For those of you who wish to look at the entire summarized Federal budget (as proposed by the President) - here is your chance.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/
A PDF of the summarized Department of Commerce’s budget (which of course the USPTO is an agency of) is located below.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office got a big budget bump in the president’s budget proposal released on Monday.The PTO, which charges fees but does not always get to keep all of the money, was given a budget of $2.322 billion for the 2011 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, up 23 percent from 2010’s expected budget.
“The President’s Budget gives the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) full access to its fee collections and will strengthen USPTO’s efforts to improve the speed and quality of patent examinations through a fee surcharge,” the White House said in budget documents.
“The budget includes a proposal to increase statutory patent fees by 15 percent, which is expected to yield over $200 million in additional collections in 2011. The increase is intended to be an interim measure,” budget documents said.
President Barack Obama’s proposed budget said the PTO would develop a new fee schedule that better aligns fees to the cost of providing services.
In the past two fiscal years, the patent office earned more in fees than it was allowed to keep despite a problems like taking an average of 34.6 months to approve or reject a patent application.
In 2009, the patent office used $1.9 billion in funding and gave back $2 million additional that it earned in fees. For the 2010 fiscal year, it is estimated that the PTO will have access to slightly less but earn an additional $116 million in fees.
In other years, Congress had set the patent office budget at the same amount as the agency’s expected intake plus a cushion of $100 million. But Congress cut the cushion for fiscal 2010, that ends on Sept. 30. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0124400920100201
According to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), they received more than 976,000 patent applications last year (2009), up nearly 18 percent year from 2008. These figures included patent right of invention, utility model and design.
According to the State run IP Office, nearly 90 percent of them were domestic applications, the number which was up more than 22 percent year to year. The others were foreign applications which were down nearly 11%.
Ofcourse their is no outside verification of these numbers or any real way to check them, but it is an interesting bit of information.
The rest of the brief article can be seen by clicking on the following link:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/28/content_9394262.htm
THE WHITE HOUSE
For Immediate Release January 22, 2010
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
DURING TOWN HALL MEETING
1:45 P.M. EST
All right, gentleman right back here. Yes, it’s a guy’s turn. Yes, sir.
Q I’m an inventor, and I hold
THE PRESIDENT: Okay.
Q And before I ask my question I’d like to make a sales pitch. (Laughter.) If you can use my patent in your next election, I think you can raise a ton of money worldwide. You should take a look at it.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, we’ll take a look. All right.
Q If you can’t use it, the government could use it, and I could build a multibillion-dollar business here in
THE PRESIDENT: All right, we’ll take a look at your patent. Go ahead, what’s your question?
Q Yes, okay, it has to do with international patent rights. With all this free trade and trade barriers falling, it’s really hard for an individual like me with a global-scope patent to file all over the world and get patent protection everywhere, and having to go overseas to fight infringement. So if you’re going to drop trade barriers, maybe you can extend my patent rights to the foreign countries.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is a great question, and this is a huge problem. (Applause.) Look, our competitive advantage in the world is going to be people like this who are using their minds to create new products, new services. But that only helps us and helps you build a multibillion-dollar company if somebody can’t just steal that idea and suddenly start making it in
And one of the problems that we have had is insufficient protection for intellectual property rights. That’s true in
So I’ve given instructions to my trade offices — and we actually highlight this at the highest levels of foreign policy — that these are issues that have to be addressed because that’s part of the reciprocity of making our markets open. And so when I met with President Hu of
And one of the things that we’re also doing is using our export arm of the
Can I just say, we just went through a decade where we were told that it didn’t matter, we’ll just — you just keep on importing, buying stuff from other countries, you just take out a home equity loan and max out your credit card, and everything is going to be okay. And it looked, for a lot of people, like, well, the economy seems to be growing — but it was all built on a house of cards. That’s what we now know. And that’s why if we’re going to have a successful manufacturing sector, we’ve got to have successful exports.
When I went and took this trip to
All right, great question.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/01/obama_at_elyria_ohio_town_hall.html
President Barack Obama was in Elyria, Ohio last Friday and spoke briefly on Intellectual Property, in response to a question from a participant in the audience. The President said that ensuring U.S. intellectual property was properly protected from theft was crucial in reviewing the country’s trade deals, citing China as part of this process. This is an important issue in states like Ohio that have suffered severe economic distress as a result of a decline in manufacturing and other consumer goods.
The President went on to say,”One of the problems we had was insufficient protection for intellectual property rights. That is true for China … these are issues that have to be addressed,”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWEN883120100122?type=marketsNews
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According to an article in the AP today, insurance giant Mutual of Omaha has just settled its trademark fight with Oprah Winfrey and we are again reminded that you can trademark just about anything!The insurance giant has decided to settle its lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey’s production company over rights to the phrase “aha moment” (yep, I am not kidding).
Jim Nolan, a spokesman for Mutual, and Angela DePaul, a spokeswoman for Winfrey’s Chicago-based Harpo Productions Inc., would only say Monday that the case was resolved amicably. Documents filed last month in U.S. District Court in Omaha do not outline details of the settlement.
