Patent management

A patent family is all the patents and patent applications resulting from a specific patent application.

Generally, a patent application for an invention is originally filed in one country. Sometimes that original patent application is the basis for filing patent applications in several other countries (see also right of priority). Each of these new patent applications can become the basis for filing subsequent patent applications. A single patent occasionally results in many, many patents throughout the world.

When one patent application results in several patents in many different countries, all of the patents and applications associated with the original patent application is called the patent family.

See also

• Continuing patent application
• Triadic patent

Most countries of the world have different names in different languages. Some countries have also undergone name changes for political or other reasons. This article attempts to give all known alternative names for all nations, countries and sovereign states. It does not offer any opinion about what the “original”, “official”, “real”, or “correct” name of any country is or was.

Countries are listed alphabetically by their current best-known name in English. Each English name is followed by its currently best-known equivalents in other languages, listed in English alphabetical order (ignoring accents) by name and by language. Historical and/or alternative versions, where included, are noted as such. Foreign names that are the same as their English equivalents are listed, to provide an answer to the question “What is that name in…”?. See also: List of alternative country names

Please format entries as follows: for languages written in the Latin alphabet, write “Name (language)”, for example, “Afeganistão (Portuguese)”, and alphabetize it in the list according to English rules of alphabetical order. For languages written in other writing systems, write “Romanization - native script (language)”, for example “Argentine - אַרגענטינע (Yiddish)”, and alphabetize it in the list by the romanized form.

For reasons of size, this article is broken into four parts:

• List of country names in various languages (A-C)
• List of country names in various languages (D-I)
• List of country names in various languages (J-P)
• List of country names in various languages (Q-Z)

See also

• List of countries by native names
• List of countries and capitals in native languages
• List of sovereign states
• List of Latin place names in Europe
• List of cities in the Americas with alternative names
• Names of European cities in different languages
• List of European regions with alternative names
• List of European rivers with alternative names
• Geographical renaming

External links

• Slovene Governmental Commission for the Standardisation of Geographical Names - in the first column are names as proposed by the commission, in the second column are short official names, in the third column are long official names. Accessed on 7 October 2005.

The Patent Act is the Canadian Act of Parliament that governs the patent law in Canada.

See also

• Bill C-9 - Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act
• Pledge to Africa Act
• Manual of Patent Office Practice (MOPOP)

External links

• Patent Act text

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - XYZ

This is a list of rivers in the United States that have names starting with the letter V. For the main page, which includes links to listings by state, see List of rivers in the United States.

V

• Van Duzen River - California
• Venema Creek - Washington
• Ventura River - California
• Verde River - Arizona
• Verdigris River - Kansas, Oklahoma
• Vermilion River - Louisiana
• Vermilion River - Ohio
• Vermillion River - Wisconsin
• Virgin River - Utah, Nevada
• Volga River - Iowa
  

A divisional patent application (sometimes referred to as a divisional application or simply a divisional) is a type of patent application which contains matter from a previously-filed application (the “parent” application). Whilst a divisional application is filed later than the parent application, it may retain its parent’s filing date, and will generally claim the same priority.

Divisional applications are generally used in cases where the parent application may lack unity of invention; that is, the parent application describes more than one invention and the applicant is required to split the parent into one or more divisional applications each claiming only a single invention. The ability to file divisional applications in cases of lack of unity of invention is required by Article 4G of the Paris Convention.

Practice by jurisdiction

The practice and procedure of filing a divisional patent application varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

European Patent Convention

Before the European Patent Office (EPO), divisional applications can be filed under . A European divisional application is a new application which is separate and independent from the parent application, unless specific provisions in the European Patent Convention (EPC) require something different. Decision G 1/05 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO, Reasons 3.1 and 8.1.

