IP SOLUTIONS BLOG

The recent Supreme Court ruling on Bilski v. Kappos left the door open for companies to continue to file for business method patents providing their claims are not too abstract. Some have interpreted this to mean that computer-oriented processes will likely remain patentable subject matter, whereas computer-implemented innovations will require additional evidence of the fact that the concept is nonobvious and patentable.

All this talk about the ruling got me wondering just how prevalent business method patenting is. So we did some research on the history of such patents. Here’s what the data showed:

• Global business method patenting has been on the rise for more than a decade, dipped slightly from 2003-2006, then rebounding with an increase of 637% from 1998 – 2009
• Over 43,000 business method patents filed and granted in 2009
• The United States and Japan are, by far, the most prevalent business-method-patenting countries. Their leading positions can likely be attributed to the technologically-saavy mentality of these nations and their awareness of the opportunity such patents present. The US and Japan are also world financial leaders, and business method patenting has strong origins in that industry.

To learn more, download our special report, The Evolution of Business Method Patenting.

Laura Gaze, Senior Marketing Manager, IP Solutions Bilski, Business Method Patents, Patents Bilski, Business Method Patents, Patents

Are you preserving a wrinkle-free face with nanotechnology?

You may be, without even knowing it. Nanotechnology, the use of microscopic devices, materials or compounds that are 100 nanometers or smaller, isn’t just for your favorite electronic gadget anymore.

A new report, “Can Nanotech Unlock the Fountain of Youth?” from Thomson Reuters IP Solutions, finds that the beauty industry has started taking an aggressive approach to using nanotechnology to improve the performance of creams, sunscreens, shampoos and other personal-care products.

And surprises abound: while L’Oreal and Amorepacific are, as expected, early innovators in the development of nanotech-based beauty products, a great deal of new innovation in the field comes from companies that one would not traditionally associate with the cosmetics industry, including Fujifilm and BASF.

Of 367 unique inventions filed in 2009, 10 were by Fujifilm; nine were by BASF and seven were by Amorepacific.

To hear more about innovation in the nanotechnology arena for personal care items, listen to Michael Thompson from IP Solutions in this podcast.

Read the full report.

Data for the report is compiled from the Thomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index® database, for patent research, and SERION®, for trademarks, to identify global innovation and brand activity in nanotechnology for personal care products.

admin Nanotechnology, Patents, Trademarks Nanotechnology, Patents, Trademarks

Icelandic ash clouds, British Airways and French general strikes notwithstanding, Thomson Reuters IP Solutions staff, invited speakers and guests gathered together last month at the Hotel Scribe in the Opera district of Paris to conduct the fourth in this year’s series of Global IP Leader Exchanges.  This seminar series provides valuable, strategic insight for professionals in charge of IP operations at their organization through presentations and discussion with industry thought leaders on today’s major IP issues.

The day began with an overview of some market dynamics impacting Intellectual Property including monetization and valuation of IP assets, the demands of increased collaboration through open innovation and the continuing seismic shift in patent filings towards Asia.  This was followed by a presentation of the key findings of a benchmark survey, “The State of Global IP”, conducted last year jointly by Thomson Reuters and IAM Magazine and now published in the July/August 2010 issue of IAM Magazine.

One of the key themes of the day was the level of engagement of executive management in IP strategy development.   Jeroen Gaasbeek, Senior IP Counsel for Shell, described how at Shell the executive committee now has direct involvement with the IP strategies of different businesses of Shell with the Head of IP reporting to the Legal Director who is part of the executive committee.  Maria Thompson, Director of Intellectual Asset Management Process and Tools at Motorola, talked about the IP Policy Creation initiative at Motorola which established management’s commitment to and involvement in IP management statement of policy. This was instrumental in the successful implementation of the IP strategy at Motorola. A workshop in the afternoon considered a case study of a commodities business looking to introduce a new specialty product and how best to engage R&D and business managers in developing the IP strategy to support this development.  Discussion topics included securing engagement of R&D by getting their ideas for how their research planning can contribute to and align with the IP strategy for the new product; and the thought that having an IP strategy in place is meaningless unless you have the right people and the right skill sets in place to deliver on that strategy. As important as the IP audit is a personnel and skills audit to ensure these are aligned.

The final presentation of the day by Jean-Yves Legendre, Licensing & Business Development Manager at L’Oreal, addressed a further key theme – the question of patent quality.  This means different things to different people.  To a company, the quality should be sufficient to deter competitors; to the patent office, applications should be of sufficient quality to allow delivery of granted patents; and to the investor the quality should be sufficient to allow comparison and relative valuation against other companies’ holdings. He then went on to review existing measures for evaluating both individual patents and patent portfolios.

