In a recent post Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Horacio Gutierrez, articulated the need for a global patent system calling it “a necessity, if national patent authorities are to overcome the substantial difficulties they face”. With respect to patent applications, such difficulties include, increased number of patent application backlogs, longer pendency periods, […]
A recent appeal initiated by the University of Western Australia (UWA) was dismissed by the full Federal Court of Australia, which upheld the decision to place intellectual property rights into the hands of academics, and not the institutions that employ them. The case of University of Western Australia v. Gray involved a particular invention developed […]
Software patents have been criticized frequently in recent years for a multitude of reasons. Computer programmers argue that they can make programming impossible for both commercial and for non-profit projects. Some analysts have noted that they do not promote innovation like patents in other industries do, and may in fact be hurting research and development […]
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 […]
This summer I had the opportunity to travel to Munich, Germany where I attended summer courses in Copyright and Patent law. I attended this program though the George Washington University Law School and the courses were held at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law. What I learned in the classroom […]
Mark Rogers (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University) focuses on applied analysis of intellectual property and performance in his research. He is an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. The role of IP in the UK, as elsewhere, is under active debate. In 2006 the Gowers Review of IP looked at all aspects of IP, although with a particular […]
The current decline in patent filings at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has been well documented on many prominent intellectual property blog sites. In fact, according to a recent Patently-O blog entry, “new patent filings are down 16% so far in 2009.” This post examines the variability in the number of application filings in the United […]
Nigel D’Souza is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. I have been researching at Human Rights Law Network for over a month now and my findings are quite concerning. In terms of patent law, a skeleton based on international standards is in place but clarity is lacking. As mentioned in my previous post, […]
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 […]