MSD recently announced it will close down the Organon research & development facilities in Oss, near the Netherlands university of Nijmegen. This came as a shock to many in the Netherlands. The departure of Organon is ‘a totally missed chance,’ said Michel Dutrée, head of the Dutch pharmaceutical organization Nefarma. ‘Now you see what happens if the government does not have a proper strategy for innovation.’ Dutrée told the Volkskrant, a major Dutch newspaper, he was concerned other pharmaceutical...

In 1999 Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, delivered a speech at Harvard University entitled “Transcending all else is being principled”. In it he said of reputation “In today’s world, where ideas are increasingly displacing the physical in the production of economic value, competition for reputation becomes a significant driving force, propelling our economy forward. Manufactured goods often can be evaluated before the completion of a transaction. Service providers, on the other hand, usually...

Thomas L. Friedman reminded us that “Invent, Invent, Invent” is the mantra to get us out of economic downturn. A surprising number of great companies, like General Electric, IBM, Kraft, McDonald’s, Walt Disney and Electronic Arts were formed in years that featured a recession, as did Motorola, HP,  Xerox, Unisys, Texas Instruments and Revlon.  The recession of the early 1990s hit much of the world. The rapid recovery from the recession and the growth of industrial output in Finland has been very much explained by...

The creation of a new European Patent System meets some firm opposition and obstacles from various sides. Debates have been going on for decades now whether we should have a EU – or in older terms “Community” – Patent.  Presently, the only “European” patents[1] that exists next to “national” patents are those granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich according to the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of  5 October 1973, commonly known as the European Patent...

The Nokia vs. Apple patent dispute entered a new stage. Nokia recently brought up a fresh patent infringement action against Apple, alleging that Apple’s new iPad product infringes five Nokia patents. At a first glance, the recent lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin could be seen as nothing special. A patent holder just asserts his patents  against an alleged technology “theft”. But it looks as if there is more behind all this. We remember the first act of the dispute...

Roche, the Swiss drug maker, lost its antiviral drug patent for Valcyte in India patent widely used by AIDS patients. The assistant controller of patents and designs, said that the patent covering Valcyte (valganciclovir hydrochloride) lacks inventive step and does not demonstrate significantly improved efficacy over previous compounds. Section 3(d) of India’s Patent Act[1], which sets out the limitations of patentable subject matter, says “the mere discovery of a new form of a known substance which does not result...

Tomorrow, Monday April 26, is World Intellectual Property Day. Initiated by WIPO in 2000, the 10th anniversary of this day coincides with the 40th anniversary of the entry into force of the Convention establishing WIPO (the WIPO Convention).  There are currently 184 Member States, i.e. over 90 percent of the countries of the world. Many countries and WIPO members organize special events for this day, countries with an active IPR policy but also countries one would not imagine to pay much attention to IP, like Moldova or Saudi...

The interaction between university, industry and government is key to innovation and growth. Innovation simply defined is “fresh thinking that creates value [1]“.  Capable of fresh thinking by the brightest minds, universities (or other knowledge producing institutions) still struggle whether the results of those thinking exercises are just part of academic freedom not to “do” anything with that other than for educational and scholarly purposes, or, use the results of this “fresh thinking”...

The World Intellectual Property Organization  (WIPO) in Geneva published its “World Intellectual Property Indicators 2009”. It provides – among others – statistics on how many patent applications have been filed via WIPO’s PCT. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international treaty, administered by WIPO. The PCT makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in a large number of countries by filing a single “international” patent application at WIPO. …

Recently we blogged about Patent Plutonomies. The expression was coined following Ajay Kapur, (former) global strategist at Citigroup, who described countries which are defined by massive income and wealth inequality as “Plutonomies”. Translated into IPR, especially to the patent system, “Patent Plutonomy” refers to an IP world where only a few know how to play the system and to generate reasonable revenues, while the majority is – or just feels – overcharged. A recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers shows that NPEs...

