Bayer's petition against NACTO Compulsory license dismissed

In a yet another historic legal battle Intellectual Property Appellate Broad has dismissed Bayer's request for a stay order against last year grant of compulsory license by the patent controller to Natco.

The compulsory license issued by patent controller earlier last march allowed Natco to make and sell the generic version of  Multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer's patented drug Nexavar - used for treating liver and kidney cancer, after paying 6% royalty .

As Economic Times reports that, Justice Prabha Sreedevi of IPAB rejected Bayer's petition on the ground that the company did not even make a prima facie for grant of a stay against the order. She considered that a stay to the order will hamper the interests of the public as the company even admits that the drug is intended to improve the quality of life of patients in the later stages of disease.

Bayer was selling the said drug in Indian market for Rs 28,000 for a month's dose while Nacto's version offered to sell them at Rs 8,800 per month which is only 3% of Bayer's rate. Patent controller in his decision found that the medicine was available only to a small percentage of population and does not meet the requirements of the public. 

India's first ever compulsory license and the latest development were viewed with great concern by generic industries in developing countries  as a prospective watershed for affordable access to patentable medicines as well as  developed nations like US who opposes the move. 

India is currently in middle of raging patent battles in pharma industry with Novartis appeal  currently in supreme court and Delhi High court's Judgement on Cipla v Rosch.

Apple embarks on a winning spree

In a setback for Google and another win for Apple, a German court has found Google-owned IT company Motorola guilty of infringing Apple patents on the design of smartphones and tablets, a court spokesman said on Thursday. The court ordered Motorola to pay a yet-to-be-specified fine and pull the infringing devices, from the market.

This particular patent involves a feature known as "overscroll bounce" or "rubber-banding" that pulls a written text or image back to the centre of the screen to signify to the user that the end of a list or menu has been completed. Motorola had won a similar patent case in western Germany last July and has one month to appeal the decision.

 It would be interesting to see, what would be the outcome of the appeal. On the other hand for Apple, it has been a winning spree, till now. In August, a California court decided in favour of Apple in a patent case against Samsung, awarding the iPhone maker about one billion dollars in damages.  

The case is just one of many patent battles that technology companies have waged worldwide, but especially in Germany where patent protection laws are particularly strict. This case might just give Apple, the required boost to sell its latest IPhone, which has got a mixed review.

Contributed by

Abhishek Kukreti

Mirror Worlds lost the patent infringement suit

It was again a victorious day for Apple Inc. (AAPL), when it won in an appeal against a verdict regarding the issue of U.S. patent-infringement of the invention by a professor of Yale University on how documents are displayed on a computer screen.

The question arose in the case was, whether Apple was responsible for infringement of patents owned by Mirror Worlds LLC. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington gave the verdict, upholding a lower-court decision that tossed the 2010 jury verdict.

The suit began in 2008, when Mirror Worlds, founded by Yale University computer-science Professor David Gelernter, sued Apple’s alleging that its Mac computers infringed its patents. Apple challenged the validity of the patents and argued against the infringement. The jury held Apple responsible for infringing three patents and awarded damages of $208.5 million for each, (a total of $625.5 million). In court papers, Apple argued that the amount was too high and that it was improper to add the damages.

Later the U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, overturned the October 2010 verdict, holding that Apple was not liable for infringement of the patent and that Mirror Worlds had failed to establish its case. The court also said the damage award was too high, while also upholding the validity of the three Mirror Worlds patents.

The trial looked into the Spotlight, Time Machine and Cover Flow features in Apple’s Mac operating systems.

The case can be found by searching Mirror Worlds LLC v. Apple Inc., 11-1392, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington) and Mirror Worlds LLC v. Apple Inc., 08cv88, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Tyler). 

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Apple vs. Samsung: Is the verdict pro-consumer?

The victory of Apple against Samsung in the famous patent case indicates the arrival of hard days for its rivals. Samsung has termed its defeat as loss to consumers; on the contrary, Apple has termed its victory as the gain for the American patent system and innovation. The judgment is symptomatic of the high investment in innovation to be made by Apple’s rivals, which indicates higher costs for everyone.

Though, Samsung will have to pay $1.05 billion to Apple. But ultimately, it is its customers, who will have to pay higher prices as the device manufacturers pay more to Apple for license of the technology they already use. It would result in several Samsung and Android devices going out of the market, whereby the consumer will face shortage of choice.

Following are the devices that will be adversely affected:

1.      Galaxy S,

2.      Galaxy S II,

3.      Nexus S,

4.      Mesmerize,

5.      Vibrant,

6.      Fascinate,

7.      Skyrocket,

8.      Continuum,

9.      Prevail,

10.  Infuse,

11.  Gem,

12.  Mesmerize,

13.  Indulge,

14.  Replenish,

15.  Epic 4G Touch,

16.  Droid Charge,

17.  Nexus S smart-phones

18.  Galaxy Tab and

19.  Galaxy Tab 10.1

The verdict may result in a gain for Apple in terms of market share and profits in the form of sharp rise in its share prices after the verdict. But the verdict does not lie in the favour of consumers for many reasons.

Choice and competition must prevail in the market, which is not going to be the aftermath of the decision. This may make the losers unite to take revenge from Apple to often beat Apple in whichever way they can.

Further, as observed by Judge Richard Posner in an earlier Apple versus Motorola case, Apple often adopts patent litigation as a tool not for safeguarding breakthrough innovation, but to stall and delay competitors. 

Conclusively, there is an open question. Does the verdict favour the market and consumers of smart-phones?