“The procedure concerning the divisional application is in principle independent from the procedure concerning the parent application and the divisional application is treated as a new application…. Although there are some connections between the two procedures (e.g. concerning time limits), actions (or omissions) occurring in the procedure concerning the parent application after the filing of the divisional application should not influence the procedure concerning the latter….” Opinion G 4/98 in point 5 of the Reasons, cited in decision G 1/05 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO, Reasons 8.1.

The practice relating to the filing of divisional applications under the EPC was clarified by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO in June 2007. The Board held that a divisional application which on filing contained subject-matter extending beyond the content of the earlier application as filed could be amended later to remove the deficiency, even at a time when the earlier application is no longer pending.Decisions G 1/05 and G 1/06 of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO.

United States

In the United States, a divisional application is seen as a type of continuing patent application.

See also

• Double patenting
• Submarine patent

References

Novelty is a patentability test, according to which an invention is not patentable if it was already known before the date of filing, or before the date of priority if a priority is claimed, of the patent application.

In some countries, such as the United States and Japan, a grace period exists for protecting an inventor or the successor in title from a publication of the invention before the filing date. That is, if the inventor or the successor in title publishes the invention, an application can still be validly filed which will be considered novel despite the publication, provided that the filing is made during the grace period following the publication. The grace period is usually 6 or 12 months. This type of novelty bar is sometimes known as a relative novelty bar.

In other countries, including European countries, any act that makes an invention available to the public before the filing date or priority date has the effect of barring the invention from being patented. Examples of acts that can make an invention available to the public are written publications, sales, public oral disclosures and public demonstrations or use. This is known as an absolute novelty requirement.

Local novelty (as is currently the requirement in New Zealand) only regards publications, uses or sales that have taken place within that jurisdiction to be novelty destroying.

The grace period should not be confused with the priority year defined by Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. The priority year starts when the first filing in a Contracting State of the Paris Convention is made, while the grace period starts from the pre-filing publication.

United States

In the United States the four most common ways in which an inventor will be barred under Section 102 are:

1. by making the invention known or allowing the public to use the invention; or
2. having the invention published in a fixed medium (such as in a patent, patent application, or journal article); or
3. if the invention was previously invented in the U.S. by another, who has not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed the invention, or
4. if the invention was described in a patent application filed by another, where the application later issues as a US patent.

In U.S. patent law, anticipation occurs when one prior art reference or event discloses all the features of a claim and enables one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention; the claim is then said to lack novelty.

Prior art search

The standard method for discovering if a proposed invention is novel is to perform a prior art search. A prior art search may for instance be performed using a keyword search of patent databases.

See also

• Disclaimer (patent)
• Filing date
• Doctrine of inherency
• Prior art (including a discussion on novelty searches)
• Priority right

External links

• Enlarged Concept of Novelty on the WIPO site
• Grace Period and Invention Law in Europe and Selected States, a comparative study of grace periods applicable for assessing novelty (on a web site sponsored by the European Commission)
• British Patent Office regulations

Braeburn Capital is an asset management company based in Reno, Nevada and a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Apple created the company on April 6, 2006 to better manage its assets and to avoid certain California state taxes. At the end of 2005 and 2006, Apple’s cash and short-term investments were valued at $8.3 billion and $10.1 billion, respectively. The name Braeburn refers to a particular kind of apple.

References

Matthew Evans s one of two Canadians who developed and patented an incandescent light bulb, on July 24, 1874, five years before Thomas Edison’s U.S. patent on the device.

Evans, from Toronto, Ontario, and his friend Henry Woodward, made the light bulb by sending electricity through a filament made of carbon.

The two men patented it but did not have enough money to develop their invention, so they sold their US patent 181,613 to Thomas Edison for US$5,000 ($US 100,000 in 2006 dollars). They also granted Edison an exclusive license to their equivalent Canadian patent.

External links

• The First Electric Light Bulb

Lukas Howes is the key

The Commutation Act of 1784, enacted by the British Parliament, reduced the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%, effectively ending the smuggling trade. William Pitt the Younger, acting on the advice of Richard Twining of the Twinings Tea Company, introduced the act to increase revenues through legitimate sales of tea by ending 100 years of punitive tea taxes which promoted smuggling.

