Concept for a Multinational Patent Search using Elements of Blockchain Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
Stefan Marschall
Keyword(s):  
Financial Incentives ◽  
German Law ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Consensus Building ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Network Competition ◽  
Patent Search ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Prior Art

Abstract Blockchain Elements Integrated Multinational Search (BEIMS) is a response to an ongoing discussion about the search and examination procedures employed in patent offices, relaunched in 2018 when German law firms sent an open letter to the President of the European Patent Office. The BEIMS concept turns away from patent examiners working by themselves in isolation, and instead involves experts from different offices working in close co-operation. BEIMS integrates elements of Blockchain Technology – such as decentralized network, competition and consensus building – with the participation of several national and/or regional patent offices, and involves financial incentives. The co-operating patent offices are coequal and, as a consequence, a multinational search report is generated with cited prior art determined and evaluated by patent examiners of different patent offices in due time.

scholarly journals Writing successful patents and overcoming patent barriers

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (01S) ◽  
Author(s):  
Padmavati Manchikanti
Keyword(s):  
Environment Friendly ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Plant Parts ◽  
Agriculture Sector ◽  
Patent Search ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Technology Area

Inventions related to pre-harvest and post-harvest technologies have revolutionized agriculture. There is a significant growth of intellectual property rights (IPR) in agriculture across the globe. The predominant forms of IP relevant to agriculture sector are patents and designs. Patents are given to inventions that qualify patent eligibility, patentability criteria and disclosure norms. In the area of agriculture, patents provide a great opportunity for improving agricultural processes and products. Understanding the requirements of an invention under the Indian Patents Act, 1970 is necessary to know what can be patentable in India. The criteria of novelty, non-obviousness and industrial application and disclosure norms are applicable to all inventions irrespective of the technology areas. Examination guidelines for each technology area indicate to the elaborateness of the practice in relation to patents. While preparing patent specifications for agriculture inventions, it is important to ensure that the subject matter claimed should not be a method of agriculture (under Section 3h) or plants or plant parts (under Section 3j of the Act). Identification of relevant prior art and its anticipatory value is very important for the assessment of novelty of inventions. Agriculture inventions which can lower the cost, be obtained by reduced number of steps and are environment friendly can be considered under ‘economic significance’ by the Indian patent office (under the purview of Section 2(1) ja). Adhering to the disclosure norms (as mandated under Section 10 of the Act) are also important. Inventors/applicants need to also consider the deposit requirements. The present work examines the relevance of IPR and expansion of the patentability criteria, disclosure norms and additional requirements in relation to agriculture. It will highlight the need for patent search as an integral requirement for research, the process of preparation of invention disclosures to enhance the innovative ability of academic institutions as well as researchers.

Driving Productivity by Innovation? Analysing German Law Firms.

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagen Habicht ◽  
Friedrich Wilhelm Werner Heidemann ◽  
Alastair Ross
Keyword(s):  
German Law ◽  
Law Firms

Searching bioremediation patents through Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajendra Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Classification System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Uniform Structure ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Patent Classification ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
International Patent ◽  
Different Sources

AbstractPatent classification systems have traditionally evolved independently at each patent jurisdiction to classify patents handled by their examiners to be able to search previous patents while dealing with new patent applications. As patent databases maintained by them went online for free access to public as also for global search of prior art by examiners, the need arose for a common platform and uniform structure of patent databases. The diversity of different classification, however, posed problems of integrating and searching relevant patents across patent jurisdictions. To address this problem of comparability of data from different sources and searching patents, WIPO in the recent past developed what is known as International Patent Classification (IPC) system which most countries readily adopted to code their patents with IPC codes along with their own codes. The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is the latest patent classification system based on IPC/European Classification (ECLA) system, developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which is likely to become a global standard. This paper discusses this new classification system with reference to patents on bioremediation.