2010 fast approaching it’s a good time to reflect on the past year and come with some good intentions for the New Year. Almost a decade ago we were hyped by fear of a Millennium Bug as a potential apocalypse of the Internet and IT systems. Google was still in its infancy and the social media technologies were in an embryonic state compared to today’s ubiquitous facebooking, twittering and blogging. In the ten years that have passed the technological and communications landscape have changed with 350 million users[1] worldwide...

This week, 34000 people gather in Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference to meet delegates from every corner of the world and to negotiate pressing climate issues. So what have patents to do with this? The conference builds on the discussions and agreements established in Rio de Janeiro (1992), Kyoto (1997), Hague (2000) and Bali (2007). If previous climate meetings dealt with issues such as setting greenhouse gas emissions targets and avoiding deforestation, this year’s conference focuses even more on how “climate changing...

China’s standard setting organization (Standardization Administration of China, or SAC) posted a draft new patent regulation (“Regulations for the Administration of the Formulation and Revision of Patent-Involving National Standards (Interim) (Exposure Draft)”. Industry concerns, mostly from outside China have been expressed. Especially the provisions of the articles 8, 9 and 13 cause concerns that companies have to licence their IP below market value. …

In the IP Legal World Top Ten Lists are a staple of a culture obsessed with ranking. The IP legal world (patent attorneys, IP trial lawyers and their European counterparts) are used to do whatever it takes to show up on Top Lists of Best This And That, simply to stay competitive, to be known and, most of all, to get recognition from peers. Whether customers in fact choose any of their IP counsel by exclusively relying on those Top Whatever Lists is, as far as we know, the Big Unknown. Surely, many corporate counsel will check...

With just a little more than a month left of the Swedish EU presidency, it is time for some reflection. What has been achieved in the case of the intellectual property system during the last 6 months? The Swedish government said it would drive progress towards the much debated Community Patent and the Unified Patent Litigation System (UPLS). So, what happened? Despite years of discussions on the topic of harmonizing the prosecution and enforcement procedures of European inventions, we are still a long way from seeing white smoke...

Lately patent infringing issues arising from implementing standard compliant products are catching the news media, among which in Europe the decision in Orange-Book-Standard by the German Bundesgerichthof (BGH). In the US Nokia sued Apple for producing it top selling iPhone compliant with the telecommunication standards GSM, UMTS and the networking standard WIFI, alleging 10 Nokia patents infringed. While these patents have been licensed by 40 other companies, including all major vendors of mobile devices, only Apple has refused...

Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism – A Love Story” provided us the inspiration to blog about Patent Plutonomies. Ajay Kapur, (former) global strategist at Citigroup, and his research team came up in 2005 already, with the term “Plutonomy” to describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality. According to their definition, the U.S. is a Plutonomy, along with the U.K., Canada and Australia.  In a series of research notes, Kapur and his team explained that Plutonomies have...

Not many things gets emotional in Patent World it seems, except when it comes to NPEs, Patent Trolls and Those Who Oppose or Defend Them.  When emotions run high and words come out fast, the pen can be much sharper than the tongue. That experienced Rick Frenkel, a lawyer and the (former?) director of IP litigation at Cisco who outed himself as the author of the widely-read Patent Troll Tracker blog. The blog follows companies said to holding patents solely to sue for infringement. (Now the blog can be read only by invited members)[1]....

The recent German Federal Supreme Court ruling Orange-Book-Standard (BGH, 5/6/2009 – KZR 39/06) seems to be a strong attack on one of the core features of intellectual property rights: the provision of an injunctive relief in (patent) infringement proceedings. In the context of standardized technology the Federal Supreme Court concludes that an injunctive relief is exposed to the widely known “competition law defence” under special circumstances. It may result in Germany being a NPE walhalla. However, there is light at...

How come licensing by European companies is largely lagging behind the US? A March 2009 OECD Study on licensing practice by European and Japanese patent holders tells the story. Zuniga and Guellec published a their study [1], “Who Licenses out Patent and Why?” using the outcome of the OECD survey (done in 2007). 600 European companies, 1.600 Japanese companies have been surveyed by the researchers from OECD, EPO and University of Tokyo. Overall, the study finds that approx. 20%[2] of European companies holding patents license...