The act was created to stimulate trade in China for the British East India Company, which at the time was suffering from mounting debts. Indian opium was exchanged for tea in China which was then shipped to Britain for sale on the domestic market.

The Commutation Act improved trade relations between Britain and one of its primary tea suppliers, China.

The Patent Busting Project is an EFF initiative launched April 19, 2004 to challenge patents that the EFF claim are illegitimate and suppress innovation or limit online expression. The initiative involves two phases: documenting the damage caused by these patents, and submitting challenges to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The EFF’s basic assumption is that many such patents are invalid due to prior art which has historically been difficult to document in software and internet fields. (It is worthy to note that many patent owners file patents to cover seemingly trivial concepts without any intention of enforcing the patents, but rather to use as part of a larger patent portfolio in their own defense against potential future patent lawsuits.)

Status

The effort began with a “patent busting contest” where the public was encouraged to submit proposals of the worst offenders. Of these, EFF chose the top “10 Most Wanted” list of patents based on patent viability, whether the patent owners intend to enforce these patents, and how much of a threat they are to potential infringers.

As of April 29 2006, EFF has announced formal challenges to two of the listed patents: Test.com’s patent on administering online tests [1], and Clear Channel’s patent on recording and distributing CDs of live shows [2].

On July 6, 2007 The United States Patent and Trademark Office denied the EFF’s request for the reexamination of NeoMedia’s patent #6,199,048.

Ten Most-wanted Patents

• Acacia Research: Audio and video receiving and transmission system
• Clear Channel Entertainment: System and method of creating digital recordings of live performances
• Acceris: Method and apparatus for implementing a computer network/internet telephone system
• Sheldon F. Goldberg: System and method for playing games on a network
• Ideaflood: System apparatus and method for hosting and assigning domain names on a wide area network
• Neomedia Technologies: System and method for automatic access of a remote computer over a network
• Test.com: Method for administering tests, lessons, assessments
• Nintendo: Software implementation of a handheld videogame hardware platform
• Firepond: System that uses natural language processing to respond to customers’ online inquiries by email
• Seer Systems: System and method for generating, distributing, storing and performing musical work files

External links

• EFF Patent Busting Project page
• WikiPatents - Community Patent Review

The European Convention on the International Classification of Patents for Invention was signed on December 19 1954 in Paris, France by members of the Council of Europe. It entered into force on August 1 1955 and it was denounced by all Parties and ceased to be in force as from February 18 1999. The Convention created the International Classification of Patents for Invention. The Convention is written in English and French, both texts being equally authoritative.

See also

• Strasbourg Agreement Concerning the International Patent Classification of March 24, 1971

External links

• Archived page on the Council of Europe web site
  • Official text (.doc)

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is a Federal law of the United States contained in 42 U.S.C. §§6901-6992k. It is usually pronounced as “rick-rah” or “Wreck-rah.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that RCRA’s goals are:

• to protect the public from harm caused by waste disposal
• to encourage reuse, reduction, and recycling
• to clean up spilled or improperly stored wastes.

EPA waste management regulations are codified at 40 C.F.R. pts. 239-282. Regulations regarding management of hazardous waste begins at 40 C.F.R. pt. 260. As noted below, most states have enacted laws and promulgated regulations that are at least as stringent as the federal regulations.

The EPA replaced its toll-free hotline c. 2005 with the RCRA Online Database — http://www.epa.gov/rcraonline. For more information see EPA’s RCRA Orientation Manual (1996).

Related acts

An amendment of the earlier Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, RCRA was enacted to create a management system to regulate waste from “cradle-to-grave.” In 1984 the Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendments Act was added to the Act and in 1986 the law was expanded further to regulate underground storage tanks and other leaking waste storage facilities. However, unlike the “Superfund” (CERCLA), RCRA only regulates active and not historical sites.

