| News March 2009 |
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Discovery Channel Company Claims Amazon Infringed their Patent March 19, 2009 The company behind the Discovery Channel, Discovery Communications has stated that they hold a patent for ‘Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System’, which Amazon’s electronic book readers Kindle and Kindle 2 is said to infringe. Joseph LaSala, counsel for Discovery Communications stated, “The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems. We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation” For more information visit: Trademark - “Likelihood of Confusion” Analysis March 19, 2009 The Trademark Trial and Appellate Board (TTAB) has held that the marks “Kids Outdoors” and “Outdoor Kids” for clothing are distinctive and confusion between the two is not likely. The Board explained, that the consumers "would rely on what might otherwise be slight differences between petitioner's OUTDOOR KIDS mark and respondent's KID'S OUTDOORS and design mark to distinguish the marks” and hence the “consumers are not likely to assume that all marks that contain these elements or permutations of these elements indicate a common source.” For more information visit: Copyright Infringement - Prison Term for Uploading Songs Online March 13, 2009 Kevin Cogill has been arrested for copyright infringement and faces upto six months in prison and $371,622 in damages for uploading music tracks from the unreleased album of Guns &Roses Chinese Democracy, to his site antiquiet.com. The prosecutor, Craig H. Missakian stated, “artists like the band Guns N' Roses put their blood, sweat, toil and tears into the creative process….and this country has seen fit to protect their rights…. and in doing so foster and encourage the creative process by which all of society benefits.” For more information visit: Patent for Electromagnetic Beam Detection System for the Human Eye March 4, 2009 Dr. Colin A. Ross, well known psychiatrist, has filed a patent application at the U.S.PTO and a PCT application for ‘a system to detect the electromagnetic energy emitted by the human eye’. Dr. Ross states, “The existence of the human eyebeam has been dismissed by psychologists, physiologists, physicists and virtually all modern scientists. This represents a big step forward.” The International Search Authority has stated that all aspects the invention is novel, inventive and have industrial application. For details of Dr. Ross’s patent application, see For details of Dr. Ross’s patent application, see Patent Reform Bill – Blessing or Curse? March 3, 2009 Debate on the new patent bill has revealed that the bill is said to ‘weaken protection for small investors’ and ‘threaten US jobs’. According to US Reps Michaud and Manzullo, the bill is said to “weaken America’s strong patent system, making it easier for foreign companies to take our ideas and our jobs. By diminishing the damage awards in patent infringement cases, this bill would encourage intellectual property theft by foreign competitors, putting 298,000 American manufacturing jobs at risk and curtailing U.S. research and development”. The CEO and chairman of GPC, Dr. Alexander Poltorak has stated that, “if passed this year, the new bill would replace America’s ‘first to invent’ system which favors innovators – with a European-style ‘first to file’ approach that encourages a race to the patent office that rewards large corporations.” For more information visit: Opposition to Psion’s “NETBOOK” trademark March 2, 2009 Both Intel and Dell have filed petitions with the U.S.PTO for the cancellation of Psion’s trademark ‘NETBOOK’ on the ground of it being generic. Intel states: “The consuming public has already adopted 'netbook' as a generic term for a category of notebook computers that are small, inexpensive and contain less processing power, making them optimal for connecting to the internet” For more information visit: |