Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam as ASEAN Member States have launched an ASEAN Patent Examination Co-operation (ASPEC) programme. It is the first regional patent cooperation programme.
The purpose of this programme is to share search and examination results between the participating offices to allow applicants in participating countries to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently. The project will potentially reduce duplication for the search and examination work done, thereby saving time and effort. Additionally, search and examination work done on corresponding applications will serve as a useful reference in producing quality reports.
Many of you will be familiar with the new generic top-level domain (TLD) application process being undertaken by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The corporation has decided to open up TLDs to anyone who can afford the $200,000 price tag. This would mean that the current limitations of dot-com, dot-net, dot-info, etc., will be removed.
New TLDs like dot-news, dot-radio, dot-cats, or maybe even dot-muffins, could be popping up as soon as the applications, some of which are currently being reviewed, go through.
The multinational limited drugmakers started monopolizing the market of medicine in India. The MNC pharmaceutical companies are now engaging themselves in the work of increasing Intellectual properties (IP). This is a kind of protection which gets passed through the Drug Controller Office and it also prohibits the generic drugs getting registered. Previously MNC pharmaceutical companies had filled up patent applications for the known drugs which are there in a new form and they are as well also making an effort to link up between the generic status and the patent status.
The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) have launched a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot. The purpose of the programme is to share search and examination results between the offices to allow applicants in both countries to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently.The pilot period commences on 1 July 2009, for a period of one year ending on 1 July 2010. This period may be extended for up to an additional year or terminated earlier depending on the volume of participation and other factors. Advanced notice will be given should the PPH pilot programme be terminated before 1 July 2010.
Heads of ASEAN Intellectual Property (IP) Offices announced in Cha‐Am, Thailand the launching of the
first regional patent cooperation project that will make it easier for entrepreneurs, particularly SMEs
and inventors to obtain patents on their innovations in the region.
“Known as the ASEAN Patent Examination Co‐operation (ASPEC), the project marks an important
milestone towards realising the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and is in line with the ASEAN
collective objective of providing effective and efficient intellectual property protection,” said Mr. Kamel
Mohamad, Director‐General of the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia and outgoing Chairman
of the ASEAN Working Group on the Intellectual Property Cooperation (AWGIPC).
By Corrie Tan, Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co., 16 June 2008
LOCAL inventors who want to license their creations can now benefit from the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), a new pilot cooperation initiative between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO).
Both offices signed the Statement of Intent on Monday for this work-sharing programme.
To be launched on July 1, this one-year pilot programme will help to speed up the patent application process here, as patent certificates can be granted faster.
An average period for a regular patent application from request to first action in the JPO is about 26 months. With the PPH, it is estimated that this will be reduced to about 2-3 months.
In order to obtain a grant for a patent, a search and examination must take place. A search is conducted by the patent office for relevant information and materials related to the invention. An examination determines that the patent is new, involves an inventive step, and is capable of industrial application.
The PPH will allow both the Singapore and Japan offices to reduce the search and examination workload. This is Singapore’s second PPH pilot programme. The first was signed with the US in February.
Ms Liew Woon Yin, Director-General of IPOS, said that ‘applicants will be able to obtain quicker patent protection and begin commercialisation of their intellectual property earlier.’
This sharing of work is crucial due to the increasing number of patent applications worldwide, as well as in Singapore. Local-based patent requests increased from 729 in 2007 to 808 in 2008.
Another new programme is the Asean Patent Examination Cooperation (ASPEC) project, which began on Monday. This is the first regional cooperation between Asean countries, and was initiated by the IPOS. The countries taking part are Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
This means that patent examiners in these countries will be able to share their search and examination results, thereby reducing their workloads.
I recently received an e-mail from Ron Katznelson, who is the Founder and President of Bi-Level Technologies in Encinitas, CA. Dr. Katznelson is a named inventor in more than 25 U.S. patents and his research and development interests include optimal signal design, digital RF signal processing, digital television, signal representation & sampling theory, intellectual property management and patent law. Over the past several years Dr. Katznelson has been heavily engaged in the patent reform debate, both with respect to reforms the Patent Office has attempted to implement and with respect to reforms that Congress has been considering. Dr. Katznelson is now attempting to gain support within the inventor and start-up community to request Congress to reconsider the First-to-File provisions that are currently within the current patent reform legislation, which is now pending and widely believed to be a done deal.
Dr. Katznelson believes, as many do, that the first-to-file provisions are not helpful to the independent inventor and start-up communities, and instead favor larger corporations. I have been on record for years saying that Congress would never pass a first-to-file law because it would substantially impair the ability of individuals, start-ups and research and development based companies to compete against extremely well-funded and established corporations. If the US patent system becomes a race to the Patent Office this will favor those who are capitalized and be an impediment to those small businesses and start-ups that are the life-blood of the US economy.
