nowEurope

I have just found an interesting guide, published by the project “USEandDIFFUSE” that was co-financed by the European Commission DG Research under the 7th Framework Programme. They have produced a guide packed with helpful information advice, quotes and real-life examples from SMEs that participated in 24 Best Practice projects (most of them in the ICT domain, some even in Central Europe). You can download the report here.

I found it interesting because it provides several hints on how you can transfer/uptake technologies!

In 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the “Federal Circuit”), the federal court that hears all appeals in patent cases in the United States, decided the State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group case.  That case held that a business method could be patentable if it produced a “useful, concrete and tangible result” (and if the other tests for patentability were met – novelty and non-obviousness).

The U.S. courts, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and the public interpreted this case broadly, with conventional wisdom developing that even pure business methods (not necessarily driven by a computer, for example) could be patented.  The floodgates were opened for patent protection for business method inventions (both automated, and in their pure form), causing a spike in the number of patent applications for such inventions (and resulting in many such patent applications issuing as patents by the USPTO in later years).

Meanwhile, the European Patent Office (EPO) (the regional patent-granting authority for member states of the European Patent Convention) continues to consider methods for doing business as unpatentable per se, unless the invention has a technical characteristic.  Thus, the USPTO and the EPO have been at odds over the years as to whether business methods can be patentable, with the USPTO generally taking a more expansive view (business methods are patentable), and the EPO generally taking a more restrictive view (business methods are not patentable).

This all changed with the In re Bilski case.

Continue reading ‘In re Bilski: Harmonizing U.S. and European Patent Law for Method Inventions?’

Comment on Robert Nemeth’s question “Can Centrope profit from the Chinese recovery?“ below.

China has been impressing analysts and and the rest of the world  since the start of its economic redirection almost 30 years ago. But there have always been warning voices, on malevolent copyright and technology theft on one hand, on bubble based growth on the other.

I have always been in favour of stronger links between Europe and China – simply for strategic reasons: Of the three (or maybe four, including India) superpowers China is Europe’s best choice, despite neglecting human rights etc. (The others are not better in this respect.) Continue reading ‘China: Yes, but carefully’

For the past several years, I’ve been wondering if a facilitator and a manager can be found in the same person. Or are the skill sets for each position so dissimilar, that two different personalities are necessary? It would be great to solve this while we are thinking about clusters, but not only because of clusters. Facilitators may play a critical role in instigating some bigger cooperation initiatives or partnership projects among several private companies, or between companies and the public sector.

Continue reading ‘Facilitators vs. managers’

As a U.S. patent attorney, I work with companies of all sizes (including many start-up companies), in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, helping them file for and obtain U.S. patents.  I also help these clients coordinate patent filings worldwide.  A question I’m often asked is: are patents worthwhile?  As with many types of investments and property rights, the answer is – it depends.

By way of brief background, patents can be considered a contract between an inventor (or the inventor’s employer) and the government.  Like most contracts, patents are a two-way street.  In exchange for a full disclosure of the invention by the inventor, the government agrees to grant exclusive rights to the inventor/company, but only if certain patentability tests are met.

Continue reading ‘Patents: Are They Worthwhile for a Start-up Company?’

Two weeks ago I met a very interesting person who told me that he would like to revolutionize the IT sector. He has developed a software (90% finished) to strike a new path. The product is calld “MyPM” and can be described as follows:

“MyPM” is a method to:

• describe business processes and their connections as hierarchical model
• describe these business processes in a clear form, precisely and as detailed as desired
• create automatically software from these descriptions
• combine analysis, design and implementation
• describe business processes and data simultaneously
• create databases automatically from the model description
• describe business processes without having to think of software development

Continue reading ‘A genius?’

The title of this post is a quotation from Meir Brand’s presentation, delivered at Innovation Thursday in Prague last week. The event attracted about 130 people and was organised in cooperation with our FIRST Innovation Park and the CITT project. Michael Novak and I also took part in the founding meeting of the Innovators Club where we talked to several key ICT innovation players in the Czech Republic.

I wrote down a few remarks that seem to me highly relevant to the technology transfer activities within CITT and thus I am offering them as the starting points for our cluster strategy development.
Continue reading ‘Some secrets are more valuable when shared’

There is no form of intellectual property more controversial, nor more often misunderstood, than so-called “business method patents”. While some individuals and companies complain that patent systems were never intended to protect “methods of doing business”, patent applications on these types of inventions continue to be filed in record numbers. Government patent offices continue to issue such patents, with support by judges who interpret the patent law. While the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has perhaps become the most liberal in granting business method patents, Europe (such as by way of the European Patent Office) also allows these types of patents to be granted, if they are deemed to have a “technical effect”. Like most debates, there are plenty of arguments to be made pro and con.

Continue reading ‘Intellectual Property Rights for Financial Services’

The European Commission is going to hold a public hearing on future EU patent policy on the 12th of July 2006. This public hearing is following a public consultation launched in January 2006 with the aim of collecting stakeholders’ views on the patent system in Europe and of seeking views on what measures could be taken in the near future to improve this system.

Continue reading ‘The European Commission’s public hearing on future patent policy’

On Monday, March 7, 2005, European government ministers approved a directive designed to reform how patents are handled in the European Union. The European Parliament (which includes some opponents of the directive), will ultimately vote on the initiative, which will either become law or be rejected.

At issue in the directive is whether the European Union will have an EU-wide system for enforcing patents (currently handled on a national level), and whether Europe will allow broader patent protection for software.
Continue reading ‘Software Patents in Europe’