The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently ended much of the controversy surrounding product-by-process claims in Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc., but arguably created a new debate in the intellectual property world. The court overruled an earlier panel decision from Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation v. Genetech, Inc., instead following the precedent […]
In a recent decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled that method claims in patents cannot be infringed under 35 U.S.C. §271(f). This section of the Patent Act is meant to prevent the encouragement of infringing a U.S. patent in another jurisdiction, and it came about in response to a […]
There is an interesting debate going on right now between William Patry and Ben Sheffner at the Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars blog. It centres on the verdicts in two recent high-profile p2p trafficking cases launched by RIAA against regular people (Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum). In Thomas-Rasset’s case, a jury awarded damages against […]
Australia is now at the centre of the global gene patent debate with a Senate inquiry that began last week in Melbourne. Senators in Australia began hearing public submissions on August 4th about the topic of gene patents in relation to the impact they have on health care costs. The inquiry centres around a bid […]
Infopaq, founded in Denmark in 1998, is a media monitoring and analysis company. One of their services is the monitoring of keywords that appear in newspaper text. To achieve this, Infopaq scans newspaper pages and the uses software to turn the image of the page into text. If pre-determined keywords that clients want monitored appear […]
It is often said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but in the world of copyright, flattery is a much more controversial act. If you are not already familiar with the Shepard Fairey v. The Associated Press controversy, hop over to this site and take a look at the two pictures. The original […]
European Union Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding is planning to overhaul Internet downloading policies in order to facilitate simple, consumer friendly, and legal access to music and films online. Her response to a recent survey, showing 60% of people between ages 16-24 as downloaders of illegal audiovisual content, is that “internet piracy appears to become more […]
On Monday, July 13th, Mosaid Technologies Inc. filed a suit against IBM Corporation for patent infringement concerning six of Mosaid’s United States patents. The suit was filed in the United States District Court in the District of Delaware. Mosaid, an Ottawa-based company, is well known for developing semiconductor technology. The patents involved in the suit […]
Despite the ominous verdict from the Swedish court which sentenced The Pirate Bay (TPB) operators to a year in prison and a penalty of US $3.6 million for facilitating copyright infringement, TPB may soon have new life breathed into the service. Global Gaming Factory X, a Swedish software company, has offered to purchase TPB for […]
Massive uncertainty looms around the future of Apple’s iPhone as Apple hits a new pothole in its rough journey to release iPhones in the Chinese subscriber market. The reason behind this ambiguity is that the trade-mark “i-phone” for mobile handsets in China is already owned by a Chinese electronics firm Hanwang Technologies Co., thereby making […]