Mc Donald filed for coffee trademark

McDonald's Corp. has filed a trademark using its name for ground and whole-bean coffee.  McDonald's Corp has filed for the trademark McCafe Indicating intention of burger giants to enter into retail markets.

The registration was made last month, and The Wall Street Journal says it signals the quintessential American fast food chain could be considering selling packaged coffee in grocery stores, emulating some of its competitors.

MC Donald filed for Mc Cafe trademark for coffe

Infosys way ahead of peers in patents

Infosys, India's second largest software exporter leads in the number of patents filed by Indian  IT companies. According to the data compiled by an equity research firm Barclays, the Indian IT giant has filed 159 USPTO in last five years.

Globally only firm which competes with Infosys is Acceture which filed 345 patents in the last five years.  In India Infy is followed by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd with 43 applications and Wipro with 8 and HCL stands the least among country's top tier IT firms with 4 applications.

In order to maintain uniformity Barclays have confined  their research to USPTO . They have also confirmed that Infy has filed 354 patents globally in different jurisdictions during the last five years.

Infosys is one of the few IT companies that spent money heavily on Research & Development. Reports says that during last three years company has spent 2.1% of its revenue on R&D which is best in the industry.

Source: Business standard

Significant changes on the anniversary of AIA

In 2011, when the America Invents Act (AIA) was given the shape of law on September 16 last year, some significant changes were introduced to U.S. patent law, including changes to patent litigation rules and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) procedures. While some changes - particularly those related to patent litigation (such as limitations on joinder of defendants, the elimination of the best mode invalidity defense, an expansion of the prior use defense, and provisions regarding proof of willful and induced infringement) - went into effect immediately, some additional aspects of the Act, including significant changes to procedures within the USPTO, were implemented on September 16, 2012.

Source 

Time for Trademark Oppositions

After a number of patent battles now its time to watch how Samsung and Apple fights over trademark.

Apple on May 2010 filed a TM application vide application no with USPTO for International registration  of a logo titled "Made for iphone" vide application no: 85025627 which contains a small image of an iphone along with the word mark "Made for iphone".

Now after two years of registration with the USPTO, Samsung along with Acer has challenged the registration of the mark in the Canadian Trademark Office

According a document provided by the Canadian Trademark office Samsung and Acer has filed their opposition on October 2011 and has been granted an extension for formally making their case which is due for 20th of November.

Source: Patently apple

First to File system to face Judicial scrutinty

An American Inventor, Mark Stadnyk and his company Madsatd Engineering Inc is now challenging the Constitutional validity of USA's new patent regime under the America Invents Act of 2011 which replaced the "First to invent" with  "First to file".

Mark Stadnyk has sued the USPTO,its director, David Kappos  and the United States of America before the United States District  Court for the Middle District Florida Tampa Division.

Contentions raised by the Plaintiff

• Mark stadnyk claims that the First inventor to file system is a " smoke screen", in the sense that in reality patents would be granted only to the person who have filed the application early regardless of whether the applicant is the first inventor of the system
• The "First - to- file " system violates the intellectual property clause of US constitution as this would allow patents only to  the "winners of race", ignoring the actual inventors of genuine discoveries. Further he points out that First- to - File system was rejected in the early years of US IP regime especially by Thomas Jefferson, one of the members of original patent board in some early cases.
•  "First- to - File " system would discourage innovation as  individual inventors, start ups, small business and research organizations lack the resources to compete with the big corporations in the race to file applications with PTO. 
• He calls the Act per se discriminatory against small inventors, universities and independent research institutes which is basically the backbone of every nation's innovation.
• AIA and the First- to- File system would only increase the back log of cases within the USPTO and would increase the duration of entire process.
• Further he points out that since AIA is concerned with the First- To - File system the inventors and entrepreneurs are now forced to invest a large amount for protection of computer data to prevent others from having access to R&D of their company. He claim that Madstad Engineering Inc, itself have invested $3,500,00 for additional computer security measures.

Mark Stadnyk claims that AIA has thus caused irreparable harm to plaintiff's business, property and constitutional rights and hence ask the court to restrain USPTO and US Government from using AIA's provisions against him.

It would be interesting to look into the proceedings of the case and how the Federal Court is going to determine the constitutional validity of the new  "First- To - File" system.

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RIM ordered to pay $147 million for patent infringement

San Francisco District court has ordered Researchers in Motion (RIM), makers of Blackberry to pay $147 million as damages for infringing patents of Mformation technologies. Mformation took Blackberry to court on an allegation of violating their patent on “remote management of device from server” which is used in blackberry mobiles.

Court ordered RIM to pay $8 per every mobile device already sold in use which amount to $147 million when summed up. Thankfully court didn’t take into consideration any of the current and future sales, which if taken up would have resulted in much higher damages.

In a statement, RIM said that it is disappointed by the outcome, and is evaluating its options.

"RIM has worked hard for many years to independently develop its leading edge Blackberry technology and industry leading intellectual property portfolio, and RIM does not believe that the Mforemation patent in question is valid"

This decision is the second biggest loss for RIM in patent infringement suits, after March 2006 settlement with NTP Inc
It would be interesting to watch how RIM proceeds with the case, whether to go for review or appeal or to settle the issue ignoring its current drop in market.

source