Keeping an eye on patent related news can give a real insight into where companies are focusing their efforts or areas that they are considering moving into. This article highlights a few areas that Amazon and Apple are working in/filing patents in in the medical field. Whilst I can see the merits in the collaboration between Apple and Zimmer Biomet to provide information to patients and to monitor progress before and after knee and hip replacements, I'm less convinced I like the idea of...
I recently posted about the twentieth anniversary of the patent search database called Espacenet. It really is a great resource for informing commercial and R&D decisions, as well as patent ones. The search functionality on Espacenet has recently been improved under this new beta version. It puts more tools at your fingertips than ever before. There's also a short introductory video showing you how to make the most of it.
It seems the UK government is still very much talking the talk that they believe we (the UK) will be part of the UPC system after Brexit. How this is possible is yet to be negotiated but, as Daniel Alexander QC said earlier in the discussions before the House of Lords’ EU Justice Sub-Committee, “where there’s will there’s a way”. For now I guess it’s just one of a multitude of matters still to be negotiated - but it seems there is still the will at least.
In 2017 the EPO amended its rules to exclude from patentability plants and animals obtained by essentially biological breeding processes. The Opposition Division at the EPO has now used these new rules for the first time to revoke Monsanto's patent covering broccoli plants with an exerted head which are easier to harvest. At the time of the opposition protestors from the No Patents on Seeds Association built a giant broccoli outside the EPO in Munich. It remains to be seen whether further...
The UK Supreme Court has dismissed Warner-Lambert's appeal concerning pregabalin/Lyrica for use in the treatment of pain and has indicated that the non-statutory plausibility "standard" is here to stay. More to follow...
I am currently on a business trip to Japan and following in the footsteps of the European Patent Office (EPO), who held a seminar on patenting Information and Computing Technologies in Tokyo last week. Many of the people I have met in Japan have asked about the European patent process and a number of my UK-based clients regularly ask me about the Japanese patent system, so it is worth comparing and contrasting the EPO and Japanese Patent Office (JPO), which are two of the biggest patent...
The CJEU has handed down its judgment in the referral from The Netherlands regarding copyright in the taste of cheese. The Court has held that both the authorities responsible for ensuring that the exclusive rights inherent in copyright are protected as well as individuals, particularly economic operators, must be able to identify, clearly and precisely, the subject matter protected. Secondly, there is a need to ensure that there is no element of subjectivity in the process of identifying...
I love this comment at the end of a fascinating article from hbr about continuous learning. Whilst, like many others, I am required to do continued professional development (CPD) in my specialist area of patents, and the wider area of Intellectual Property, one of the other areas that occasionally ends up towards the bottom of my to do list is continuous development of myself in other work-related areas (management, leadership, productivity... to name but a few). Over the last few years I...
As a self-confessed adult fan of LEGO (AFOL) I was interested to see the recent case that the LEGO Group has won against imitators in China. In the case, LEGO succeeded in bringing a Copyright action against four companies which were producing and distributing similar building sets under the LEPIN brand. The LEPIN brand generally makes their own versions of LEGO sets which significantly undercut the official products. For example, the largest and most expensive set directly purchasable from...
With more and more US states legalising cannabis, patent filings related to the drug are also on the increase. It is interesting to see how patent strategies develop for this rapidly growing market, which is still illegal at the federal level in the US. As seen in the filing statistics, a lot of the applicants are not the usual players in the food and drink field. This may represent the grassroots growth of newer companies in this area, or that certain established brands do not want to be...
Much of what I do day to day involves sitting at the interface between the legal and technical worlds. Communicating in a meaningful way to the relevant audience is especially important. Often, I need to explain huge concepts in accessible terms. Regularly, I need to paint a big picture. And, almost always, I need to tell a story. This video is a great example of fantastic, accessible communication of a vast and complex subject: the entire field of physics is presented in the form of a map in...
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, announced last week that a new fifty pound note would be released to celebrate the UK's contribution to science. The public have been invited to nominate their favourite scientist to feature on the new banknote and there are certainly many notable candidates to choose from. Recently deceased Steven Hawking is expected to be a popular choice for his contributions to our understanding of cosmology. He also ignited the curiosity of many aspiring...
The CJEU recently confirmed that microorganisms prepared using gene editing technologies such as CRISPR fall within the Genetically Modified Organisms Directive (GMO Directive; 2002/53). The GMO Directive places a huge regulatory burden on companies looking to generate GMO products and it is apparent that the Decision will require more stringent regulation of food and crop products prepared using new mutagenesis technologies, and may also have implications for the use of these technologies in...
Following on from my previous post, where I reported on a collaboration between NASA and Uber relating to taxis in the sky, it seems that how we move about may well be the next big change after smart phones, even if I'm still skeptical that we'll all shortly be flying around in VTOL taxis. The EPO have recently reported a study on "Patents and self-driving vehicles", which shows a significant increase in the number of patent applications at the EPO for autonomous driving related inventions...
A news story seems to break almost every week about the application of AI (and more specifically, machine learning) to addressing scientific, engineering and medical problems. As machine learning algorithms become more user-friendly and readily available (Google's TensorFlow (TM), Microsoft's Cognitive Toolkit and Amazon's Machine Learning on AWS, for example), their usage is proliferating. R&D in almost all industries is looking to AI to provide performance and efficiency benefits. The...
