Jugaad Inventors Rejoice

This image is taken from Here

It's good news for jugaad inventors. the Government seems keen on moving ahead with granting utility patents and is in the process of drafting a legislation. A number of government agencies of the likes of DRDO and the Department of Science and Technology haven been requesting for a utility patent regime for small sclae innovators. These patents would probably be granted for a period of 8-10 years. As the Economic Times rerports, the government will be keeping the pharma and the biotech sectors off bounds to avoid any issues with the Indian health sector. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had circulated a discussion paper in May 2011. The last day for receiving comments was the 30th of June 2011.

The report says that around 50 countries in the world have a utility patent system. This system does not go against international agreements in this sphere. More of it in future posts.

This image is taken from Here

It Ain't So Obvious

Patent law and standards of patentability have evolved over the past hundred years. Once upon a time novelty and utility were the sole standards of patentability. Over the years a third standard-non-obviousness-was added as a hurdle to overcome for an invention to be granted a patent. In retrospect, one can say that this was necessary in order to prevent trivial inventions from being patented.

Needless to say, the standard of obviousness is not so very obvious. This is due to a number of reasons. For one, courts are not very clear in setting objective standards of obviousness. Secondly, the progress of technology is much ahead of law and laying down agreeable standards of obviousness in areas like software, biotechnology or nanotechnology is still a distant dream. Then again, objectifying a subjective standard of obviousness is not an easy task. Reversing the onus probandi on the courts to set objective standards is simpler than trying to set them by oneself.

Obviously, the standard of obviousness cannot be covered in one post. So I will lay out the plan for the posts to come. Firstly we will briefly cover the development of the non-obviousness doctrine in patent law. Thereafter we shall see some recent judgements in the area of non-obviousness. Then we shall take up specific sectors of technology and delineate, through court decisions, the standards of obviousness set down therein. Finally we will make a comparison among the various sectors to see if some set of objective standards can be culled out. This exercise will obviously be interesting as the standards for software itself will vary from that of, say, a mechanical invention. “Obviously”, you might retort. But then again, the standard of obviousness itself varies between jurisdictions. For example, a software patent in the USA may not be granted in the EPO if it does not provide a “technical solution” to a “technical problem”.

Glenmark balms Triax and Astellas

In yet another pharmaco agreement, Glenmark Pharma entered into an agreement with Triax and Astellas in order to resolve a patent infringement case in the US. The chemical in question was the generic hydrocostisone butyrate cream, used to treat skin infections.

Hydrocortisone butyrate cream is a generic version of Triax's Locoid Lipocream.

Under the settlement and licence pact, "Glenmark will be permitted to market and distribute its 0.1 per cent hydrocortisone butyrate cream under a royalty-bearing license from Astellas and Triax in the US near the end of 2013."

Environment Tidbit

Believe it or not, the 2G scam proceedings has an environment aspect to it. The chargesheet runs into 80,000 pages and has 17 accused. Each of them is to be provided with a copy. If you include the judges and the lawyers it goes upto at least 20 lakh pices of paper. Now, a standard tree gives us 8500 sheets of paper implying that one chargesheet is was basically ten (erstwhile) trees!

So what is the environment aspect? 2G scam accused Asif Balwa got the court to agree to using his iPad thus saving ten trees.