An Internet Victory for Copyright Holders

There have been a number of intellectual property developments over recent months, among the most noteworthy of which was the order imposed on an internet service provider (ISP) to block access to a website. The High Court recently ordered ISP British Telecom to block access to a website that indexed and enabled searching of unlawful copies of films.

The Newzbin2 site was the second site that had been set up by an unidentified group of individuals following the voluntary liquidation of the original Newzbin Limited Company and the closure of the original Newzbin site in May 2010. The servers used to host the new site were located in Sweden, and the domain name was registered to a company in the Seychelles in an attempt to protect themselves against action in the UK.

In order to grant an injunction against an ISP under the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988 the ISP must have actual knowledge that another person is using their service to infringe copyright. Despite BT’s arguments that they did not have actual knowledge, the judge decided that an injunction may be granted against an ISP which “carried” an infringement since ISP’s were best placed to bring infringing activities to an end. The court’s decision indicates that the “actual knowledge” requirement should not be interpreted too restrictively and what had to be shown was that the ISP had actual knowledge of one or more parties using its services to infringe copyright.

It is an interesting decision and is believed to be the first order of its kind against an ISP. It is also a decision which those in the creative industries have welcomed. The difficulty many foresee, however, is the ease with which offending sites can be set up and the time it then takes to obtain an order of this nature to block access to the site in question.

The decision was made under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Despite provisions in the Digital Economy Act 2010 addressing site blocking the Government recently announced that the implementation of those provisions of the act would be put on hold, which is a decision that has caused concern in the film and music industries.

Be discreet on the street about your patent

After filing a patent application, you can legally use the term “patent-pending” or “patent-applied” and move forward with your business plan. However, you still need to be discreet when disclosing information about your invention during this phase. Only share certain aspects with the necessary people, without revealing the entire invention, and have these individuals sign a non-disclosure agreement for added protection whenever possible.

Be discreet on the street about your patent

After filing a patent application, you can legally use the term “patent-pending” or “patent-applied” and move forward with your business plan. However, you still need to be discreet when disclosing information about your invention during this phase. Only share certain aspects with the necessary people, without revealing the entire invention, and have these individuals sign a non-disclosure agreement for added protection whenever possible.

Can't afford a patent attorney?

Attorney fees can be expensive, so if you’re tight on funds, try this: fold your patentable idea into a business plan and seek investors who would support your business concept. Explain how you can start a business and grow it substantially around your patent or a potential license in the future. To provide incentive, give them options. Offer them equity in the new business or a direct percentage of the royalties you will gain from successfully licensing the innovation. They take risk by helping you pay for the patent now, but they get to participate in the potential upside as well.

Go with the patent pros

While the patent system was designed for you to file a patent on your own, we highly encourage you to hire an experience patent attorney to help you construct and file the patent. Take it from Bill Abbatt, an experienced intellectual property attorney at Brooks & Kushman, P.C. “The claims of a patent are very precisely written; you’ve got to do them right, and do them right the first time,” he states. “Otherwise, you could have an invalid patent. There could be a significant delay in time before your patent issues, and it may jeopardize the probability that it ever issues."

Facebook Granted News Feed Patent

Facebook was on Tuesday granted a U.S. Patents for aspects of its news feed, as was first reported by AllFacebook. The patent, which covers methods for dynamically parsing and distributing information about what users have done on a social network to other users of that social network, names CEO Mark Zuckerberg as inventor along with other Facebook engineers and product people. It was originally filed in August 2006, before the Facebook news feed launched that September.

The patent is particularly valuable because news-feed style communication has become pervasive since it was launched on Facebook. However, it’s not clear that there aren’t precedents for the technology; for instance, the social network Multiply.com had a similar interface for keeping track of friends’ actions before Facebook launched its own.

Facebook, which said in a statement it was “humbled” and “pleased” by the patent, may well choose not to enforce it. In fact, one of the more important social networking patents, from the early site Six Degrees, was bought by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Tribe.net/Zynga’s Mark Pincus explicitly to promote an open playing field for the sector by taking it away from people who might choose to enforce it in the courts. However Friendster, which was recently bought by a Malaysian company, made much of the fact that had obtained five U.S. social networking patents, at times using the patents to scare off the competition, at least in the press.

