Headline, December27, 2013

''' SOME INVENTIONS THAT -DEAR! - 

AND MI - MI THAT -SOME PATENTS '''

Time enough to look at Patent Regimes in most countries, and get to the base line because:

America's Supreme Court has raised the bar for what deserves a patent.

In 1572 the Privy Council Of Elizabeth 1, the Queen of England, refused to grant patent protection to new knives with bone handles because the improvement was marginal.

It is only natural that things progress, the council reasoned; minor amelioration's do not cut it. Then in 2007, America's Supreme Court decided likewise.

Ruling on KSR International v Teleflex, a patent dispute centered on the addition of electronic sensors to a car-accelerator pedals, the court said that the combination of two existing was not sufficiently  ''non-obvious'' to deserve a patent.

''Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress.'' wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in his opinion for the court.

To obtain a patent's 20-year exclusivity, an invention is expected to be novel, useful and non-obvious  -but the third requirement has not been rigorously applied in recent years by the patent office and the courts.

Now examiners and the courts have more discretion to use ''common sense''. 

The ruling has sweep implications. ''Nearly every patent in force today is prospectively open to challenge,'' says Bruce Lehman, a former commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office who works at Akin Gump, a law firm.

He expects a huge increase in litigation, longer waits to get patents and ultimately less certainty over their legitimacy. Yet this is beneficial, believes Brian Kahin, an intellectual-property expert at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, an industry lobby, since it may reduce the number of trivial or dubious patents.

The computer industry welcomes the ruling in a way as a way to thwart the growing number of frivolous lawsuits by  ''patent trolls''  -firms that make a business of suing others for violating questionable patents.

But it is a setback for the drug industry, which often seeks new patents for minor tweaks to existing inventions, such as combining one drug with another.

The ruling is just one in a string of recent cases in which the Supreme Court has sought to reverse the trend towards making patents easier to obtain and enforce.

In 2006, a case involving eBay, the biggest online auction site, the court tightened the standards that determine when an injunction can be used to force a firm accused of patent infringements to stop trading.

The same year the court ruled in a dispute between two biotech firms that companies which license a patent from its owner may still challenge its legality.

And then the same year in a separate decision the court ruled in favour of Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, and against AT&T, the world's biggest telecoms firm, in a dispute over damages for  patent infringement. 

The Post Continues:

With respectful dedication to the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Intellectual Property Of Every Student In The World  '''

Good Night & God Bless!

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