Whistleblower protection

RCRA contains a whistleblower protection. Employees in the US who believe they were fired or suffered another adverse action related to enforcement of this law have 30 days to file a written complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

TSDFs

TSDF is an acronym for Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facilities.

See also

• Clean Water Act
• Public employees for environmental responsibility (PEER)
• Solid Waste Disposal Act
• Superfund
• Whistleblower

External links

• TSDF permitting
• Collected Papers of William Sanjour, a retired EPA employee and whistleblower
• Information on the Act
• Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
• Government Accountability Project
• National Whistleblower Center
• Workplace Fairness FAQ for environmental whistleblowers
• Tate & Renner article on whistleblowers under US federal law
• Whistleblower Employee Protection Website
• U.S. Department of Labor Whistleblower Program & information

The PCT Newsletter is a monthly publication of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It contains “up-to-date news about the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)”, PCT Applicant’s Guide, Volume I, Chapter I, item 7, Retrieved March 25, 2006. which provides a system for filing international (patent) applications. The PCT Newsletter is published in English only. Important changes to the PCT are mentioned and explained in the PCT Newsletter.

References

See also

• Official Journal of the European Patent Office
• PCT Gazette
• List of intellectual property law journals

External links

• PCT Newsletters since 1999 available online on the WIPO web site

For more information about European patent law in general, see European patent law.

The expression Europe-wide patent may refer either to

• the Community patent, a European Union project to create a unitary patent in all EU member states; or to
• European patents, granted by the European Patent Office under to the European Patent Convention, the enforcement of which is dealt with before national courts.

Barbara Kulaszka is a Canadian lawyer best known for her role in defending far-right figures.

Kaulaszaka has been a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1980 and has practiced law since 1987. She acted with Doug Christie as co-counsel to alleged Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel in the 1980s and assisted Christie as a legal researcher in a subsequent Zündel case in the 1990s. She also worked with Christie in the defence of alleged World War II war criminal Imre Finta who was acquitted in 1990. In 1999, she was awarded the “George Orwell Award” by Christie’s Canadian Free Speech League.

In 1990 she represented former Nazi rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph when he entered Canada an unsuccessfully sought visitor status when the government ruled he was inadmissible due to his suspected culpability in war crimes.Timothy Appleby, “Rudolph hearing adjourns Ex-Nazi seeks visitor status, The Globe and Mail, July 7, 1990 Rudolph ultimately left Canada of his own accord and an immigration hearing held in his absence, at which he was represented by Kulaszka, ruled that Rudolph could not return to Canada due to his use of slave labour to produce V-2 missiles during World War II.Robert MacLeod, “Former Nazi scientist is barred from Canada”, The Globe and Mail, January 12, 1991

She has produced two books, Did Six Million Really Die? Report of the Evidence in the Canadian ‘False News’ Trial of Ernst Zündel - 1988 and The Hate Crimes Law in Canada, 1970-1994: Effects and Operation. Both books were published by Zündel’s Samisdat Publishers.

Kulzaszka has also addressed meetings of Paul Fromm’s Canadian Association for Free Expression. In 2005, she defended Heritage Front leader Marc Lemire before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against a complaint filed against him by Richard Warman[1].

She continues to practice law in Brighton, Ontario[2].

Sources

• Affidavit filed by Barbara Kulaszka on December 16, 1996
• Affidavit filed by Barbara Kulaszka on March 4, 1996

Events

• March 4 - USA: Andrew Jackson succeeds John Quincy Adams as the President of the United States of America.
• July 23 - William Burt obtains the first patent for a writing mechanism. (See typewriter)

• James Smithson leaves £100.000 to fund the Smithsonian Institution

See also

• 1828 in the United States
• 1829
• 1829 in Canada
• 1830 in the United States

In patent law, a cross-licensing agreement is an agreement according to which two parties grant a license to each other for the exploitation of the subject-matter claimed in patents. In other words, cross-licensing is the mutual sharing of patents between companies without an exchange of a license fee if both patent portfolios are about equal in value. Large corporations like Microsoft use this method to pile up more licenses for technology developed by other companies. They have many patents that can be used for such cross-licensing. Large corporations can force small companies to share their patents with the large company in a cross-licensing agreement or face legal problems from the large company which has patents that are infringed by the small company.

