FTISA AGM: Live note-taking

27, January, 2010 | Daniela | Tags: , , , , , , | Comments Closed

Final e-poster of the ‘Imagine if…’ campaign

Imagine if… the cure to the AIDS virus was patented on discovery.

This is the third and final e-poster in our ‘Imagine if…’ campaign, with a very real warning of how the patenting process has tangible, life-or-death consequences in Africa. We ask you to upload the new e-poster to your blog or social networking profiles, as a way to drive home the importance of the patent issue, and the role that FTISA plays, and will continue to play, in reforming patent policy, legislation and practice in South Africa.

A big thank you to Pria Chetty who provided the inspiration for this poster; along with those who contributed their slogans to this campaign over the last month.  Also kudos to Infiltrate Media who interpreted the slogans to produced these stunning images.

To all those who have confirmed their attendance at the event – this is a final reminder for the AGM tomorrow, which starts at 2.00pm until 7.30pm at the University of the Witwatersrand, Administrative Block, Room CB8. This is going to be a highly interactive event, so be ready to contribute, contribute, contribute! A detailed programme for the afternoon is available here.

And to those who cannot attend the event, we are planning on live blogging the proceedings, so join us on the homepage of this website (http://ftisa.org.za) from 2pm for a blow-by-blow account of the AGM.

26, January, 2010 | Daniela | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Microsoft XML patent rejected because of prior art and obviousness

The USPTO operates very similarly to the SA roadworthy test. Patents are rarely rejected outright. Their claims are examined and the examiner returns a report of all the things which need to be fixed.

All the claims of MS Wordprocessing-XML patent were rejected by the US examiner back in June. Of the 31 claims, 29 were plain rejected and the remaing 2 objected to.

MS cancelled all the existing claims (1 – 31) submitted a set of amended claims (32 – 41). You might be curious to know that the USPTO examiner has just finished examining the new claims and rejected the whole lot of them! The primary basis for the rejection of the new claims is prior art from Abiword.

You can follow all the documented correspendence between MS and the USPTO by making use of the portal:

http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair

You must select “Publication Number” and enter “US 2004-0210818 A1″. The system is VERY fussy so be exact or you get nowhere.

It seems that the USPTO examiner really has something against this patent application. Of course, the version that is already granted in our office is the original 31 claims. It seems that the EPO (European) application has not yet gone for examination. It looks like they will probably wait until they finally get a “roadworthy” from the USPTO before amending the claims accordingly and request examination in Europe. Seems like they are not getting an easy ride.

(Contributed by Bob Joliffe)

11, September, 2006 | admin | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »

The UK patent office refuses to patent the wheel

There is some good news – it seems the UK patent office just turned down a trivial software patent (similar in nature to the MS XML patent) sought by Oracle.

The patent officer made the following judgments:

“Stephen Probert drew on other guidance in CFPH’s case, where the judge had pointed out that the European Patent Convention of 1973 had excluded computer programs from the scope of patentability because they would do more harm than good. The policy behind the exclusion was that computer programs as such “could not be foreclosed to the public under patent law.” The argument runs that to grant a patent for software would stifle the market.

Read the full story.

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