as I know, Applications filed as a national phase of a PCT Application take longer than Applications originally submitted as a US Application.

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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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 A webpage at wipo presents annually selected notable inventors. I would like to share with you some inventions for daily use by these notable inventors

(WO/2001/033409) COMPUTER GENERATED POETRY SYSTEM

by Raymond KURZWEIL;

 

(WO 03/103559) Hybrid Human/Electric Powered Vehicle

and

(WO 02/011641) Apparatus and Method for Cleaning Teeth

by

Dean KAMEN; 

 

(WO 98/049868) LIGHT ENHANCED BULLHORN

and

(WO 03/091099) ROTORCRAFT

by

Elwood Norris;

 

 and finally

 (WO 98/028988) EDIBLE TOY FIGURES CONSTRUCTED OF CEREAL, AND METHOD

and

 (WO 98/038810) DISPOSABLE WIRELESS TELEPHONE AND METHOD

by

Randice-Lisa ALTSCHUL.

 

I hope you have enjoyed!

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A possibility for opposing pending patent applications in the US is presented by Dennis Crouch in his blog Patently-O under the title "poor-man's opposition proceedings ".

The US law does not allow opposing a patent application (in contrary e.g. to israeli procedures which are partly based on receiving third party's oppositions), however they do commit applicants to submit to the patent office any relevant subject matter.

So, the procedure comprises sending such subject matter to the applicant, thus making him obligated to disclose it to the patent office!

I like this

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 I would like to recommend the Duncan Bucknell blog , which contains a wealth of information and articles in different IP related themes. The posts are very well organized namely in a weekly report of news from all over the world (with indication of the blogs reporting them) and also in scorecards which hold the items categorized after the relevant firms (e.g. - find all IP issues relating to Apple). Just delve

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Hello again,

following Biomed 2008 in Israel and after talking to some ex-scientists that have turned to patent drafting, I would like to share with you a word of encouragement. Here's an article from USAToday (from a year ago) indicating that (as David Bowie sings) - we're not alone!

Yours,

Ophir.

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