Dr. Katznelson is attempting to gain signatures on a letter that he will present to Congress in the coming days. The companies who have thus far signed the letter are largely unknown because they are in their early stages of development Any company who wishes to join the list by the close of business on Thursday, April 9, 2009, are welcome to do so by contacting him directly at rkatznelson@roadrunner.com. Send the full legal name of the company and city. For those who are not familiar with Dr. Katznelson, I can tell you that he is widely respected and can be taken seriously, so if you are inclined to agree with his position I would not hesitate to contact him and join in his efforts.
I would encourage everyone to read the full letter, but what appears below is the Detailed Concerns section of the letter explaining why it is believed that the First-to-File provisions are problematic (footnotes have been omitted).
The First-To-File (FTF) provisions of S. 515 do not merely amend § 102(g) for resolving interference issues in favor of the first to file. Rather, they radically change most subsections of § 102 and § 103 to redefine what prior art means, thereby undermining basic priority property rights of inventors. These proposed amendments would have far-reaching adverse consequences, some of which we enumerate below.
(1) We believe that the FTF proposals in S. 515 impermissibly deviate from the Patent Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as this clause had been consistently understood over two hundred years to secure the rights of first inventors to their inventions.
(2) We are concerned about the chilling effects FTF would have on startup companies’ ability to forge strategic partnerships and obtain related investments during the most critical phase of their development. Startup inventors would find it hard to disclose their inventions to potential strategic partners/investors, because the proposed statute has much lower threshold triggers for loss of patent rights of those who actually conceive of an invention first. Small entities that cannot “throw money” at accelerating their R&D efforts would be disadvantaged compared to larger entities in the race to the patent office that the proposed statute creates.
(3) The proposed “derivation” proceedings contemplated by the bill to address misappropriation of inventions by the first filer add complexity and place untenable evidence discovery burdens on smaller companies. This is because the primary evidence of “derivation” or misappropriation will be in the hands of the adversary whose patent priority is being questioned. In contrast, under current law, the primary evidence for determining priority is in the possession of the parties.
(4) Proponents of FTF argue that its priority certainty promotes judicial efficiency, but this purported certainty is highly questionable. The priority issues will simply change from those of conception, reduction to practice, etc. under current law, to issues of claim support under § 112 in provisional application strings, CIPs, and specification support in the eventual application for after-added claims. Moreover, Interference proceedings would be replaced by “derivation” proceedings because first inventors would not just cede priority to first filers without attempting to discover possible first filer derivation from their prior invention.
(5) In a recent study2 of over 1,000 applications, it was found that at least 13% of priority applications would lose more than one year of priority rights under FTF and that at least 4% would lose more than two years of priority rights.3 Although a minority, these are probably the most valuable patents, requiring longer experimentation and development of preferred modes of practicing the inventions. These statistics provide only lower bounds, as data on actual earlier invention dates were not available. Some companies have explained that they already file patent applications as if FTF were in place, because of their international practices. They opine that enacting FTF would not make much difference in their operations. However, examination of patent disputes suggests that in many cases this argument is shortsighted, overlooking the role of U.S. patents in international patent portfolios, in which the U.S. patent is often the central pillar. When a U.S. patent is part of a patent family, validity of the foreign counterpart patents in the family is generally not litigated. Many disputes settle across the full international patent family, based on analysis of only the U.S. patent, because that is where the dominant economic value lies. Thus, we believe that since FTI was effectively the controlling criterion, patentees have had very little actual experience in evaluating the full effects of FTF on international patent portfolios.
(6) U.S. R&D jobs would likely be lost following enactment of FTF. The loss of patent priority rights would selectively harm only companies that employ U.S.-based R&D teams, as current law provides the advantage of priority rights only to domestic activities prior to filing. In contrast, foreign competitors having foreign-based inventors would lose nothing. To the extent that multinational firms have incentives to keep their R&D activity in the U.S. due to the current domestic priority advantages that make their inventions more valuable, the proposed FTF law would remove all such incentives.
(7) Over more than a century, the American First-To-Invent (FTI) system produced a legal balance among the various factors and incentives of the patent law, including written description and enablement requirements and the patentee’s entitlement to priority. The expertise in the American innovation process for handling disclosure, investment, collaboration and technology diffusion was developed and perfected under the legal procedures and protections afforded by the FTI regime. FTF would dramatically upset this legal balance and change the costs, the risks, the internal engineering procedures and the processes of IP development. It would “throw out the window” our workforce’s expertise of doing its innovation business, requiring a lengthy learning curve based on development of new case law and new strategies over many years to come. If enacted, FTF will create two legal frameworks, encumbering Americans with confusion over priority rights of new patents and the more valuable priority rights of old patents issued prior to FTF’s effective date.