There is no hope in inventive step

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Gemma Wooden ◽  
Matthew Blaseby ◽  
Derk Visser
Keyword(s):  
Technical Problem ◽  
European Patent Office ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Patent Office ◽  
Inventive Step ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
Skilled Person

Abstract Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office, November 2019 edition The European Patent Office’s Guidelines have been updated to clarify that the approach for assessing inventive step involves determining whether a skilled person would have modified the closest prior art in an expectation of some advantage or improvement. A hope of solving the objective technical problem is insufficient for a modification of the closest prior art to be considered obvious.

scholarly journals When do the USPTO examiners cite as the EPO examiners? An analysis of examination spillovers through rejection citations at the international family-to-family level

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 1591-1615
Author(s):  
Tetsuo Wada
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
European Patent ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patent Citations ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
Patent Family ◽  
The Us ◽  
Patent Examiner ◽  
Family Based ◽  
Release Timing

AbstractThis paper empirically examines coincidences between “rejection citations” (i.e., those cited as grounds for rejections) added by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and “X/Y patent citations,” which are also added as grounds for rejections at the European Patent Office (EPO) within the same patent family, based on more than forty thousand families of triadic application sample. We consider the release timing of European search reports and the timing of rejection actions by the USPTO for the same family of patent applications. We find that the frequency of rejection (X/Y-equivalent) citation coincidences between the USPTO and the EPO according to family-to-family citation criteria increases after the release of search reports by the EPO. It suggests that the US examiners capture spillovers of search efforts from the EPO, namely, the USPTO examiners rely on prior art information collected and disclosed by the EPO. The results also reveal that International Search Reports (ISRs) prepared for Patent Corporation Treaty (PCT) applications, as well as applicant-submitted citations, play important roles for the convergence of rejection citations between the two patent offices. We furthermore find that the US examiners are less likely to add the same patent citations as the EPO examiners when rejections are persistently repeated at the USPTO. The methodology in this paper introduces the novel use of patent examiner citations to compare examiners’ citing behavior across jurisdictions.

Institutional Legacies and Firm Dynamics: The Growth and Internationalization of UK and German Law Firms

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (12) ◽  
pp. 1765-1785 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Morgan ◽  
Sigrid Quack
Keyword(s):  
German Law ◽  
Firm Dynamics ◽  
International Markets ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Institutional Legacies ◽  
Path Modification

This article addresses the question of how economic actors (re)shape their organizational and institutional contexts as their activities internationalize. By focusing on law firms, we choose a professional activity that has been regarded as highly determined by the national distinctiveness of professional and legal systems and would lead us to expect strong institutional legacies on firm dynamics. The comparative study of the growth and internationalization of corporate law firms in the UK and Germany presented in this article, however, refutes this view. The results reveal that in both settings ‘institutional pockets’ of corporate lawyers existed whose entrepreneurial orientations and international reach were much stronger than among other subgroups of the profession. From the 1970s onwards, these lawyers and law firms engaged in redefining their organizational and institutional contexts with the aim of positioning themselves in ways that would allow them to seize upon the emerging international markets for legal services. They did so in different ways and at different times in each country. We conclude that internationalization of UK and German law firms bears traces of institutional legacies as well as signs of path-modification, and that international markets for legal services may be more differentiated and less dominated by Anglo-Saxon law firms and conceptions of law than has been so far recognized.

Decision G 1/19 and the Messy Misconception of the COMVIK Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Baldus
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Technical Problem ◽  
Substantial Effect ◽  
European Patent ◽  
Classification Problems ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
Technical Effect ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Technical Character ◽  
Technical Features

Abstract Decision G 1/19 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) answers the question whether computer simulations can be protected under the EPC. It was decided that these simulations in principle could solve a technical problem by producing a technical effect going beyond the simulation’s implementation on a computer. The result of the decision is rather non-spectacular and obvious, since it simply states that simulations can be protected under EPC law when they solve a technical problem. Nevertheless, the decision casts an extensive light on the general and established criteria to be used for assessing technicality. In this context a misconception of the COMVIK approach becomes apparent. The COMVIK approach is based on distinguishing technical from non-technical features. All technical features must be considered when assessing inventive step of an invention over prior art, while non-technical features have no significance for this purpose. In this view it is assumed that all information provided by a claim can be either classified as a technical or a non-technical feature. Further it is assumed that features exist that are inherently technical, i.e. technical per se. However, this concept of an inherent technical character is misleading. Basically, all information should first be distinguished as to whether it has a substantial effect on the design of the claimed subject-matter. Information that does not influence its ‘appearance’ must be seen a ‘non-feature’, whereas all other information describing a characteristic of the claimed subject-matter forms a ‘feature’. Secondly the so determined features are to be divided into technical or non-technical features, solely depending on whether they contribute to the solution of the concrete technical problem of the invention. In this way, the non-feature concept avoids many classification problems associated with the former COMVIK approach and constitutes the only admissible way to assess technicality correctly, consistently and non-sophistically.

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