On Thursday, November 2, 2006, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will host a one-hour webinar on its accelerated examination procedure beginning at 2PM Eastern time. On August 25, 2006, a new procedure was finalized to allow for an applicant to receive a “final decision” from an Examiner within 12 months of filing a patent application. This accelerated examination process requires an applicant to perform his or her own patent search, providing detailed search results to the USPTO at the time of filing, and limits the applicant to a maximum of 3 independent claims. The USPTO has dedicated a specific web page to the Accelerated Examination program, including several additional links in addition to those listed below. According to the general USPTO invitation, the webinar will discuss benefits to the applicants, petitions to make special, specific processing and examination procedures, the information required to be provided by an applicant under this program, the accelerated review period itself, and instructions on how to electronically file such an application on EFS-Web. Registration for this webinar is required (see link below).

USPTO General Invitation: LINK
Webinar Registration: LINK
Accelerated Examination FAQs: LINK
Application Guidelines: LINK
USPTO Search Templates Website: LINK
MPEP § 708.02 (VIII – Accelerated Examination): LINK

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it has granted a writ of certiorari for Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp to allow for additional comment on foreign patent damages. In July of 2005, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision that AT&T could pursue royalties from Microsoft from Microsoft’s overseas manufacture and sale of infringing software. At issue were the master versions of the Microsoft Windows® product that Microsoft would ship overseas and allow specific computer manufacturers to replicate the software and install it on computers being assembled and sold overseas. The software contained specific speech codecs that were held to be infringing of AT&T reissue patent no. 32,580. The Federal Circuit affirmed the decision that Microsoft was liable to AT&T under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), holding that shipping software overseas for copying purposes counts as “supplying” under the statute. Microsoft’s petition for a writ of certiorari contained two issues: “(1) Whether digital software code – an intangible sequence of “1’s” and “0’s” – may be considered a “component[] of a patented invention” within the meaning of Section 271(f)(1); and, if so, (2) Whether copies of such a “component[]” made in a foreign country are “supplie[d] … from the United States.” According to the Washington Post article (link below), this “is one of the most important patent cases that will come before the court this year and could determine the reach of U.S. patents overseas.”

U.S. Supreme Court Announcement: LINK
Washington Post News Article: LINK
Microsoft v. AT&T (Federal Circuit Decision): LINK

On Wednesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a new speech recognition patent to Apple Computer, Inc. This patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,127,394, entitled "Assigning meanings to utterances in a speech recognition system") includes 29 claims for computer-implemented methods, computer-readable storage media, and an apparatus pertaining to speech recognition. The first claim is a method comprising "determining a set of speech rules which match a spoken sequence of words by searching a current language model," the language model generated "from a plurality of speech rules according to a current operating context" and the words are received through an audio input. The claim also describes the plurality of speech rules as comprising "a language model and an expression; and evaluating said expressions in said current language model to assign a meaning to said spoken sequence of words." According to the patent, "prior art speech recognition systems suffer from many deficiencies that prohibit incorporating such technology into non-dedicated devices such as a personal computer," including the overall complexity of algorithms used for speech recognition, problems with accuracy, the requirement of a large vocabulary of words, dynamically adding words to the vocabulary, and transforming the spoken commands into data that can be used by the system. To potentially overcome these deficiencies, the disclosed technology within the patent is to "provide a means for associating meanings with spoken utterances in a speech recognition system" and "provide an improved method for associating expressions (e.g. actions and variable values) to speech rules in a speech recognition system." According to the Mac News Network Article (link below), "it's apparent that this patent could easily apply to a future iPhone."

U.S. Patent No. 7,127,394: LINK
Mac News Network Article: LINK

According to a recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Press Release, there are now 17 countries (including the European Patent Office) allowing electronic filing of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications. The list of countries/offices, in alphabetical order, providing such a filing mechanism includes Australia, Denmark, the European Patent Office (EPO), Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States of America. Oddly enough, the newest member of this list is the United States, when on October 14th of this year the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s EFS-Web system was expanded to allow for the filing of PCT-SAFE (“Secure Applications Filed Electronically”) system. Some benefits are listed in the WIPO press release (link below), including reduced fees in some instances, prompt filing receipts and processing notices, and cost savings pertaining to copies and postage.

WIPO Press Release: LINK
PCT Treaty, Regulations and Administrative Instructions: LINK
USPTO Electronic Business Center Website: LINK
Current USPTO Fee Listing: LINK
USPTO EFS-Web Help & Tutorial Webpage: LINK

On Monday, two men who conspired to steal trade secrets from The Coca-Cola Company for subsequent sale to PepsiCo, Inc., pleaded guilty to the crime at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Dehaney pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy, while a third person, Joya Williams, pleaded not guilty to the charges against her. According to the CNN article (link below), Williams was to "copy and/or remove the company's trade secret documents and remove samples of products that were in development" and give them to Duhaney and Dimson, who would then attempt to sell the trade secrets. An attempted sale to a Pepsi employee led to involvement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, further leading to a $75,000 attempted sale and a $1.5M attempted sale of the trade secrets by the two men. A sample of product that was stolen from Coca-Cola and “sold” to an FBI agent was tested and confirmed as a true Coca-Cola sample product. According to the Yahoo! News article below, convictions in this trade secret theft case could result in 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine for each defendant.

