Tabrez Ahmad'sTechnolex


Tabrez Ahmad's Technolex

Technology, Education R&D, Consultancy,Hyperawareness,ODR,

Network of Law

The objective of the blog is to provide a fair analysis and awareness of legal issues in an easy way for the understanding of the people at large


Tuesday, June 29, 2010

ConferenceLex (Call for Papers): CII & APTDC, National Conference on Building Next Practices of IP Management

ConferenceLex (Call for Papers): CII & APTDC, National Conference on Building Next Practices of IP Management

Dr.Tabrez writes about the ever-expanding world of Intellectual Property Law,Cyberlaw,Corporate Law including burning issues of other areas of National and International Importance.

The Bilski Case is Finally Decided

 

          The court held that the Bilski's application was not statutory subject matter:

Petitioners' remaining claims are broad examples of how hedging can be used in commodities and energy markets. Flook established that limiting an abstract idea to one field of use or adding token post solution components did not make the concept patentable. That is exactly what the remaining claims in petitioners' application do. These claims attempt to patent the use of the abstract idea of hedging risk in the energy market and then instruct the use of well-known random analysis techniques to help establish some of the inputs into the equation. Indeed, these claims add even less to the underlying abstract principle than the invention in Flook did, for the Flook invention was at least directed to the narrower domain of signaling dangers in operating a catalytic converter.
* * * 
Today, the Court once again declines to impose limitations on the Patent Act that are inconsistent with the Act's text. The patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas. The Court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable "process," beyond pointing to the definition of that term provided in §100(b) and looking to the guideposts in Benson, Flook, and Diehr.

And nothing in today's opinion should be read as endorsing interpretations of §101 that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used in the past. See, e.g., State Street, 149 F. 3d, at 1373; AT&T Corp., 172 F. 3d, at 1357. It may be that the Court of Appeals thought it needed to make the machine-or-transformation test exclusive precisely because its case law had not adequately identified less extreme means of restricting business method patents, including (but not limited to) application of our opinions in Benson, Flook, and Diehr. In disapproving an exclusive machine-or-transformation test, we by no means foreclose the Federal Circuit's development of other limiting criteria that further the purposes of the Patent Act and are not inconsistent with its text.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Source: The 271 Patent Blog  By Peter Zura


For a copy of the opinion, click here (link)

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Monday, June 28, 2010

Launch of WIPO-Gold- an IP Research Portal

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva  has launched a IP Resource Portal named 'WIPO-Gold' focusing on providing online IP information tool, which can be helpful to access broad collection of  IP data  relating to technology, brands, designs, statistics, WIPO standards, IP classification systems and IP laws and treaties. The Portal is very useful since it provides treaties administered by WIPO, its regulations and also the contracting members list, which comes very handy in various situations. Along with it it also provides for Statistical publication of Patents, trademarks, designs, plant varities, microorganisms, etc. 

A specific section has been dedicated to WIPO UDRP Panel Decisions, which houses full text search of WIPO Decisions on Domain Names. 


In the website, Director General Francis Gurry said "The launch of WIPO GOLD is a significant step towards fulfilling one of the Organization's strategic goals – that of serving as a world reference source for IP information and analysis". The WIPO GOLD portal is a rich, dynamic and evolving information tool that will continue to be expanded and improved over time," he added. 

To visit WIPO Gold, please visit : http://www.wipo.int/wipogold/en/

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

5th LAWASIA International Moot Competition 2010, New Delhi India

As you are aware but might have not taken notice or remembered, Wednesday 30th June, 2010 is the deadline for expression of interest of participation in the 5th LAWASIA International Moot Competition with the actual deadline for the registration of teams on Tuesday, 13 July 2010. The expression of interest is to enable the LAWASIA Standing Committee to plan and prepare for the actual competition in November. Your expression of interest is therefore important from that perspective.

 

Please note that there are limited places for the competition and therefore the general principles adopted by the Standing Committee in deciding who gets to participate are based on the widest possible national representation of teams in line with our ethos of embracing humanity with all its diversity. The first team from a country to express interest/register will be given a place. If there are more than one team from a country such subsequent teams will be placed on a "reserve list" in chronological order of expression of interest/registration unless in the view of the Standing Committee the number of Law Schools in that country warrants the admission of a second or third team. The team at the top of the reserve list being the team to have first expressed interest/registered and so forth. In the event there is a tie the team that registered will take precedence over the team that merely expressed an interest. Similarly if there is more than one team from a country preference will be given to teams not from the same Law School. Schools that have participated in previous years will be considered favourably. There is no appeal and the Standing Committee's decision is final.

 

 



--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic'

 

The expectations and demands of privacy activists are unrealistic and uncommercial, according to one of America's top privacy law academics. Lobbyists for privacy rights should be more pragmatic and cooperate with companies, he said.

Privacy advocates this week wrote to social networking giant Facebook in the latest of a long line of criticisms of its privacy policies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU of Northern California, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) complained in an open letter (pdf) to the company that it did not do enough to protect the personal information people post to the site.

Such demands will never be successful, though, because they run so counter to the business interests of companies, Chris Jay Hoofnagle told podcast OUT-LAW Radio. Hoofnagle was speaking before that letter was made public.

Hoofnagle is director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's information privacy programs and senior fellow to the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic.

"The privacy advocates have been less than pragmatic on these issues and they're calling for interventions that I don't think will protect privacy," he said, speaking of criticisms expressed by various organisations in recent months. "[They also] might be commercially impossible to put into play."

The privacy groups this week urged Facebook to make many of its features opt-in only, so that users had to actively choose them.

