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Unitary patent: Danish Referendum – “Yes” vote
Yesterday, 25th May 2014, Denmark held a referendum on joining the Unified Patent Court. Out of just over 2.3 million votes cast, 62.5% voted in favour of joining the Unified Patent Court. The Danish parliament is now free to complete ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement and, eventually, deposit its instrument of ratification with the EU Commission. Currently only Austria and France have made such a deposit.
The Wikipedia page covering the Danish referendum is here. Commissioner Barnier also issued a Press Release in which he stated: (more…)
Unitary patent system – Scuttlebutt*
There’s not been much hard news recently regarding the unitary patent system so we’re going to take a leaf out of the 24 Hour Rolling News Playbook and start speculating away until something actually happens again….. (more…)
Rules for Playing Nicely – EU Commission and injunctions for Standards Essential Patents
The CJEU prepare to hand down their decision in Huawei v. ZTT (Image via Creative Commons Licence; Author Magnus Manske)
A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma – Churchill may have been talking about Russia, but when I hear this phrase FRAND licensing is more likely to come to mind, and more particularly, FRAND licensing for standards essential patents (SEPs). It must have all sounded so straightforward once – all the standards bodies agreed that you could bring your patents to the party, you would license them to all your competitors, you’d get a royalty back to compensate you for your R&D efforts, and it would all be fair, reasonable… and nice – well, technically “non-discriminatory”, but “nice” seems to get the wooliness of the intention over better – with the end result of a collection of patents all licensed to the rest of the industry under FRAND terms. It all seemed so reasonable that an engineer at the standards meeting could concentrate on reaching the best technical solution (his or hers, obviously…) without any thought to yucky patent stuff.
Yeah, right. It hasn’t been nice for a while – not a surprise, as a requirement to license SEPs on FRAND terms is little more than an agreement to make SEPs Someone Else’s Problem and not an issue for the standards body concerned. Despite a good twenty years of fractious patent disputes about SEPs and FRAND licensing absorbing vast quantities of legal effort – I’ve spent many hours on the DRAM and 802.11a patent sagas alone, and I was barely on the fringes of both – many key questions, such as how FRAND license royalties should be calculated and just what a patent proprietor is entitled to do up to the point where a licensing target becomes a paid-up licensee, have nebulous answers at best. (more…)
Patent Box and UK secrecy orders
The interaction between the Patent Box regime and UK patent applications subject to directions under section 22 of the Patents Act may seem like a bit of a niche interest area, but never let it be said that IPcopy isn’t willing to poke into the darkest, dustiest corners of IP trivia to get to the truth….
When I joined the patent profession I worked for the Ministry of Defence’s Intellectual Property Department. That fact means that whenever someone runs into a question about the defence industry, Defcons or whether patent applications that are subject to “secrecy orders” can take advantage of the patent box regime all eyes seem to turn towards me.
So, the question having been asked, I did some digging….
IP Bill becomes the Intellectual Property Act 2014
[Update 19.5.2014: the Intellectual Property Act 2014 has now appeared on the legislation.gov.uk website and can be accessed here]
The Intellectual Property Bill left the “ping pong” stage last month after the House of Lords approved the amendments made to the Bill by the House of Commons. Yesterday evening, the IP Bill received Royal Assent to pass into law as the Intellectual Property Act 2014 (House of Lords Hansard; Parliament (Intellectual Property Act 2014)).
As noted on the Department for Business Innovation and Skills website it is expected that some measures within the Act will come into force in October 2014, with all the measures being implemented by late 2015. (more…)
“Say cheese” – Amazon’s studio photography patent
This item was written for and originally appeared on the 2paragraphs website which covers news stories in, um, two paragraphs….
In the last week news outlets have carried a story that Amazon has been granted a patent for taking a photograph against a white background. However, as is usual in cases where patent related news intersects with the mainstream media, the reported story is not nearly so sensational as some of the headlines (1, 2, 3) that have been doing the rounds would have you believe. Although Amazon’s patent relates to the taking of photographs against a background in a studio, what most of the news items fail to point out is that the actual scope of protection for this idea is far far narrower, as can be seen by reading the long list of elements contained in the patent’s independent claims (see claims 1, 2 and 25 of US8676045). Possibly a slightly more interesting question (only slightly mind, we are talking patent law here!) is why Amazon may have applied for a patent in the first place. (more…)
How the UKIPO assess computer implemented inventions (CIPA Seminar)
This is a slightly belated review of the CIPA seminar, “Computer Programs & Excluded Matter”, held at CIPA Hall on 7 April 2014 and attended by this ipcopywriter.
The seminar was presented by two senior examiners from the UK Intellectual Property Office, Dr Russell Maurice and Dr Stephen Richardson, both very enthusiastic and articulate speakers. The structure of the seminar was based on training sessions given to UKIPO examiners and involved a presentation regarding excluded matter under the Patents Act. This was followed by a review of a handful of case studies in small groups to test the principles that we had just been taught, and then finished up with a discussion of the decisions reached by the groups.
G1/12 – Probably the most exciting G decision ever
Okay – I admit it – that’s a massive lie. Decision G1/12 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, which issued on 30 April, is not exactly a thrills-and-spills ride. The questions are uninspiring, and there is some pretty beardy, academic stuff in the Decision, but it’s all about the sort of procedural stuff that could just save a representative’s behind from the gluepot one day, so if you’re an EPA, I suppose it might be worth a cursory glance.
If you don’t have the time to wade through it yourself, the headline is: if you accidentally name the wrong Appellant on a notice of appeal, but you intended to name the right one, and the right one is inferable from the file, you can correct it. Which we pretty much knew (or at least suspected) already given existing case law, but now we know it a bit more. If you want to find out how getting to that earth-shattering conclusion could possibly have required the input of the EBA, here’s a run-down of events. Peruse through it while I write to Alton Towers and suggest that they call their next rollercoaster the G1/12-o-nator.
Unitary patent system – Nuggets of News (May 2014)
Today we have a quick round up of some unitary patent related news items that have cropped up in the last week or so. Read on for news of the progress of ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement in Belgium, two patent bills in Sweden, a statement from the EPO’s Economic and Scientific Advisory Board (ESAB) on the unitary patent package and the Brussels I regulation. (more…)
Wacky patents – Animals in Patent Illustrations
Animals in patent drawings? It must be Friday…
“Animals in Patent Illustrations”? Yup, it must be Friday…
Today, we’re going to look at some strange patents that feature various creatures in their Figures! Why? Well, blame this article from the BBC which looked at the tricky business of re-designing the humble pair of glasses. Following references to anti-fog coatings and magnet hinges this BBC article ended, where else, with glasses for chickens.
So without further delay welcome to the weird world of animals in patents….[Warning: the BadPunTM Generator and NaffTM Picture Captioning have been switched on and used extensively in this post.]
IPcopy 