All in all, this was a stimulating and rewarding day for all who participated.  The last two in this series of Global IP Leader Exchanges is scheduled to take place in London (focused on trademark issues) and Tokyo this Fall, so get ready to book your place at this event soon. Further information is available at ip.thomsonreuters.com/ipleader/.

Bob Stembridge, Customer Relations Manager, Thomson Reuters Events, Global IP, IP strategy Events, Global IP, IP strategy

I attended a World Research Group (WRG) conference in New York with IP corporate counsel. The topic “Open Innovation” was on the agenda, featuring a panel with the senior corporate counsel from SAS, open innovation director from GSK, and an independent consultant.

The moderator started the session by asking how many people in the audience engaged in open innovation in their companies. No one raised their hands. This was very surprising to me.  Were they multi-tasking and focused on something else, or was open innovation still that novel of a topic?

He proceeded by asking questions of the panelists about their involvement in open innovation, its qualities, and its risks and rewards. Following this discussion, a member of the audience raised his hand and said, “Now that you’ve defined open innovation, I would venture to guess that most of us have engaged in it but that we call it something else.”

The moderator queried the audience again: “How many of you engage in open innovation in your companies?” This time, about a dozen of the 50+ people in the room raised their hands.  They just didn’t know it by this trendy buzz word.

Also of interest was GSK’s perspective on open innovation. Helene Rutledge, director of Open Innovation, was brilliant in her responses to the questions. Clearly she is an innovator in her own right in the space. According to Ms. Rutledge, GSK started doing open innovation four years ago, when less than 20 percent of its portfolio was open innovation-related. Its reason for embracing this methodology was to enhance its product development pipeline.

Today, GSK has more than 50 percent of its portfolio attributed to open innovation and it incentivizes people for their “Proudly Found Elsewhere” attitude.

The panel was engaging and interesting. Undoubtedly, the next time the topic of open innovation comes up, the attendees of this session will have a new perspective on the topic.

Laura Gaze, Senior Marketing Manager, IP Solutions Innovation, Open Innovaiton Innovation, Open Innovation

Today is World Intellectual Property Day and Thomson Reuters is proud to partner with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to launch a program giving industrial property offices (responsible for intellectual property and copyright) and government and academic researchers in developing countries free access to global patent information.

The goals of World IP Day are to raise awareness for how patents, copyrights, trademarks and designs impact daily life; increase understanding of how protecting IP rights helps promote creativity and innovation; celebrate creativity and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies; and, encourage respect for the IP rights of others.

Our hope is that free access to scientific and technical knowledge, in particular knowledge in patents, fosters global innovation by enabling the development of solutions to the world’s technical challenges.

“The theme of this year’s World IP Day, “Innovation – Linking the World,” reflects the goal of this new program which aims to provide access for developing and least-developed countries to technical information found in patent databases”, said Yo Takagi, assistant director general, Global Infrastructure Sector, World Intellectual Property Organization “These databases offer sophisticated search and analysis tools as well as a wide range of other value-added features. Allowing developing and least-developed countries to more fully exploit their creative potential through the effective use of technical information found in these specialized patent databases will further link these countries into the global knowledge economy and foster the development of new solutions to technical challenges faced on a local and global level.”

Read the news release for more information on the program that WIPO and Thomson Reuters will be working together on.

Laura Gaze, Senior Marketing Manager, IP Solutions Global IP, Patents, Thomson Reuters Global IP, IP Solutions, patent, Thomson Reuters, WIPO

SERION, our industry-leading online trademark research environment, was recently named to IDG’s InfoWorld 100 list. This award celebrates IT projects that use technology in smart, innovative and creative ways to meet business needs.

We designed SERION with direct input from IP professionals to help make it easier for them to clear trademarks and protect brands. It also was critical that we met current technology needs and workflows of our users. The end result has allowed users to work the way they want to work.

We are honored to be recognized by InfoWorld for our work on SERION.

admin Brand Protection, Trademarks Brand Protection, Trademarks

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have partnered to offer a Master of Intellectual Property Law program in Australia, beginning in February 2010. The program is the first of its kind to be offered in the Asia-Pacific region.

