http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/ BLOG@IPJUR.COM - Patent Attorney Axel H. Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property en Serendipity 1.3.1 - http://www.s9y.org/ Sat, 11 Sep 2010 02:21:47 GMT http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/templates/coffee_bar3/img/s9y_banner_small.png http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/ 100 21 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/177-EU-Patent-Background-Note-On-Machine-Translations.html#c942 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/177-EU-Patent-Background-Note-On-Machine-Translations.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=177 nospam@example.com (Mike Unwalla) Machine translation can give satisfactory translations (http://www.international-english.co.uk/mt-evaluation.html). However, to minimise bad translations, the text must be optimised for machine translation. Technology alone is not sufficient. The EPO must help patent attorneys to write text that is optimised for machine translation. Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:36:17 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/177-guid.html#c942 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c941 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (Rebentisch) Doesn't work that way. The BoA is no Court but just an administrative appeal chamber. The problem is that the EPC is not part of the EU acquis. You cannot hack an non-EU legal framework in the EU framework while shielding it from the ordinary EU checks and balances. Notably, all these issues can be avoided by a sane approach, first EU substantive patent law harmonization, then a community patent and language rules. Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:44:46 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c941 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c937 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (RC) The problem I see is that this would also apply to oppositions, which are already lengthy enough as they are. Introducing an additional instance (and probably quite an expensive one) would be quite unfair towards patentees, especially small ones facing a powerful opponent. Just ensure that the Boards of Appeal are formally separated from the EPO (they are already "de facto" more than independent enough, in my opinion). Even if this requires yet another amendment to the EPC, this would be fairer towards both the users of the patent system and the general public than to keep adding layers of complexity. Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:14:15 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c937 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c936 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (AXEL H. HORNS) Well, apparently the French can live with the status quo while the Spanish Govt. is determined to bust any possible compromise on the languages issue by insisting on introducing their own language into the system ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:59:51 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c936 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c935 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (mandataire en colère) PS: I am not "en colère" because of your comment, I have been using this pseudonym for a long time! Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:27:36 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c935 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c934 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (mandataire en colère) Don't forget that, despite the clichés on French "chauvinism", France has adhered to the London protocol... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:25:12 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c934 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c933 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (tom) Why keep blaming the Spanish? It's the French who won't accept English. Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:41:11 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c933 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c931 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (oliver) I for one would not find it shocking if parties had the possibility of challenging a Board of appeal decision before some sort of Supreme Court. Something more consistent than what can be done by petitions for review. This should not be so difficult to implement. Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:38:57 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c931 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c930 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (Leo Steenbeek) From reading the Advocates-General opinion it appears that the EPO problem can be easily fixed. First, the requirement for an independent and impartial tribunal has already been met, see Article 23 EPC which has not at all been considered by the Advocates-General. Secondly, to ensure that the EU Court of Justice has the final say in matters of EU law, it basically suffices if the Boards of Appeal would refer questions on EU law to the EU Court of Justice in the same way as national courts and as the Benelux Court of Justice (a supranational jurisdiction just like the EPO Boards of Appeal). In case the Boards of Appeal fail to refer a question to the EU Court of Justice, a system of appeal in the interest of the law would close the gap. As regards languages, the Advocates-General only required that the defendant be allowed to obtain translations of procedural documents. So, the basic idea of using the language of the patent as language of the proceedings of the Central Division was not believed to be incompatible with EU law. Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:14:52 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c930 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#c929 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-EU-Patent-Advocates-General-Suggesting-To-Rise-The-Bar-In-a-Different-Way.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=176 nospam@example.com (zoobab) Time for a new software patent directive. All the experts agree that software patents in the EU can be rubberstamped with a central patent court. Read the German decision over Siemens document processing. Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:50:44 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/176-guid.html#c929 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-The-Patent-System-And-Its-Problem-Of-Scaling.html#c922 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-The-Patent-System-And-Its-Problem-Of-Scaling.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=174 nospam@example.com (Karl-Friedrich Lenz) From your point of view, anyone who wants to write a program needs to check first it there any prohibitions on writing it. No one does that, since it would be much too expensive, as you explain convincingly above. If software patents could be checked as easily as the ownership of some real estate, people would have much less reason to complain. That, however, is not reality. Your point of view that programmers need to check patents before writing something is refuted by your own analysis. