Should Software Patents die?

When the Supreme Court in USA made a recent decision, a lot of people weren’t sure what to make of it. The court didn’t write down a clear, black and white decision on what constituted a valid patent and many on both the pro and con software patent sides of the debate weren’t sure what effect it would have, outside of maybe making business method patents invalid.

However, a recent decision by the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences, USA,  is making many of the opponents of software patents stand up and cheer. In one of the first patent rulings since the Supreme Court’s Bilski decision, they rejected a patent application from HP mainly on the grounds that it was software and that, post-Bilski, software alone cannot be patented.

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Trade Mark in India

Google just isn’t having a good time with trademark issues in the European Union.

In March a suit brought against Google by LVMH, owner of the Louis Vuitton brand, had been ruled in favor of Google. The case involved LVMH’s claim that, by selling the Louis Vuitton brand name to anyone as a search term, Google was infringing on its trademark and promoting the online sale of counterfeit products.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg “ruled that Google isn’t liable for trademark infringement when it sells linked ads to a brand’s competitor.”

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Barbara Mori was not the only foreign body to ensure a reasonable audience for ‘Kites’. Just before the almost-Mexican film released in May, a coalition of Hollywood and Bollywood studios clandestinely divided Mumbai into various geographical zones. Each zone was planted with a set of enforcement consultants, who made sure that at least for the first five days, the city found no pirated DVDs of ‘Kites’. This level of non-availability is extremely difficult to sustain, according to American desi Rajiv Dalal, the managing director of Motion Pictures Distributors Association (MPDA) and member of this coalition which was recently christened AACT or Alliance Against Copyright Theft.

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Google awarded “Location-based mobile advertising” Patent !!  What’s the patent, exactly?

What Google now has with the awarding of this patent includes:

- Using location as a factor to decide whether an ad should be served or not (targeting and relevancy)
- Tracking the performance of an ad using location (metrics and analytics)
- Using location to determine what kind of content should be included in an ad (custom landing pages, banners, etc)
- Allowing advertisers to enter their own location data for better ad targeting (advertising platforms)

So if even part of the reason an ad publisher serves a particular ad to a consumer is because of that users location, they now infringe Google’s patent. Part of the patent covers just LOOKING at location information - even if you don’t use that information, Google has patented “accepting geo-location information associated with the requested”.

What does this mean?

It means that Google has a broad hold on the world of location-based advertising. The real question is what is Google going to do with that? If you read through the patent description, Google spends quite some time talking about the efficacy of services like Adwords and how they can be effected by this. It very much gives the impression that this entire system has been developed in order to allow search-related advertising banners to serve better targeted results.

The problem is that the actual patent covers a much larger range of mobile advertising channels. Mobile marketing is a very diverse area, with a large number of possible methods for serving ads. But this patent could potentially move in on any of them - if they want to use location as a targeting factor. It may be targeted at banner ads that accompany search results, but it could be used by Google to control targeted SMS ads, or idle-screen advertising. It doesn’t matter what the channel is that you use in mobile, Google now has a hold on any location targeting you might want to use.

Courtesy: www.gomonews.com

Trademark infringement most commonly involves the issues such as likelihood of confusion; counterfeit marks and dilution of marks. Likelihood of confusion occurs in situations where consumers are likely to be confused or mislead about marks used by two different parties. This issue was brought forth for deliberation in the case Khurshid Ahmed Bhat v. Haji Bashir Ahmed Bhat 2010(42)PTC 248 (J& K) , which appealed an order by the Trial Judge, allowing temporary injunction. The case holds prominence since it reiterates that registration of a trademark is not the sole criteria to determine infringement of trademark.

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ID Analytics, Inc., the leader in on-demand identity intelligence, announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the issuance of U.S. Patent Number 7,686,214 for the company’s system and method for fraud detection using multiple historical identity records. Continue reading →

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, says that Microsoft is a patent troll. Given that Microsoft has just sued the company for patent infringement just this month, that comment might not be a surprise.

First, lets’ look at the definition of patent troll from Wikipedia: Continue reading →

If you’re wondering how to copyright software, the good news is you’ve probably already done it. At least you have if you have ever written software. Most people get confused over exactly what having a copyright for their software means. Only those things that can be seen (when it comes to software) can be copyrighted. If it is original, fixed, and tangible you can copyright it. Essentially you already know how to copyright software if you’ve put it into a finished form. Once you’ve written the source code, the copyright belongs to you. Continue reading →

Las Vegas gaming company Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. on Thursday sued an Internet firm in Pakistan that Pinnacle says is infringing on trademarks with a website promoting an Indiana casino. Continue reading →

Google has received a writ from Vicki Van Valin and Neil Mertz as part of a class action that their privacy was violated by “Street View” vehicles picking up data from open wireless internet connections used at home. They also want a court to prevent Google from destroying the data that’s been collected. Continue reading →