From left to right: Andrew O'Brien (Regional Sales Mgr., Thomson Reuters), Philip Noonan (Dir. General, IP Australia), Brian Fitzgerald (Prof. of IP Property & Innovation, QUT), The Hon. Michael Lavarch (Exec. Dean, Faculty of Law, QUT), Kamal Puri (Prof. of IP Law & Program Director, WIPO-QUT Master of IP Law), Steve Thom (Senior Advisor, Office of the Director General, WIPO), Dr. Francis Gurry (Dir. General, WIPO), Jeff Roberts (Asst. Director, International Cooperation, IP Australia).

Thomson Reuters will support the innovative program by providing the university with access to its industry-leading patent research and analysis solution, Thomson Innovation. With the program placing special emphasis on IP matters specific to the Asia-Pacific region, the comprehensive Asia-Pacific patent coverage in Thomson Innovation will be useful for students. The aim is to provide future IP law professionals with the necessary tools to succeed in their courses and become acclimated to products that will help them flourish in their careers.

Thomson Innovation provides full-text English translations of Japanese and Korean patent data, English translations of the titles, abstracts and claims for Chinese data, as well as editorially enhanced, English-language abstracts of patents from Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand , the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.

Read the program brochure.

Laura Gaze, Senior Marketing Manager, IP Solutions Global IP, Innovation, Thomson Reuters asia, Asia-Pacific

Hear David Brown, President of the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters, talk about patent analysis of wind, solar and marine alternative energy technologies in a recent interview with Fox Business co-host Dagen McDowell. David highlights findings from the just-published Thomson Reuters World IP Today Report, “Alternative Energy Powers Up,” written by Sue Cullen, Ph.D., IP Consulting Services director, IP Solutions, Thomson Reuters.

Read the full World IP Today Report on Alternative Energy.

Laura Gaze, Senior Marketing Manager, IP Solutions Alternative Energy, Patents Alternative Energy, Patents, Thomson Reuters

Green is popular. While consumers are voicing their great concern for our planet, the business world is looking for strategies to respond appropriately to the eco trend and to create new opportunities. The growing popularity of green products has led to a global increase in the number of trademarks that have been applied for that have terms like ‘green’, ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ in their name.  

Is green the color of brands in the future as well as the color of money for those brands to survive in today’s economic climate? The lack of legal standards or a public consensus about what ‘green’ exactly includes, is one of the big challenges of ‘green marketing’. But there is much more legal specialists and companies must be aware of when launching a ‘green’ brand.

Explore this issue further in an insightful article written by Katrina Burchell, head of the Trade Marks department and Global Category Counsel for Skin products at Unilever. Her research into the importance and the impact of ‘green’ brands offer specialists and legal services guidelines when applying for trademarks, and help them to avoid legal traps. Thomson CompuMark contributed to this study by helping to uncover some remarkable trademark registration trends.

Read the full article.

Ilse Clymans, Marketing Communications Director, Thomson CompuMark Brand Protection, Global IP, Thomson Reuters, Trademarks Global IP, green, green brands, IP strategy, Trademarks

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education posting describes an amusing deception carried out by a researcher in response to receiving numerous “aggressive” unsolicited e-mail messages from an open access publisher which finances its scientific journals by charging authors a publication fee.

Philip M. Davis, a doctoral student in communication at Cornell University, submitted a fake computer-generated research paper from a fake institution. The paper – “a nonsensical five-page report with footnotes and graphical charts” – was accepted after the publisher said it had been peer-reviewed (along with an invoice for $800.)

This made me wonder what happened to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) conducted “Peer-to-Patent” experiment. The answer is that, as of June 15, 2009, the pilot is now closed to new applications, but the pipeline of existing applications will continue to be processed until they have all completed the normal peer review cycle (estimated to be mid-October).

The pilot was set-up to determine if peer review can support, in a cost effective manner, timely, accurate decisions about what inventions merit a U.S. patent.  Certainly in terms of participation the pilot can be judged a success.  A recent update recorded that since Peer-to-Patent launched, there have been 370,011 page views from 67,188 absolute unique visitors in 152 countries/territories with 2,501 registered users of the site and nearly 350 prior art uploads by volunteer experts since the project’s launch.  121 applications have completed or are currently participating in the program.  There are currently 27 patent applications available for review.

The decision to discontinue the program was made by the USPTO on the heels of the recent recognition of Peer-to-Patent by the White House Open Government Initiative.  The USPTO has requested a period of time in which to evaluate the program before making a decision on whether and how to proceed further.

We’d be interested here in your views of the program.

Bob Stembridge, Customer Relations Manager, Thomson Reuters Patent Law, Patent Reform, Patents Patents, Peer-to-Patent, USPTO