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:39:40 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-guid.html#c922 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/173-On-How-To-Make-Use-Of-A-Mobile-eBook-Reader.html#c920 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/173-On-How-To-Make-Use-Of-A-Mobile-eBook-Reader.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=173 nospam@example.com (Mark Groen) Thank you for your article on using e-book readers in the profession of a patent attorney. I myself started using an e-book reader one and a half year ago. My conclusion is that an e-book reader certainly has a chance of becoming a practical asset, but at present there are still quite some shortcomings. First the advantageous: The display of e-book readers is definitely superior to your eyes and comes close to a paperlike experience, although, as noted, the contrast could still be improved. It is more like reading on non-bleached, recycled paper. (E-book readers without touch displays, or alternatively using Wacom technology apparently have a slightly better contrast.) Furthermore, you can bring an enormous load of documents, legal texts, case law, prior art, the complete file wrapper of a case, and as a bonus: your complete library of novels. The devices are now small, and light enough to be really portable and battery life is suffient for days of reading. However, the display is still slow (0.5 - 1 second, but for large scanned documents or complex PDF documents, this can turn into seconds). For reading a book from cover to cover this (0.5 - 1 second) is not really a problem, but when jumping through a document back and forth, it can become a pain. Here, the documents themselves could be of help, by including navigational aids such as cross reference links and tables of contents. That way one at least jumps right to the correct page. PDF documents already available on the net (for example Guidelines for Examination before the EPO) do not contain linked cross references. This is where an e-book reader could really shine. Preparing your own material, as described in the article, can be quite laborious. Especially, when one decides to increase the navigational options by including table of contents and linked cross references. As mentioned, a 6 inch screen is rather limited in size. Especially for prior art documents. Most patent publications are PDFs with the text embedded as images. This means one has to pan through the page, because the display is too small. I am using a 10.8 inch display myself, which is just big enough for displaying a complete page of a patent publication. EP documents are quite alright, US documents use a slightly smaller print and are, as far as I am concerned, on the limit of what is considered comfortable reading. (It helps to use the reader in landscape mode, and fit the page to page width, but then with the two column format used in US publications, one is scrolling up and down again. However, it is usable.) Lastly, because PDF patent publications use embedded images for representing text, they do not allow for text searching. Another possible strength of an e-book reader becomes less valuable this way. My remarks above concentrate a bit on PDF. This is because that is the format I ended up using the most. As noted, at present ePub is not readily available, and after one and a half year of use, I prefer not to spend too much time reassembling my own material. For example, if one was to prepare an EPC text, the EPO offers a PDF document, or an enormous tree of HTML-pages, each page containing one EPC article or rule. This takes too much time for a single individual to assemble and then maintain with each change of the rules. I now stick to the PDF document (which however is not updated with every change of the rules). Probably, in a number of years e-reader hardware has improved. I envisage devices with the size and weight of an iPad, a fast colour e-paper display (either eInk, or an alternative reflective technology) and the processing power of a laptop. By that time the publishing industry hopefully has picked up the line too and publishes legal texts in e-book formats (indeed hopefully without DRM so I can still use it on my new devices, even after 10 or 15 years), the documents containing tables of contents and fully cross linked by cross references. At present I am the only patent attorney in our firm working with an e-book reader. Although my colleagues find it interesting, I still do not consider it a break through product within our professional business and do not encourage my colleagues to use an e-reader. (However, neither do I discourage them.) We need some more evolution for that. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:25:43 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/173-guid.html#c920 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-The-Patent-System-And-Its-Problem-Of-Scaling.html#c916 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-The-Patent-System-And-Its-Problem-Of-Scaling.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=174 nospam@example.com (pessada) Programmers write code to execute it. They give instructions to a computer. And the execution should not be bared by any restriction, since it is their freedom to speak and give instructions to a machine. This is like saying music partitions are copyrightable, but the performance by a musician is patentable. Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:18:46 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/174-guid.html#c916 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/172-Biotechnological-Patents-Court-Of-Justice-Of-the-EU-Decides-Against-Patent-Theory-Of-Monsanto.html#c914 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/172-Biotechnological-Patents-Court-Of-Justice-Of-the-EU-Decides-Against-Patent-Theory-Of-Monsanto.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=172 nospam@example.com (patent litigation) This ruling makes much sense. A different ruling would have facilitated a ridiculous amount of unnecessary patent litigation. Also, it seems fair, since one has to draw the patent-eligibility line somewhere. Though I suppose the anomalous treatment of genetic products could be grounds for accusations of arbitrariness. http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/general-patent-gets-results-its-clients Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:47:15 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/172-guid.html#c914 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/164-IP-And-The-Fight-On-Business-Models.html#c912 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/164-IP-And-The-Fight-On-Business-Models.html#comments http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/wfwcomment.php?cid=164 nospam@example.com (Nick White) I have responded to Andrew's post on his blog and would refer you to that for the detail. My main concern is that we should not tarnish all NPEs with the Patent Troll brush. This over simplification of the position as expressed in the tangibleip blog and on slashdot undermines the NPE offering as opposed to the Patent Troll model. Be aware that the NPE definition includes technology transfer from Universities for example. What we need before we enter a debate is clarity as to what the subject of the debate should be. Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:54:06 +0200 http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/164-guid.html#c912