(8) There is evidence that FTF would likely create unintended collateral damage, an unprecedented flood of hastily submitted patent applications to the USPTO. In some cases, companies say they would have to double the number of applications they file to ensure early priority dates.4 Other evidence shows that many of the applications filed under the “FTF gun” have lower quality, with a majority being ultimately abandoned.5 One important item that FTF proponents neglected to consider is that the USPTO does not use the pre-examination application disposal mechanisms used by other national patent offices to encourage voluntary abandonment. Those mechanisms, including issuing Search Reports and Deferred Examination, are crucial to prevent flooding the examiners in FTF systems6 but are not included in the “harmonized” provisions of this legislation. U.S. FTF would increase the backlog at the USPTO, reduce patent quality and would generate more fodder for “trolls”.
(9) Because of the increase in applications filed, FTF would also saddle U.S. innovators with higher product development costs because they would have to invest R&D resources to develop non-infringing solutions “designing-around” patents that would have never been applied for, let alone issued, under the current First-To-Invent system.
VNBusinessNews.com - A trademark or brand name is a commercial indicator with broad meaning. It can be a national brand (Made in Viet Nam); an indicator of a particular industry (Viet Nam Agricultural Product); a geographical or regional indicator (Phu Quoc sauce); a brand of a particular enterprise (Trung Nguyen coffee, Vinamilk milk, etc.); or a brand indicating a specific product or service (Wave motorbike, CLEAR shampoo, etc).
Brand can be viewed as a generic commercial term, while words like trademark, trade name, and geographical indicator are terms of art with specific legal meaning.
Most countries give exclusive protection to these forms of intellectual property, provided that ownership is registered. Rights of exclusive use are conferred on an owner based on two basic principles:
(1) the first-to-file rule. Where two or more applications for registration are filed by different parties to register marks that are identical (or confusingly similar), or for identical or similar goods or services, then a protection title is granted to the valid application with the earliest priority or filing date among applications which satisfy all conditions for the grant of a protection title. This rule is the same as followed in the granting of domain names.
(2) exclusivity limited by territory. Protection of a trademark recognised by a particular country extends only to that country.
Trademarks ‘stolen’
Recognising that a number of well-know Vietnamese brands have been appraised by foreign companies to be worth millions (e.g., P/S toothpaste, estimated to be worth US$5 million), some enterprises have attempted to take advantage of these two principles and attempted to “steal” well-known Vietnamese trademarks by registering them with other countries’ trademark authorities.
In 2002, Indonesian company P.T. Putra Stabat Industri registered the trademark of leading Vietnamese tobacco brand Vinataba in as many as12 countries, including China, Japan, South Korea and nine ASEAN member states.
In April 2002, a US corporation, the Nguyen Lai Corporation, lodged an application with the USPTO to register the trademark “PetroVietnam and flame device.”
Afterwards, these firms typically offer to resell the mark to its genuine owner at a high price; force the genuine owner to sign distribution contracts; or prevent the genuine owner from exporting the goods bearing the trademark into relevant foreign markets.
Unlike fixed assets such as a house, a motorcycle, or a pen, things that are easily possessed, a brand (trademark) affixed on goods or services is intellectual property that cannot be physically possessed. Rights to such property can be infringed by counterfeiting, confusing consumers and undermining confidence in the legitimate product. such genuine trademark by other illicit competitors for wrongful benefits.
Registering trademarks is important, therefore, to confer title to the genuine owner of the trademark, and to provide the trademark owner with legal remedies to enforce the right to exclusively use the trademark and prevent public confusion over counterfeit goods or services.
In addition to registration domestically, marks also need to be registered in strategic foreign markets in which goods might be distributed in the future.
At a field hearing of committee, Berman announced “the start of a concerted effort to capitalize on opportunities that are unique to this committee.” He said, “Through our oversight of international programs, travel and longstanding relationships with policymakers around the world, we plan to work more closely with other governments to provide the resources, training, legal guidance and tools which they need to alleviate the international piracy that is so devastating to American ingenuity – and American jobs.”
The hearing examined a range of illicit activities, from sales of pirated CDs to illegally downloading of movies from the Internet. Testimony was provided by Steven Soderbergh, National Vice President of the Directors Guild of America; Richard Cook, Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios; Michael F. Miller, Jr., International Vice President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE); Zach Horowitz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Music Group; and Timothy P. Trainer, President of Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center, P.C.
Later this month the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is scheduled release its “Special 301″ report listing countries whose lack of intellectual property protection have the greatest adverse effects on United States industries - among them.
“The United States and its trading partners rely heavily on investments in intellectual property to drive our economies,” Berman said. “Unfortunately, the incentives and profits for engaging in piracy are high, and the risks of being apprehended and sanctioned are low in many countries around the world. Piracy of copyrighted materials is not a victimless crime and its global repercussions must be addressed.”