3 accelerated patent prosecution options

When managing a patent portfolio, it is important to understand and control the speed at which patent applications are examined and prosecuted. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and several other international patent offices have procedures that are designed to enable applicants to accelerate examination.

1. Track One Examination (Prioritized Examination)

Under the America Invents Act, Congress created a program called Track One Examination. Under Track One, the applicant files a complete application that includes a specification, claims, an abstract, drawings and a declaration. Additionally, the applicant is required to submit the standard fees required for filing of the application and an additional fee. Currently, the additional fee is $4,800. Track One, however, is a limited program and only 10,000 Track One applications may be filed per year. However, as of April 13, only 2,221 Track One requests had been made for Fiscal Year 2012.

2. Accelerated Prosecution

In order to have an application considered more quickly with only a minimal petition fee ($130), an applicant may choose to file a petition to make special. One petition to make special is the Petition to Make Special Under Accelerated Examination Program. An application filed under this program guarantees that a final disposition (e.g. final rejection or an allowance) will be reached within 12 months of filing.

This program requires the applicant to conduct a search and prepare an accelerated examination support document. Essentially, the applicant (usually through an attorney) must make statements concerning novelty and non-obviousness of the claims in light of art that has been found by the search. Since 2006, less than 4,000 applications have fulfilled the requirements.

3. Patent Prosecution Highway

Another program that affords an applicant an opportunity to accelerate examination is the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), for which there is no fee. Whereas applications are normally considered in the order in which they are filed, participation in the PPH means that the applicant’s application will be examined out of turn.

Current Challenges in Patent Information Retrieval

There are lot of things that are measured in patent information.

Patents form an important knowledge resource –much technical information represented in patents is not represented in scientific literature – and at the same time they are important, and economically highly relevant, legal documents. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of patent applications filed yearly worldwide grew by more than 50 percent. Yet still we see a huge gap between, on the one hand, the technologies that emerged from research labs and are in use in major Internet search engines or in enterprise search systems, and, on the other hand, the systems used daily by the patent search communities.

In the past few years, the editors have organized a series of events at the Information Retrieval Facility in Vienna, Austria, bringing together leading researchers in information retrieval (IR) and those who practice and use patent search, thus establishing an interdisciplinary dialogue between the IR and the intellectual property (IP) communities and creating a discursive as well as empirical space for sustainable discussion and innovation. This book is among the results of that joint effort. Many of the chapters were written jointly by IP and IR experts, while all chapters were reviewed by representatives of both communities, resulting in contributions that foster the proliferation and exchange of knowledge across fields and disciplinary mindsets.

Reflecting the efforts and views of both sides of the emerging patent search research and innovation community, this is a carefully selected, organized introduction to what has been achieved, and perhaps even more significantly to what remains to be achieved. The book is a valuable resource for IR researchers and IP professionals who are looking for a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in this domain.

Facebook and Yahoo! in patent fight truce talks

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook and Yahoo! are in patent war truce talks that could end a legal battle between the companies, according to court documents available online Wednesday.

"The parties are currently engaged in settlement negotiations to resolve this dispute," attorney Kevin Smith of the Yahoo! legal team said in a filing asking a federal court to allow the companies more time to negotiate.

"The parties believe that a further extension will facilitate settlement."

In March, Yahoo! filed suit against Facebook in US District Court in San Francisco, accusing the social networking giant of infringing on 10 patents.

The Yahoo! suit accused Facebook of infringing on patents in areas including advertising, privacy and messaging and contended that Facebook's growth "has been based in large part on Facebook's use of Yahoo!'s patented technology."

Yahoo! asked the court to order Facebook to halt its alleged patent-infringing activities and to assess unspecified damages.

Facebook, which is based in the northern California city of Menlo Park, denied violating any valid Yahoo! patents.

Facebook went on to accuse Yahoo! of infringing on its patented technology in a broad array of products including online venues for news, games, cars, travel and photo-sharing service Flickr.

The fight between Yahoo! and Facebook heated up in April with the floundering Internet pioneer accusing the social network star of buying patents just to retaliate in court.

Yahoo! also added a few more patents to the list of intellectual property it claims Facebook is abusing.

"We remain perplexed by Yahoo's erratic actions," a Facebook spokesman told AFP at the time.

"We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously."

Patent suits are a frequent occurrence among smartphone and tablet computer makers, and the world's best known brands are ensnared in a complex web of legal claims, but such suits are relatively rare among social media companies.

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