A New Tool in the Battle Against Patent Trolls: Shame

With a federal crackdown on “patent trolls” stalled, startups and small companies are turning to a low-cost tactic to combat frivolous patent claims: shame.

Some entrepreneurs and business owners who receive letters from patent-holding entities that demand costly licensing fees, or threatening legal action, are posting the letters online.

They say the move is meant to embarrass the patent holders, whose claims can be vaguely worded and often far-fetched – such as claims over the use of technology in a standard office fax machine or the transfer of data by emails.

From http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-538741/

British executive accused in China drug bribery

To stifle competition ahead of the 2012 expiry of the patent for one of its drugs, GSK used bribes to ensure hospitals were using the drug exclusively, Gao said.

GSK also set up a special unit to fend off bribery investigations, he said. Employees had obstructed previous inquiries into possible misconduct by bribing investigators and other government officials.

In a separate statement, police in the central city of Changsha, where the investigation began, said Reilly and two Chinese executives also are accused of bribing government officials in Beijing and Shanghai.

Police in Changsha said last July that employees appeared to be trying to evade GSK’s internal anti-bribery controls by making payments totaling as much as 3 billion yuan ($490 million) to a travel agency that gave back at least part of that money.

One of the detained Chinese employees was shown on state television at that time describing how he paid bribes to government officials to win support for use of the company’s medications.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/14/british-executive-accused-in-china-drug-bribery/?page=2#ixzz31mhurFJ8

Swatch mulls suing Apple over iWatch

Swatch Group, the world’s biggest watchmaker, says it’s taking action against Apple Inc over the most valuable technology company’s use of the iWatch brand, which it says is too similar to its own iSwatch label.
 Swatch’s measures may include pointing out Apple’s branding to authorities in all the countries where it has been registered as a trademark, Swatch chief executive officer Nick Hayek said in a telephone interview. “This is the normal procedure to protect your own brand name,” Hayek said. “We react like this for all other brand names that we have protected.” Cupertino, California-based

Apple hasn’t yet disclosed any specifics for an Internet-connected wristwatch. Swatch Group, with headquarters in Biel, Switzerland, sells a digital-display model called iSwatch. Apple may be looking to make inroads on that brand name because the two are too similar, Hayek said.

The company is seeking to block Apple trademarks for the name “iWatch” because of its own line of watches called “ISwatch.”
A representative for Swatch told Watson: We assess the likelihood of confusion as given, the marks are confusingly similar. In all countries where the mark is registered, we go against it before. While Swatch says it will fight the trademarks, the watch maker will not give specifics as to how it plans to do so.
According to U.S. government filings, Swatch has moved in the past to block companies from registering the iWatch trademark.

Related post(s):
http://patentssupportonline.blogspot.in/2014/05/apple-expands-trademark-for-watches.html