Patent Baristas

This is a reminder that some companies and individuals are sending out unsolicited mailings to patent applicants and owners of international patents, designs and trade marks asking them to apply for entry in various (sometimes official sounding) publications, databases and “registers” in return for payment of a fee.  These parties tend to make their offers [...]

The Vatican is throwing its support behind an international project for adult stem-cell research but is not directly involved and has made no financial contribution to the initiative. The project, led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, comprises a consortium of researchers from several Italian health institutes, including the Vatican-owned Bambino [...]

An increasing awareness of the importance of intellectual property (IP) rights to business success has led to unprecedented growth and transformation in the IP sector in recent years, but where does the industry go now? In IP Review’s State of the IP Industry 2009 survey, IP professionals revealed that they were coming under increasing pressure [...]

Though even thinking on the subject of time may prove discomforting, it is not a bad idea—especially at the beginning of a new year. As we look into 2010 we look at a block of time. We see 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds. And all is a gift [...]

On World AIDS Day, 15 organizations — including the Stop Aids Campaign, Médecins Sans Frontières, Unicef and Christian Aid — are calling on nine drug companies to join a patent pool being put together by Unitaid, which aims to improve access to drugs for HIV/Aids and other diseases in poor countries. The patent pool would [...]

The Supreme Court finally heard oral arguments in the Bilski v. Doll case and everyone has something to say about it. Whether the Court will make a narrow ruling on that the claim at issue is not patent eligible subject matter rather than some broad ruling that would cover all methods patents is certainly likely [...]

The infamous Troll Tracker suit has come to an end.  As we reported, Rick Frenkel, the anonymous blogger of the Troll Tracker blog who revealed his identity, along with his employer Cisco, were sued for defamation by two attorneys from Texas, Eric Albritton and T. John “Johnny” Ward, Jr. The lawsuit was over a posting [...]

The Prometheus  v. Mayo case, what Hal Wegner calls “Metabolite déjà vu II,” has represented perhaps the most troubling development for medical treatment patents in recent times.  The case concerns a patent for a means to measure the level of 6-thioguinine (6-TG) and 6-methylmercaptopurine (6-MMP), which indicates that an adjustment in drug dosage may be [...]