Posts Tagged: "International"

Currently, the massive volume of filings at the Chinese Patent Office (CNIPA) exceeds the filings of the next four most active patent offices combined. It portends a rapid shift to Chinese language prior art being the repository of technical teachings around leading edge technologies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This will happen for several reasons and much more rapidly than…

The trade dispute between the US and China started with a US accusation of intellectual property theft on the part of China.  Is China really “stealing” intellectual property?  I’m not so sure.  Perhaps the Chinese are stealing trade secrets, and if parties are engaged in such activities they should be punished, but there is a lot of taking that has been legitimized – even authorized – by the Congress and the Supreme Court in recent years.  U.S. patent law is today enabling foreign corporations, including Chinese corporations, to legitimately take intellectual property developed in the U.S.  That is not theft.  It’s just business.  And far more damage is being done to the U.S. as the result of legalized appropriation of patented innovations than could ever be done by the theft of trade secrets.

Join Gene Quinn, patent attorney and founder of IPWatchdog.com, for a free webinar discussion – Global Patent Landscape 2018: Where to File and Why – on Thursday, March 22, 2017, at 12pm ET. Joining Gene will be Patrick Kilbride, Vice President of International Intellectual Property for the U.S. Chamber’s Global Innovation Policy Center.

ACTION for Trade asks Lighthizer to consider advocating for strong IP protections and robust enforcement to benefit a diverse group of industries, including digital content producers and distributors, biopharmaceutical firms and software developers… Along with strong patent policy, ACTION for Trade calls for the establishment of regulatory data protection (RDP) provisions which are consistent with U.S. law, especially where medical innovations are concerned. The letter to USTR Lighthizer notes that U.S. law recognizes a 12-year period of RDP for biologic treatments and a 5-year period of RDP for small molecule treatments. Such provisions would allow the original innovators of novel medicines to submit data on the safety and efficacy of medicines while shielding that data from others who might produce generics based on the data.

The European Patent Office announced that U.S. companies and inventors filed 5.8% more patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2017 than in the previous year. This follows a decrease in applications in 2016 (-6.1%), which had been a knock-on effect of changes in U.S. patent law introduced in 2013.

While the United States continues to do well overall, patent protection continues to be problematic. In 2017 the U.S. ranked 10th worldwide in terms of offering patent protection to innovators. This year, the U.S. fell out of the top 10, tumbling to a tie for 12th with Italy… With a decrease in the score relative to patent protection from 2017 to 2018, the United States joins a handful of other countries that are not thought of as being at all intellectual property friendly. Those countries having a weaker performance relative to patents in 2018 include the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, Columbia, Chile and Australia. See page 22 of the Chamber report.

Massimo Sterpi has joined Gianni, Origoni, Grippo, Cappelli & Partners. Massimo, who previously worked at boutique firm Jacobacci, is one the most respected IP experts in Italy, with strong experience in both transactional matters and litigation concerning trademarks, designs, copyright and patents. Massimo joins the firm with a five associate team (Francesca Fosson, Angela Tasillo, Damiana Masi, Luigia Bersani, Andrea Colantuoni), taking responsibility for the Rome-based IP team.

The Brazilian Government is considering the adoption of an emergency measure to eliminate the Patent Office chronic backlog problem by automatically granting, without examination, 230,000 pending applications until 2020. The emergency measure has been labelled by the Government as an “extraordinary solution” and a draft of the plan was introduced for public discussion. Companies may soon need to deploy a strategy within a time-frame as short as 90 days to take full advantage of the new system while minimizing potential risks… For the past 15 years, Brazil has been enduring one of the world’s most severe patent backlogs. The problem has grown considerably after the enactment of the 1996 Patent Statute, which was adopted to make the country TRIPS compliant.

As President Trump embarks on the renegotiation of NAFTA, it is critical that we seize the opportunity to make it the gold standard in intellectual property rights protections… The stakes are tremendous and cannot be ignored.  In total, it is estimated that intellectual-property theft costs the United States approximately $600 billion per year.  A recent New York Times article notes that this is the “greatest transfer of wealth in history”.

This case was not your typical “cola war”, but rather involved TWIST, the well-known carbonated beverage brand which has been available in South Africa since the 1970s (originally as LEMON TWIST). Atlantic is the proprietor in South Africa of the TWIST, LEMON TWIST and DIET TWIST trade marks in relation to non-alcoholic drinks falling in class 32. PepsiCo applied to register the trade marks PEPSI TWIST and a PEPSI TWIST label, also in relation to non-alcoholic beverages in class 32… In finding in favor of Atlantic in the opposition, the Court felt it necessary to only rule on the issue of confusing similarity, ie. whether the proposed PEPSI TWIST trade marks were sufficiently similar to Atlantic’s trade marks to create a likelihood of deception or confusion.

On Wednesday, September 27th, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that it had decided to institute a patent infringement investigation against Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense (SHA:600060). The investigation, which follows from a Section 337 complaint filed by Japanese electronics firm Sharp (TYO:6753), will seek to determine whether certain Wi-Fi enabled devices and their components, specifically televisions which are capable of wireless Internet connectivity, which are imported into the U.S. by Hisense infringe upon two patents covering similar technologies held by Sharp.

In mid-September, the federal government of the People’s Republic of China issued statements which indicate that the country is looking to expand upon recent rhetoric over increased protections for intellectual property. According to state-controlled media outlet Xinhua, China’s National Copyright Administration (NCAC) informed a group of more than 20 domestic and foreign music companies that they must adhere to both market rules and international practices in order to widen licensing and improve the spread of copyrighted music online.