Mutual and Harpo began sparring earlier this year after Mutual starting using the slogan “official sponsor of the aha moment” in a national advertising campaign.
Harpo asked Mutual in a letter to stop using “aha moment” to promote its insurance and financial products because it didn’t want confusion about whether there was a relationship between Mutual and Winfrey. Winfrey’s representatives argued in April that the phrase was synonymous with Winfrey and her show. Winfrey often discusses “aha moments” - described on her magazine’s Web site as “those flashes of understanding” - with guests on her show.
Mutual responded with the lawsuit and documents showing it had obtained preliminary approval of a federal trademark.
The insurance company said it conceived its slogan in February 2008 and unveiled the Web site http://www.ahamoment.com a year later. It began researching trademark rights to “aha moment” in July 2008 and filed an application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that August. Mutual said no opposition was made to its trademark application, and preliminary approval was granted in April.
Mutual originally asked the court for a legal declaration allowing it to use the slogan and pronouncing that Mutual has not infringed on Harpo’s or Winfrey’s rights. Harpo never filed a formal response to Mutual’s lawsuit.
Mutual asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed last month, and the judge entered his ruling Oct. 22.
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/f/1310/11-10-2009/20091110053506_11.html
Time Magazine just published it list of the top 50 inventions of 2009. This is kind of a fun article that list the best and worst inventions of the year (according to the editors of Time!). NASA won the best invention with their Ares Rockets (see picture below) .
You can read more about the best inventions, including NASA’s rockets here: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1934027_1934003,00.html.
The worst inventions are pretty terrible but you can look at the 5 worst here: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1934027_1934004,00.html.
Overall, this is an interesting and entertaining article and well worth a quick read (except you have to navigate their confusing format).
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1934027,00.html
An interesting article from Reuters today that was picked up by CNBC.com. The Supreme Court today will hear opening arguments in a landmark patent case today.
Software, biotech firms and others who develop new ways to do business will be watching closely Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case that could determine if such innovations can win patent protection.
The case itself involves a small Pittsburgh company called WeatherWise, founded by Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw, to sell services based on hedging methods that allow users to make fixed energy payments even if usage or energy prices vary.
But when they tried to patent the hedging method, the U.S. patent office rejected it in 2000. The patent board upheld the rejection in 2006.
The battle continued up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which in 1998 had broadened the definition of what was patentable to anything except laws of nature and abstract ideas.
But, after hearing the Bilski case, the court, which specializes in patent appeals, sought to set limits. It ruled that the hedging method could not be patented because it was not tied to a machine and did not result in a transformation.
The Federal Circuit decision threw doubt on tens of thousands of business method patents, like software patents and medical diagnostic patents. One of the best-known examples of a business method patent is Amazon.com’s [AMZN 126.37 0.17 (+0.13%) ] one-click process to buy goods on the Internet.
“I did some math this morning and the market cap of the companies that filed (friend of the court) briefs is $1.2 trillion,” said Marc Pernick, a patent attorney with law firm Morrison Foerster.
Some, like software and biotechnology companies, want the definition of what can be patented to be as broad as possible because they license out those processes. Others, like some financial institutions, want business method patents to be restricted to avoid getting sued.
Ruling Expected in 2010
The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Monday, beginning at 1 p.m. EST. A decision is expected by the end of June.
Patent experts agree that, however the court rules, it will not simply affirm the Federal Circuit decision.
“The track record is that when the Supreme Court takes a case from the Federal Circuit that they see something they want to change,” said Pavan Agarwal, a patent attorney with law firm Foley and Lardner.
When the court has ruled on patent cases recently, it has tended to rule unanimously or nearly unanimously.
The high court ruled unanimously in 2008 in Quanta v. LG Electronics that patent rights were exhausted once a product was sold. A company could not sue a downstream purchaser for infringement.
In 2007, in KSR v. Teleflex, the court unanimously made it easier to show that an innovation was an obvious improvement on existing technology and, thus, should not have been patented.
In MedImmune v. Genentech, the court ruled in 2007 that a patent licensee need not stop paying royalties or otherwise breach a licensing agreement before challenging the validity of a patent. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
A 2006 Supreme Court ruling, eBay v. MercExchange, made it harder to win an injunction in the case of infringement.
WeatherWise co-founder Rand Warsaw estimated losses to his small company, because it could not patent the hedging method, at about $5 million a year.
“This lack of patent protection has given rise to competitors and given rise to companies who have taken our intellectual property. For other small companies this could have been a death blow,” he said.
See the rest of the story at CNBC.com
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33724662/?site=14081545
According to Inventors Digest -USPTO Director David Kappos has just announced a new plan to “Fast-Track” patent applications. According to the speech, given at the 14th Annual Inventors Conference (see link for more details http://uspto.gov/).
Inventors with two or more patent applications pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can have one of their patents fast-tracked - “jumped to the head of the line,” in the words of USPTO director David Kappos - provided inventors abandon one of their less pressing applications.
http://www.inventorsdigest.com/?p=2094