CNNMoney.com News Article: LINK
Yahoo! News Article: LINK
18 U.S.C. § 1832 (Theft of Trade Secrets): LINK

Late last week, the USPTO announced the winners of the 2006 Collegiate Inventors Competition, and the Grant Prize went to Matthew Haugland of the University of Oklahoma. According to the invent.org website link below, Mr. Haugland’s technology focused on accurately predicting temperatures at night after purchasing land and installing a number of weather stations on the plot to obtain temperature data, and based on the data he collected, Mr. Haugland “developed a weather forecasting technique that accurately predicts nighttime temperatures.” For winning the competition, Mr. Haugland received a $25,000 prize. First place in the Graduate Category ($15,000) went to Craig Hashi and YiQian Zhu, both from the University of California, Berkeley, for their development of a vascular graft made from a polymer and a patients own bone marrow stem cells. First place ($10,000) in the Undergraduate Category went to Fan Yang of Johns Hopkins University for her development of a coating for contact lenses to prevent bacteria from adhering, thus reducing the risk of a contact lens-induced eye infection. The Collegiate Inventors Competition first took place in 1990, and is held on an annual basis and “promotes exploration in invention, science, engineering, technology, and other creative endeavors and provides a window on the future technologies from which society will benefit in the future.”

USPTO Press Release: LINK
Collegiate Inventors Competition Overview: LINK
Invent.org Webpage for Matthew Haugland: LINK
Invent.org Webpage for Craig Hashi & YiQian Zhu: LINK
Invent.org Webpage for Fan Yang: LINK

In response to a request by a consortium of Japanese television stations and entertainment groups, YouTube, Inc. agreed to remove nearly 30,000 files from its website that were alleged to be copywritten by Japanese entities. Research performed by the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers identified over 29,000 video clips on YouTube that were posted without requisite permissions from the copyright holders in Japan. According to the Yahoo! Article below, most of the videos posted on YouTube are homemade, but there are also "scores" of copywritten material available on YouTube. YouTube has a specific policy to remove copywritten materials once a complaint is received, but it is also noted in that article that since Google recently acquired YouTube for $1.65B in stock, YouTube may be subject to a number of copyright lawsuits. According to YouTube's Terms of Use, its users may not "submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless [the user is] the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant YouTube all of the license rights granted herein." It is reported that over 100 million video clips are viewed on YouTube each day.

Yahoo! News Article: LINK
YouTube Website: LINK
YouTube Terms of Use: LINK
YouTube Community Guidelines (including copyright references): LINK
YouTube's Press Release Regarding Google Acquisition: LINK

In what is being referred to as a “landmark ruling” in Japan, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to award royalties to an employee for intellectual property created during his employment and owned by his employer. Seiji Yonezawa, the creator of technologies regarding reading CDs and DVDs that were the subject of at least three patent applications filed by Hitachi in the 1970s, was initially paid 118,000 yen (approximately US$1,000) for his inventing efforts. Mr. Yonezawa then took Hitachi to court after retiring from the company, claiming that he was due royalties based on products sold that incorporate his inventions. A 2004 court agreed with him, and on Tuesday, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered Hitachi to pay him 163 million yen (approximately US$1.4M) in royalties. According to the International Herald Tribune, this is not the first such decision awarding high royalty amounts to employee inventors in Japan, noting that earlier this year Toshiba settled a similar lawsuit filed by an inventor for 87 million yen, and Japan’s Nichia Corporation settled a case in 2005 with the inventor of the blue light-emitting diode (LED) for 840 million yen (approximately US$7.1M) after a lower court decision awarded 20 billion yen (approximately US$168.6M) to the inventor.

International Herald Tribune News Article: LINK
Forbes.com News Article: LINK
Asahi Shimbun News Article: LINK
Supreme Court of Japan Website: LINK

According to a recent Forbes.com article (link below) referencing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Patent Report released on Monday, 2004 statistics show that while Japan and the United States still lead the world in total patent application filings, China is quickly moving up the list. In 2004, 423,081 patent applications were filed in Japan, compared to 356,943 in the United States. The Republic of Korea was third with 140,115, China fourth with 130,384, and 155,000 patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office (noting that this is the only non-country on the list). The next countries, in decreasing order of patent applications filed, are Germany, Canada, Australia, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, France, Mexico, and Norway. Additional data is also provided showing the number of patent filings per billion U.S. dollars in gross domestic product (GDP), as well as the number of patent filings per million people in the country. One surprising change of note was the increase in patent applications filed in China between 2000 and 2004, which nearly doubled during that time period. I note that the article does not appear to take into consideration the fact that a significant portion of these applications are filed internationally, but the actual WIPO data shows a distinction between "resident" applications and "non-resident" applications (see link to graph below).

Forbes.com Article: LINK
WIPO Patent Report: Statistics on Worldwide Patent Activity (2006 Edition): LINK
Top 20 Patent Offices for Filing Applications (Chart): LINK

It was announced on Monday that the U.S. Department of State will be allocating $3M to assist foreign countries with their intellectual property training and protection programs. According to the AllAfrica news article below, this new allocation increases the total granted by the U.S. government since 2004 for this purpose to $8.5M. The largest allocation is just over $700k to support the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and other countries, over the next two years for training of border and customs officials regarding IP crimes. Similar assistance being provided to India, where $365k is allocated to train those officials as well as judges and prosecutors. Several other programs, including funding to Paraguay, Ukraine, Brazil, and Russia, are being funded for these purposes and for targeting specific piracy of audio and visual recordings. Lists of allocations to individual countries are available at the first two links below.

AllAfrica News Article: LINK
ag-IP-news Article: LINK
U.S. Department of State "Intellectual Property Enforcement" Website: LINK