Posts Tagged: "patenting"

In his Categorical Imperative, Kant simplifies a moral argument position for an individual by asking a question: if you thought that your position or Statement would be Universal, i.e., applicable to all people, it would have the stance of a Categorical Imperative and thus you must do it. A proposed Categorical Imperative is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others… Allowing the free taking of ideas, content and valuable data, i.e., the fruits of individual intellectual endeavor, would disrupt capitalism in a radical way. The resulting more secretive approach in support of the above free-riding Statement would be akin to a Communist environment where the State owned everything and the citizen owned nothing, i.e., the people “consented” to this.

The latest television technology (4K) contains four times the number of pixels as 1080p (full HD). Without HEVC, broadcasters wanting to transmit programs in 4K quality face the challenge of needing high quality broadband reception to make 4K broadcasts a reality. A benefit of HEVC is that it makes broadcasting 4K more feasible – reducing both the cost and time it takes to deliver high quality programming. While the technology is anticipated to be used in almost all video processors and display devices in the future, adoption remains slow because of a complex licensing scenario.

On Wednesday, April 4th, the official Microsoft blog published a post written by the company’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, which announced the company’s new Shared Innovation Initiative. The initiative involves a series of principles which the Redmond, WA-based tech giant says should address issues related to intellectual property and technologies which are co-created with Microsoft’s industry customers so as to help those customers grow their business while allowing Microsoft to continue improving its platform products.

On Thursday, December 1, I attended the Innovation Alliance’s panel on Closing the Patent Gender Gap: How Increasing the Number of Women Patent Holders Can Spur U.S. Innovation and Grow the Economy. The panel, which was moderated by the Licensing Manager for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Jennifer Gottwald, Ph.D discussed the recent findings of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and their report on Equity in Innovation: Women Inventors and Patents that was released on November 29, 2016, which explores how women are “underrepresented” among patent holders as well as their relative success in being granted patents when they do apply for them.

Even with its relatively small population, Canada is the largest export market for the US, with about 200 billion dollars worth of exports each year. Exporting to Canada from the US is a well-known process, and an inventor or company wishing to do so will have no difficulty in finding a company that can handle all the required paperwork and logistics. Even if one does not wish to export to Canada, licensing or sale of a patent is always a possibility. I have many clients whose business model revolves around finding products that sell well in the US and which are likely to sell well in Canada, having these products manufactured in China, and selling them in Canada. I often get asked to confirm that one of these products is not protected by a patent in Canada. If there is no Canadian patent, my clients are able to profit from the US inventor’s ingenuity.