IP due diligence from an in-house perspective
IPcopy and Keltie LLP were treated to an excellent presentation by Rob Carter of K2 IP on the subject of due diligence from an in-house perspective (Rob worked in Shell’s intellectual property legal team for over 25 years, the last 10 years as Associate General Counsel and as part of the Global IP leadership team).
A typical M&A transaction passes through a number of stages and IP plays a key role in many of these stages:
- Identification (to work out what IP is key?, how to extract value from the IP? etc.);
- Assessment (what information will need to go into the data room?, what IP assets does the target company have? what IP agreements will be needed?)
- Select (How do the IP due diligence results affect the proposed transaction?)
- Define (what IP-related agreements will be required – a brand licence, process licence, patent/trade mark assignments, etc?. What IP rights will a retained business need?)
- Execute (Negotiation and drafting of the IP-related agreements)
- Operate (the fun task of recording licences and assignments and transferring files)
- Asset Review (how did it go? How can we do better next time?)
US Patent Law: Prenatal DNA Test invalid under §101
Today on IPcopy we have a guest post from Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C. Many thanks to Michael J. Cronin, Ph.D for providing permission to repost this article on IPcopy.
In Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. et al. v. Sequenom, Inc. et al., Nos. 2014-1139 and 2014-1144 (Fed. Cir. June 12, 2015), the Federal Circuit held that certain method claims of Sequenom’s U.S. Patent No. 6,258,540 (the ‘540 patent) are invalid as being directed to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Court concluded that the use of conventional methods for detecting a naturally occurring phenomenon did not transform the natural phenomenon into a patentable invention. Judge Reyna wrote the opinion for the panel, which included Judges Linn and Wallach. (more…)
Innovate UK – Funding competition for £5000 innovation voucher
Innovate UK is offering up to a £5,000 voucher for your business. Great! You’ll be able to get a good 100 pens from WHSmiths for that. Except unfortunately (well, probably fortunately), this is not a voucher you can spend in WHSmith, or any other stationery shop.
Innovate UK is offering the (up to) £5,000 voucher to start-up, micro, small and medium-sized businesses to spend on finding an expert to help with your idea or design, or to buy time and support for specialist equipment. The winning businesses are selected from a lottery draw out of the initial successful applications, with 100 vouchers available each round and four rounds per year. (more…)
Trade Marks, Goodwill and the Commercialisation of your Brand
In the final article in this Intellectual Property (“IP”) series, we look at the protection and commercialisation of brands or trade marks.
Trade marks are business identifiers which are generally comprised of one or a combination of the following elements: words, logos, slogans and even colours, shapes and sounds. Generally, anything in which your business has acquired goodwill and acts as an indication of trade origin can be considered a trade mark.
It is recommended to protect those trade marks of value to your business by registering them at the IP offices of the countries of commercial interest. Trade mark registrations provide prima facie evidence of a business’ rights in a mark and ensure that business is able to prevent third parties causing confusion in the marketplace, or taking advantage of its goodwill in its mark, by using an identical or similar trade mark.
Once in place, trade mark registrations can also be licensed or assigned to generate revenue for your business and are valuable business assets. (more…)
Patent Box – Some Practical Considerations
A “patent box” (though eagle eyed readers should be able to tell why this wouldn’t qualify..)
Keltie LLP was pleased to welcome David Clift of Hazelwoods recently to give a presentation on the issue of Patent Box that highlighted practical experience of the regime along with some hints and tips and areas to be wary of. In this post we’ll briefly recap the scheme before focussing on the practical advice provided in the presentation. (more…)
EQE Pre-Exam 2015 – Questions on cardboard cut out
[Update 11/5/15 – it appears from the comments on DeltaPatents results blog post that non-appealing candidates have also benefitted from the decision.]
IPcopy has just learned that the EQE Examination Board has sent out what appears to be a response letter to candidates who appealed their pre-exam results based on questions 15.2 and/or 17.3, rectifying their ‘fail’ decisions to passes. The letter means that the Examination Board has effectively accepted both true and false as correct for these questions where the main point of contention was whether the prior art disclosed that cardboard comprises wood fibres. However, this is not explicitly stated in the letter and, at time of writing, the marking scheme has not been updated. (more…)
Google Introduces New Patent Marketplace to Limit Troll Activity
Today on IPcopy we have a guest post from Peter Vanderheyden of Article One Partners on the subject of Google’s new patent marketplace.
Earlier this week, Google announced the formal launch of a new patent marketplace.
“The usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls,” said Google patent deputy counsel Allen Lo, as quoted in the Daily Mail. (more…)
Spot The Difference…. How do you Deal with Copying?
In the previous “general introduction to IP” article, we discussed various different intellectual property or “IP” rights. This time, we are examining two of these rights in more detail, the two rights invoked most commonly when encountering instances of copying of products, packaging or promotional materials: Copyright and Design Right. As noted before, these articles are designed as (brief) primers to highlight some particular elements of the subject area.
Subsistence
Copyright will subsist in the tangible expressions of your ideas and creativity. Examples of copyright works are paintings, photographs, sound or film recordings, drawings and written works, such as the scripts appearing on your product packaging or websites. Copyright does not apply to single names or titles. (more…)
Are You Protecting Your Most Valuable Assets? An Introduction to Intellectual Property
Over the next couple of weeks, IPcopy will be republishing some general introduction to IP articles that we prepared to present some topics, facts and issues from the area of intellectual property law for people who have had little or no contact with intellectual property. The articles are designed as (brief) primers to highlight some particular elements of the subject area.
Intellectual property (IP) can sometimes be overlooked. Intellectual assets are not tangible and, as such, can be difficult to value. Often, they are not taken into consideration properly when assessing the worth of a business. However, these assets can be the most important to a business, contributing significantly to its goodwill and reputation, and need to be protected properly. (more…)
EQE Pre-exam 2015 – Downward adjustment to results?
The results for the EQE pre-exam were released yesterday (Friday 20 March) and IPcopy would like to extend its congratulations to those of you that passed. We would also like to sound a slight note of caution. The Delta Patents blog post for the 2015 results has highlighted that the marks that were available online may have been adjusted down by 1 or 2 marks at some point during the day yesterday. If you were a borderline pass it could be worth rechecking your results. (more…)
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