Apple vs. Samsung: remarkable day for Apple

In a much awaited judgment that has been a landmark one in the IP realm, to be precise, patent realm, the US court jury has ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion. There is a room for appeal against the judgment.

Giving brief insights of the case, Apple Inc. filed its patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co., in April 2011, claiming $2.5 billion. Samsung Electronics Co. fired back with its own lawsuit seeking $399 million.

In its verdict, the US court jury in California rejected all Samsung's claims against Apple. However, the jurors also decided against some of Apple's claims involving the two dozen Samsung devices at issue, declining to award the full $2.5 billion Apple demanded.

The U.S. trial was the latest skirmish between the two tech giants as they have filed similar lawsuits in eight other countries, including South Korea, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, France and Australia.

In the home court ruling, Samsung won global patent battle against Apple as judges in a Seoul court held that Samsung didn't copy the look and feel of the iPhone and ruled that Apple infringed on Samsung's wireless technology. But they also held that Samsung had violated Apple's technology behind the feature that causes a screen to bounce back when a user scrolls to an end image. Both sides were ordered to pay limited damages.

Before the US Court's verdict against it, Samsung had also lost previously in European court, where judges ruled that Samsung patents were part of industry standards that must be licensed under fair terms to competitors.

News Source

Apple vs. Samsung: Trial to be over soon.

The most popular and most complex patent lawsuit between two giants, is about to be over. Apple and Samsung both have finished presenting evidence in the patent infringement trial, involving the technology in each company’s smart-phones and tablet computers.

Both sides seem to be submitting closing arguments on 21^st August, before the jury in U.S. District Court in San Jose begins its deliberations the next day. On 17^th of this month, which was the last day of testimony, both sides presented rebuttal witnesses to reinforce their sides. 

News Source 

Smartphone Patent War: Apple versus Samsung

On 15^th April, 2011, Apple sued Samsung, alleging that the later copied the look and feel of its iPhone and iPad in its product Galaxy S line. Apple said “Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple's technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products,” according to the Wall Street Journal

This suit was later expanded to include 13 more products, including the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Nexus S 4G, and the Droid Charge.

Samsung filed a countersuit, targeting Apple for infringing on five patents relating to wireless networking technology (though it later dropped one countersuit that was filed in a U.S. federal court to simplify its proceedings).
In 2010 Apple had also dragged HTC (for 20 instances of patent infringement) and Motorola (alleging that its multi-touch smart-phones use Apple-owned intellectual property) in the patent battle. By August, 2011, there were 19 ongoing lawsuits (at present the number of lawsuits is more than 50) in 12 courts in nine countries on four continents.
Judgment of Various Courts across the Globe.

Country	Judgment	At present
Germany	Court blocked the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe, with the exception of the Netherlands. Later the court tightened its ruling and only applied the ban to sales within Germany	Appeal by Samsung
Australia	Samsung agreed not to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia until it settles an ongoing patent dispute with Apple.
Netherlands	A Dutch court in The Hague, imposed a ban on the Galaxy smart-phones but not the tablets, at the request of Apple.

Apart from the abovementioned courts, the parties are also fighting in France, Japan, USA, International Trade Commission (ITC), United Kingdom, Italy and South Korea.

Current Status.

In the lawsuit pending before a US District Court, on 1^st August, 2012, Apple said in its filing with U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh that a July 31 statement from Samsung’s lawyer, (wherein Samsung intended to convey to jurors, through the media, arguments contesting Apple’s central allegations that Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad) was “bad faith litigation misconduct”, which was meant to prejudice the jury. Hence, it requested the court to issue sanctions granting judgment that Apple’s asserted phone-design patent claims are valid and infringed by Samsung.

Samsung, in an 2^nd August filing, countered that Apple’s request should be rejected because Samsung’s statement was protected free speech.

The court dismissed Apple’s request for a judge to punish its lawyer’s public disclosure of evidence excluded from trial

The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11- cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

Setback to Kodak

In a patent suit involving Kodak on one hand and Apple and RIM on the other,  Kodak has faced setback, when the patent controversy regarding digital image previews was decided against it. The patent described a system for previewing images on digital cameras and was considered as one of the most valuable one in Kodak's portfolio.

When it began?

It was in January 2010, when Kodak filed a suit and thereby made an attempt in obtaining licensing fees from RIM and Apple for using technology, which according to it was relating to the way digital images are previewed on a screen. According to Kodak, the same technology was patented by it. Kodak was seeking over $1 billion from Apple alone. 

Decision given. 

The International Trade Commission (ITC), in consensus with a judge’s ruling ruled that neither Apple nor RIM has violated Kodak’s patent for digital image preview inviting an injunction to prevent imports of defendants products to the market

Consequences ahead. 

This decision can be a grave setback to the Plaintiff as it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. It had the hope of selling its patents in order to revive the company. Now without the image previewing patents the value of its patent portfolio could fall significantly giving more trouble to already bankrupted company.

Source

42,000 patent applications filed in 2011

According to an official statement from the Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, 42,000 patent applications were filed in 2011. Such a huge number of patent applications indicates rising trend of patent filings.

Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma inaugurated the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Intellectual Property Management (NIIPM) building at Nagpur, emphasising upon the recognition by the country of need for creating a pool of trained professionals to evaluate and assess the applications.

The Ministry also has plans to establish the India Intellectual Property Foundation at NIIPM, with collaboration of CII and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

In the wake of increasing workload of patent application, Indian Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has recently recruited 257 examiners of patents and designs, who will undergo a comprehensive one-year training at NIIPM.

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