With the rise of the celebrity chef and the increasing amount of money spent on recipe books and all things food-related, I guess that it should not come as a surprise that intellectual property protection would not be far behind. One would believe that the possibility to protect culinary creations Read more
The world’s favourite patent troll, NTP, is back in court trying to bump Blackberry makers RIM Ltd. out of the market. Welcome to the wacky world of the American patent system, where innovators are punished for being first in the market while a patent shell company gets all their profits. Read more
I thought that I had read it all when it came to silly patents. Apparently not. The Register reports on U.S. patent application 20060015812 by mobile giants Cingular, attempting to patent the use of emoticons in wireless devices. The abstract reads: A method and system for generating a displayable icon Read more
The EPO has just released a study conducted in 2004 by consulting firm Roland Berger Market Research on the cost of patenting in Europe. According to the study, an average EPO patent costs €30,530 EUR, where the costs are higher for Japanese and American companies validating in Europe. As further Read more
There have been hundreds of reports about the very real possibility that the BlackBerry will not survive this year because of the patent threats by a company called NTP. The BlackBerry case is perhaps the most evident example of the folly of the patent system as it exists in the Read more
Now to one of my favourite blogging subjects, the broken American patent system. Every time I get comfortable and think that it could not get any sillier, a new patent comes along that is so mind-boggingly ludicrous that leaves me gasping for breath. Let me introduce U.S. patent 6,960,975, which Read more
As if the patenting of software was not enough of a nightmare, the next step could be the patenting of movies. You would be wise to be sceptical of this claim, who in their right mind would think of patenting movies? Behold U.S. patent application 2005/0244804, an application for the Read more
Some of the top patent judges in Europe are pleading for a unified first instance European patent court. After all, there is a European Patent Office, but the patents must be enforced in the national jursidictions, which creates a patchy and unneven application of patent rules and produce the wildy Read more
It is official, the American patent system has gone bonkers. Take a look at patent application 20050160005, describing a method for “providing food, beverages, and associated goods and services in a retail environment“. What does it consist of? This is a business patent for mixing cereals in the same bowl. Read more