For example, if Sony owns a patent of interest to IBM, and IBM owns a patent of interest to Sony, Sony may grant a license to IBM for the Sony patent while at the same time IBM grants a license to Sony for the IBM patent. Then Sony and IBM will have concluded a cross-licensing agreement, in this hypothetical example. This means each company can make, use, and sell products claimed in each other’s licensed patents and that will not constitute an infringement.

If a third party, let’s call it InfringerCorp, infringes the Sony patent, Sony can sue InfringerCorp for infringement. In most jurisdictions, a licensee, IBM for example, can become party to the court proceedings and also claim damages from InfringerCorp.

To a large extent, cross-licensing agreements are legal, otherwise this could completely block the exploitation of a technology of which two or more inventions are patented by different companies. As one lawyer for a large electronics company put it: “Everybody invents. They need our stuff, we need their stuff. And so instead of suing each other, we have a meeting every few years and cross-license.” This can easily become a complex issue, involving (as far as the European Union is concerned) Art. 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty (abuse of dominant position, etc) as well as licensing directives, cartels, etc. To insure they will have plenty of patents to cross-license, each large company may do “patent flooding”http://www.idea.piercelaw.edu/articles/40/40_3/13.Sankaran.pdf | Patent Flooding which is to patent every conceivable way of doing something.

Some non-patent Intellectual property such as computer software can also be cross-licensed.

See also

• Licensing (strategic alliance)
• Patent pool

External links

• Example of patent cross-licensing agreement
• Article about a cross-license agreement

The name Hatch Act is given to two unrelated pieces of United States federal legislation

• The Hatch Act of 1887 created agricultural experiment stations.
• The Hatch Act of 1939 aimed at corrupt political practices, prevented federal civil servants from campaigning.

See also

• Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act

Eli H. Janney, also known as Eli Hamilton Janney or simply Eli Janney (November 12, 1831 – June 16, 1912), was the inventor of the modern knuckle coupler that replaced link and pin couplers on North American railroads.

He was born in 1831 to Daniel Janney and Elizabeth Avis Haines in Loudoun County, Virginia. He married Cornelia Hamilton (1833-1889). He studied briefly at a seminary.

In the American Civil War, Janney achieved the rank of Major for the Confederate States of America.

After the war, he was a dry goods clerk in Alexandria, Virginia; he spent many of his lunches whittling his concept out of a block of wood for a replacement to the railroads’ link and pin couplers that were in wide use. On April 1 1873, Janney filed for a patent titled “Improvement in Car-Couplings” describing the knuckle style couplers that are in use on railroads today. He was awarded on April 29 1873.

He died on June 16, 1912 in Alexandria, Virginia.

External link

• American Heritage

References

• CPRR.org (2004), Link and Pin Couplers; includes a scanned copy of the patent application. Retrieved March 31 2005.
• Union Pacific Railroad, UP - Chronological History. Retrieved March 30 2005.

The Little Nine Partners Patent was the final patent granted
(1706) in Dutchess County, New York, USA.
It was located in the northern part of the county, and
comprises all or parts of the modern towns of Milan, Pine Plains, and North East.
Roughly triangular in shape, it was bounded on the north by Columbia County,
on the south by the Great Nine Partners Patent (1697)
and on the west by the Schuyler (1686) and Rhinebeck (1697) patents.
Its eastern boundary was the area known as The Oblong, a narrow strip of land along the eastern edge of Dutchess County, bordering the state of Connecticut.

External links

• Little Nine Partners Historical Society
• Historic map