It is official, the American patent system has gone bonkers. Take a look at patent application 20050160005, describing a method for “providing food, beverages, and associated goods and services in a retail environment“. What does it consist of? This is a business patent for mixing cereals in the same bowl. Read more…
The nightly news are filled with stories about the bird flu and the prospect of a pandemic that will kill millions of people. But it has also brought one issue back to the table, the access to medicines debate. There are reports that there is only one antiviral drug that Read more…
I have been reading many different reports over the weekend regarding a supposed patent dispute between Microsoft and Apple over the iPod. The more I read about it, the more confused I become, because this seems like one of those stories invented by bored journalists with nothing else to do Read more…
This article in the Washington Post tells us about the plans to reform the U.S. patent system, because it is now felt that the system is suffering from too many patents awarded, and too few are not being awarded. There are those who want Europe to go the way of Read more…
Take a look at Amazon’s US patent 6865546. This is a patent for a system that determines a buyer’s age according to previous buying records. The patent states that: One embodiment of the present invention is a system and method of determining the age of an item recipient, such as Read more…
This one practically writes itself. The Register reports that a man in the United States is suing the makers of a herbal penis enlargement pill for misleading advertisement. He says that the ads claimed that he would gain three inches, but that nothing happened. I wonder how they are going Read more…
Some local news from Costa Rica. The weirdest patent claim has made some of the news over here, after a Canadian patented and claimed the ownership of the “canopy tours”, a great way to travel on the top of the rainforest to see the wildlife from close range. The problem Read more…
This is Intellectual Ventures, which is suppossed to be the factory of the future. They don’t build anything; they hire some few researchers to claim that they actually produce some of their own patents. But their real business is buying patents from others, particularly those who may be used to Read more…
Judge Cameron’s excellent lecture at the University of Edinburgh is now online.
Judge Edwin Cameron delivered the British Academy Inaugural Law Lecturein the Playfair Library Hall on the 19th October. In his lecture”Patents and Public Health: Principles, Politics and Paradox”, JudgeCameron talked about his own experience of living in South Africa as anAIDS sufferer and the difficulties posed by intellectual property protection Read more…