Berman said he would soon introduce legislation that will begin to elevate the attention given to intellectual property concerns abroad.
French lawmakers are poised to approve a law to create the world’s first surveillance system for Internet piracy, one that would force Internet service providers in some cases to disconnect customers accused of making illegal downloads.
The proposal, called the “Création et Internet” and known informally as the “three strikes” directive, has won preliminary votes by the Parliament and is expected to be approved in both houses Thursday. It has support from the governing party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The law empowers music and film industry associations to hire companies to analyze the downloads of individual users to detect piracy, and to report violations to a new agency overseeing copyright protection. The agency would be authorized to trace the illegal downloads back to individuals using the downloading computer’s unique identification number, known as its Internet Protocol, orIP, address, which the Internet service providers have on record.
For a first violation, the agency would send a warning by e-mail.
If a user made another illegal download within three months, a second warning would be sent by certified mail. If a third infraction occurred within a year, the service provider would be required to sever service.
Piracy costs the film and music industry in France at least 1 billion euros, or $1.3 billion, a year in lost sales, according to industry figures.
“This law is definitely overdue and it’s only a fair and proportionate response to a major problem,” said Marc Guez, the managing director of the French Society of Phonographic Producers, which represents recording companies. “Our members are losing more than 500 million euros a year in sales.”
While piracy surveillance systems have been discussed in a number of countries, the French plan goes farther than the measures under consideration elsewhere. On April 1, a law in Sweden called the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive took effect, allowing industry groups to more easily prosecute copyright piracy.
In the United States, a Congressional committee this week began studying the issue. In a hearing Monday before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, Steven Soderbergh, the film director, cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates.
In France, the law has attracted prominent support from the French music and film establishment, including Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star, and Denis Olivennes, the former chief executive of the FNAC retail chain.
The International Federation of Phonographic Industry, a group based in London that represents the global music industry, said that 95 percent of all songs downloaded on the Internet last year — including those in France — were illegal downloads. Globally, illegal music downloads cost $12.8 billion in sales, according to the group.
While supporters and opponents both predicted that the proposal would become law, some lawyers and Internet advocates said the measure would face a tougher road before the French Constitutional Council, which can invalidate laws that it determines do not conform with the Constitution.
One of several controversial aspects of the proposal places the onus of proving innocence on those accused, who would only be able to protest their innocence after they were disconnected from the Internet.
“It is always hard to predict how the Constitutional Council may rule, but this new law does not protect the fundamental right to defend oneself,” said Cédric Manara, a law professor at the Edhec Business School in Nice.
Winston Maxwell, a media lawyer at Hogan & Hartson in Paris, said the legal challenges might delay the measure’s effective date.
“But I doubt the Constitutional Council will decide a French citizen has the right to make illegal downloads,” Maxwell said.
Nonetheless, Internet advocates call the French proposal legally unsound on the ground that there are inadequate the provisions for challenging an action, and because it gives industry groups the power to police the Internet. Others question whether the law would unfairly penalize those whose wireless broadband accounts are misused by others. The French law tries to anticipate this by making it a civil infraction for citizens to fail to “secure” their broadband accounts by using approved filtering technology.
That burden, theoretically, would fall on public Wi-Fi hot spots.
Nicolas D’Arcy, a spokesman for France’s ISP Association, the Association des Fournisseurs d’Accès et de Services Internet, said Internet providers were hoping the law would not take effect.
Internet service providers, Mr. D’Arcy said, do not want to become the enforcement arm of French justice and do not trust the law to insulate them from suits brought by customers whose service has been cut off.
“There are so many things wrong with this,” Mr. D’Arcy said.
Other critics say the law will not stop illegal downloads.
Jérémie Zimmermann, director of La Quadrature du Net, an Internet advocacy group based in Paris, said some computer users would turn to encrypted downloads and other methods to avoid detection. On Wednesday, a Swedish company, the Pirate Bay, began a service called Ipredator, which lets users use its virtual private network to make anonymous downloads for 5 euros a month.
“The French law will only drive people further underground,” Mr. Zimmermann said. “It will make the situation worse.”
Michel Thiollière, the French Senate sponsor of the legislation, said the system would probably survive legal review by the council and help preserve the rights of French artists, musicians and actors.
“The mechanism is reasonable and a graduated response designed to bring Internet users to a new world where the rights of creators must be respected,” he said.
No Attorney Client Relationship. We provide this blog for general
informational purposes only for own reference. We want you to
understand that we do not create an attorney client relationship with
you when you use the blog. The information on the blog may be
changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete,
correct or up-to-date. While we try to revise the blog on a regular
basis, it may not reflect the most current legal developments. The
opinions expressed at or through the blog are the opinions of the
individual author and may not reflect the opinions of the firm or any
individual attorney.
