Posts in International

The dilemma for developing countries is primarily a function of two things: lack of access to existing medicines and absence of innovation on the treatments and cures that are needed. Admittedly each of these can be linked to intellectual property rights, but poverty is at the heart of both issues. Fundamentally, drugs are not available because there is no market for them and the necessary market incentives are absent. To facilitate innovation, especially on ‘diseases of poverty’ the UN and member states need to commit to cultivating market incentives and removing obstacles.

In mid-January, reports were issued that researchers at both the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) were able to engineer antibodies which showed effectiveness in neutralizing the two deadliest strains of Ebola. It is effective against Zaire Ebola, the one causing the most recent outbreak, and Sudan Ebola, the next most-pathogenic strain of the disease after Zaire.

Twitter’s popularity has not only benefited the legitimate side of the pharmaceutical industry. A study released in December, supported by both the Global Health Policy Institute and the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, found an empirical link between all Twitter content and content aimed at the illicit drug sales. A survey of two week’s worth of posts shared on Twitter, involving the analysis of more than two million tweets, turned up 45,000 tweets which encouraged drug abuse. The survey found that more than three-quarters of tweets both pertaining to the non-medical use of prescription medications and including a hyperlink to a sales affiliate related to the anti-anxiety drug Valium.

Toshiba exists among the giants of the U.S. patent landscape, placing sixth among all companies in terms of patents received from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2015; it took home 2,627 U.S. patents in 2015. This sixth-place showing sees Toshiba improving upon its 2014 rankings, where it took in the seventh-most U.S. patents. In terms of total U.S. patents, however, Toshiba actually earned less than it did in 2014, when it brought in 2,850 patents. In the three months leading up to this writing, Toshiba earned 677 U.S. patents, according to Innography’s patent portfolio analysis tools. The text cluster indicates that there remains a great deal of focus on developing semiconductor layer and memory technologies at Toshiba, although activities in control units, image processing and image data are also prominent.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a robotic glove designed to improve patient rehabilitation after injuries or nerve-related conditions that may have affected a person’s full range of motion with his or her hand, such as those suffered by a stroke or from muscular dystrophy. The robotic glove unit, known as the EsoGlove, is mainly made of fabric which is secured to a user’s hand with Velcro straps and a number of soft actuator components. These soft actuators are pressurized by air to distribute forces along the length of a wearer’s finger to encourage natural movements like bending or twisting.

Future Motion launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the earliest prototypes of the OneWheel on January 6th, 2014. Within 24 hours, the project had already collected 40 percent of the funds it needed for the next phase of development. Within three days, it had secured 85 percent of its funding request and it only took a total of four days to reach the $100,000 pledge goal that Future Motion had initially set out to achieve. All told, Future Motion received a total in excess of $630,000 within 25 days and was able to meet stretch goals for LED lighting systems and mobile app development.

Proteins like VRC01 are referred to as broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs), a type of broad spectrum antibody which is effective in treating against infections of viruses with high mutation rates, such as HIV as well as influenza. It’s thought that VRC01 and other bNAbs useful in treating HIV-infected patients is capable of identifying the envelope spike of a single HIV viral agent to inhibit or neutralize its effects… Gene editing tools may also be part of the solution that rids HIV/AIDS from the human race for good. The discovery of clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) has given scientists hope that they’ll be able to efficiently edit genomes with a high degree of precision and flexibility.

New Zealand Judge Nevin Dawson handed down a ruling that would allow the United States to move forward with the extradition of Kim Dotcom, the founder of the former Megaupload.com, one of the world’s most popular file sharing websites at the height of its power. Kim and others involved with Megaupload have been sought under counts of criminal copyright infringement, racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering as well as aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement. The original indictment, filed by the Department of Justice in the Eastern District Court of Virginia back in January 2012, alleged that Kim and other defendants were responsible for $500 million in harm to copyright holders.

Chinese legislators have attempted to enact anti-terror legislation purportedly designed to protect Chinese citizens against terrorist threats. In late December, China passed a law requiring both telecommunications and Internet companies operating in the country to provide decryption, technical interfaces and other assistance to public and state security organizations to conduct investigations of potential terrorist activities. The tech sector has misgivings about Chinese regulations that would force the handing over of sensitive data. Imagine a leak of encryption keys leading Chinese hackers to degrade performance of a foreign tech provider, all in the name of promoting indigenous innovation. That’s a pretty extreme scenario, but one that’s not completely unimaginable considering recent cybersecurity headlines.

Innovation in the automotive sector was a huge story, both for the types of technologies being developed and the companies pursuing the R&D in that field. Drones and robotics also played a role in other top patent applications which we’re profiling today. Rounding out our list of top 2015 innovations includes an emotion analysis system for financial security, wireless charging schemes, low-power communications for wearable devices and a greenhouse window that can generate electricity while improving crop yield.

For better or for worse, there is no such thing as a world-wide patent. There is, however, something that approximates a world-wide patent application that can ultimately result in a patent being obtained in most countries around the world. This patent application is known as an International Patent Application, or simply an International Application. The international treaty that authorizes the filing of a single patent application to be treated as a patent application in countries around the world is the Patent Cooperation Treaty, most commonly referred to as the PCT. You can file an International Application pursuant to the rules of the PCT and that application will effectively act as a world-wide patent application, or at least a patent application in all of those countries that have ratified the PCT, which is virtually all of the countries where you would want a patent anyway.

Later this evening, on December 24th, Santa Claus will guide his team of nine reindeer, led by Rudolph’s red nose, from the North Pole to points across the globe, spreading good cheer and presents to children of all races, languages and creeds. At that time, the progress of Santa’s journey will be closely tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint operation of the United States and Canadian federal governments. With many years of Santa tracking under its belt, it’s possible that NORAD has the world’s largest compendium of data collected from analysis of Santa’s previous Christmas trips. Last year, the agency released a fact sheet about Santa’s sleigh, reported by multiple news outlets.

Although the Chinese Patent Law is a mere 31 years old, it has already gone through 3 major revisions, the last being 6 years ago. In its most recent effort, China just released the “Draft 4th Amendments to the Chinese Patent Law” for public comments, which are due by Jan 1, 2016. The proposed amendments will significantly strengthen areas such as patent enforcement and broaden design patent protection.

The Australian Patent Office yesterday released its new guidelines in response to Australia’s High Court decision on the patentability of genetic material. The good news for Australia, though cold comfort for us on the other side of the Pacific, is that the Australian Patent Office has shown our counterpart US institutions the correct way to interpret and apply an important new case carving specific subject matter out of the broad default of patent eligibility. Rather than declaring ineligible from patenting everything under the sun “involving” a law or product of nature, Australia has instead read the High Court’s decision faithfully yet narrowly to exclude exactly what it said it excluded.

Sony is one of the giants of the patenting world and in 2014, it placed 4th among all companies receiving patent grants from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, earning 3,214 U.S. patents that year. This was despite the fact that Sony was only one of two members of the top 10 who received fewer patents in 2014 than it did in 2013. The patent portfolio analysis tools at Innography are showing us that Sony has earned 2,489 U.S. patents so far in 2015, so it’s likely that Sony’s 2015 patent totals will dip again. According to 2015 patent data, much of Sony’s research and development has focused on processing of information and images, along with control units and solid state imaging. head mounted displaySony’s focus on developing head-mounted devices for virtual reality systems has resulted in a couple of recently issued patents…