A quick note to mark the passing of 2011 and the start of 2012. Thank you all for reading and commenting here (and on Twitter) on the stories that have been reported on these pages. I’m looking forward to posting much more in 2012. There has been plenty to contemplate in the last 12 months [...]
Archive for the ‘patents’ Category
Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2011 
Gareth Dickson 
Posted in copyright, data protection, North America, patents, privacy, social media, trademarks, UK and Europe 
Tags: Authors Guild, Book Settlement, copyright, Google, Internet, second circuit, UK, US, YouTube 
No Comments »More #badIPnews
September 21st, 2011 Gareth Dickson With the increasing importance of intellectual property on companies’ balance sheets, and the rise in litigation between them, the law of averages dictates that we’ll be noticing more mistakes in articles discussing the nature of IP and its territorial limits. You know the sort of thing I mean: bloggers who note how someone is patenting [...]
Posted in copyright, North America, patents, privacy, social media, trademarks, UK and Europe No Comments »FTC Calls Drug Patent Settlements “Illegal Sweetheart Deals”
September 1st, 2011 Gareth Dickson With thanks to my good friend Dr. Michael Cohen, I came across an article in the New York Times about yesterday’s FTC report into the interplay of drug patents, litigation, business and competition. The report is some 270 pages long, so I’m not going to be reading it any time soon, but the central allegation [...]
Federal Circuit Reverses Southern District of New York: Myriad’s BRCA Gene Patents Revived
August 1st, 2011 Gareth Dickson In a decision that is already attracting plenty of controversy, comments, compliments and complaints, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held that isolated human DNA molecules are patentable, and were validly patented by Myriad, under the (US) Patents Act. See Association for Molecular Pathology et al. v. Myriad Genetics, Inc et al. (Case [...]
Posted in North America, patents Tags: appeals, DNA, genes, New York, patents, second circuit, US 2 Comments »
Microsoft and US Patent Attorneys Among Winners at SCOTUS
June 23rd, 2011 Gareth Dickson Microsoft’s recent (US) Supreme Court defeat at the hands of Canada’s i4i will cost them almost US$300m in damages for willful infringement of the latter’s XML patent. But in the longer term, the Court’s refusal to lower the burden of proof in challenges to a patent’s validity is good news for businesses with important patent [...]
Happy World IP Day!
April 26th, 2011 Gareth Dickson I couldn’t let today pass without wishing you all a very happy World IP Day. This year, the focus of the day is “Designing the Future”, which you can read about here. You can also ‘Like’ World IP Day on Facebook here, and can read the IPKat’s salute here. No doubt the next year will be [...]
Posted in copyright, data protection, North America, patents, privacy, social media, trademarks, UK and Europe No Comments »Czech, mate.
January 7th, 2011 Gareth Dickson Ever thought of applying for an intellectual property right via a Czech agency? Probably not, if you’re reading this, but in case you do then you might want to read the IPKat’s comments on WIPD, an organization whose name and logo closely resemble those of WIPO, which in addition to being a well respected organization [...]
Posted in copyright, patents, trademarks, UK and Europe Tags: domain names, Europe, trade marks, trademarks, unfair business practices No Comments »US politicians ignore IP as they promote job creation strategies
October 5th, 2010 Gareth Dickson We’re only a few short weeks away from the US mid-term elections and the politicians are filling the air waves with their electoral messages. A few things are common throughout their ads. First, no-one wants to mention their party. Republicans and Democrats alike are campaigning on a platform of near-independence. Second, no matter what experience [...]
Court of Justice to rule on LEGO trademark
September 13th, 2010 Gareth Dickson The Court of Justice of the European Union is expected to release its ruling tomorrow on whether a Lego brick can be registered as a trademark in Europe. The ruling will come nearly eight months after Advocate General Mengozzi opined that registration of the brick was not permissible (and tried to use one of Sony’s trademarks [...]
Posted in patents, trademarks, UK and Europe Tags: ECJ, Europe, Sony, trade marks, trademarks, World Trademark Review No Comments »How to get yourself sued using the Internet
July 22nd, 2010 Gareth Dickson A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that my name had been dragged into a significant piece of litigation in the US. Here’s how it happened, and why you should be careful about what you write online… Back in October 2009, I was browsing LinkedIn and a discussion about patents caught my attention. In summary, [...]
Posted in North America, patents, social media, trademarks Tags: defamation, Internet, libel, New York, trade libel, unfair business practices, US 1 Comment »