"The answer can't be opt in," said Hoofnagle. "Let's say [US consumer regulator] the Federal Trade Commission says we're going to create this opt in rule, companies will simply require people to opt in to see any content."

Hoofnagle has published widely on privacy law and the internet. He told OUT-LAW Radio that the very basis of the action of many privacy advocates is wrong, and that he backs a very simple solution to the privacy problem.

"If I could do anything now I would simply create a ceiling on how long advertising data would be kept, something like three months," he said. "It would cause advertisers to have to compete under that ceiling, whoever could do the best targeting with just three months of data.

"It would eliminate the civil liberties concerns because companies would have to erase the click-stream after a short amount of time. And the other benefit is that it wouldn't require the consumers to do anything," he said.

User data is valuable to website publishers such as Facebook because it allows them to sell more expensive advertising space to companies which will use the gathered data to try to match adverts to users based on their activity and supposed demographic profile.

But Hoofnagle said that advertisers had told regulators in the US that they did not need lots of historic data to make online advertising work.

"The FTC received a lot of testimony in recent years … and behavioural advertisers came forth and said that the most accurate data is the live data, it's the thing you're doing now," he said. "That really indicates your what your purchasing intent is. Historical data isn't as useful.

"A number of advertisers … said that any data that was older than a month was worthless for targetting," he said.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Whether a Digital File is a Product under Patent Law

In the  interesting trans-national infringement case of  Yangaroo v. Destiny Media Tech  (E.D. Wisc. 2010) ,  Judge Griesbach awarded summary judgment of non-infringement in favor of the accused infringer. The court held that the Canadian-based defendant's actions did not qualify as infringement under Section 271(g)'s proscription against importation-of-a-product-made-by-a-patented-process. The asserted patent claims a particular method of distributing a content file over a network. After a series of steps, recipient terminals are provided with access to the content file. The accused infringer (Destiny) distributes encrypted music files using a method that (arguably) would infringe the patent under 271(a) if it had been performed within the US. The focal-point of the 271(g) dispute here was on whether the digital music files could be considered "products" within the meaning of 271(g). 35 USC 271(g): Whoever without authority imports into the United States or offers to sell, sells, or uses within the United States a product which is made by a process patented in the United States shall be liable as an infringer. . . In earlier cases: NTP, Inc. v. Research In Motion, Ltd., 418 F.3d 1282 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citing Bayer and holding that email packets sent from Canada were not "products . . . [b]ecause the 'transmission of information,' like the 'production of information,' does not entail the manufacturing of a physical product . . . .").  Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc., 609 F. Supp. 2d 1057 (C.D. Cal. 2009) (a three dimensional digital representation of teeth transmitted to recipients in the United States was a product). Bayer AG v. Housey Pharm., Inc., 340 F.3d 1367, 1371-72 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (271(g) applies only to "physical products" and does not extend to "information" produced by a patented process.).  CNET Networks, Inc. v. Etilize, Inc., 528 F. Supp. 2d 985 (N.D. Cal. 2007) (transmission of electronic catalog of product information could be a "product" within the meaning of 271(g); distinguishing NTP and Bayer as involving "services" and "information" rather than "products" and stored data). While In the current Decision: In Yangaroo, the court distinguished CNet and Ormco by holding that the distributed music file was not a "product" of the method because the music file was not created by the claimed process. The Defendant (Destiny) did modify the music files during its distribution process by encrypting them. The district court held that the newly encrypted files could not be considered 271(g) products because the asserted patent did not claim encryption.

Source: http://www.patentlyo.com 11th June, 2010



--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Wipro and Microsoft Join Hands to Deliver Global Legal Process Outsourcing Efficiencies

As per the Businesswire ( A Birkshire Hathaway Company ),  WIPRO Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited , yesterday announced that its Business Process Outsourcing division has partnered with Microsoft Corporation to provide global Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) for Microsoft's Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio.

In July 2008, Wipro began providing U.S. Patent and Trademark filing and docketing services to Microsoft's Intellectual Property & Licensing group. Microsoft previously had used a mix of in house resources, outside law firms and offshore vendors to perform these IP services. Moving to Wipro, with its extensive BPO experience, international reach and global delivery capabilities, ensured not only efficiency but also consistency in the way Microsoft does business.

Microsoft facilitated the transition of processes to Wipro by leading domain training for Wipro's team. Wipro correspondingly developed the LPO framework, tools, trainings, controls and metrics required to drive high productivity and reduced costs for Microsoft. Wipro's operational rigor, application of tools and various quality improvement methodologies has led to significant gains in both quality and efficiency of the transferred processes. These results have led Microsoft to add international docketing and filing processes to the original US-only processes at Wipro.

Over the past two years, Wipro has developed an impressive IP domain expertise and ability to work on a scale required for Microsoft's vast IP portfolio. Wipro and Microsoft continue to jointly develop improved domain expertise, processes and case management and work allocation tools to further streamline IP processes.

"The dedicated Microsoft team at Wipro has become a fundamental component of our global Patent operations function," said Martin Shively, GM of Patent Operations at Microsoft. "The Wipro team works closely with our in-house team to manage one of the world's largest and most valuable patent portfolios."

"The success of this partnership is testament to the innovation and dedication demonstrated by Microsoft's IP team and Wipro's LPO solutions professionals," said Saju A. Joseph, General Manager KPO & LPO solutions, Wipro Technologies. "Wipro will continue to integrate legal expertise with process and technology to reduce overall legal cost for its clients," he added.

Today Wipro and Microsoft continue to work together to expand their global delivery partnership.

 This is a good news for young law professionals who want to make their career in Legal Process Outsourcing.They can specialise in IPR and Technology law and target the WIPRO LPO for a handsome starting salary.


--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281