By Scott Hervey

Canada has made a fundamental change in its Trade-mark Examination practice. It had been a longstanding practice in the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (the governmental body responsible for reregistering trade-marks) of determining the priority of applications based on the earliest of the following: the date of first use or making known in Canada, the date of filing in Canada, or the date of filing of the Paris Convention priority application. The legitimacy of assessing priority in this regard was challenged and overturned by the Federal Court of Appeals in May of this year in Attorney General of Canada v. Effigi (2005 FCA 172). Continue Reading Canada Adopts The First To File System For Trade-marks

By Pamela W. Bertani

As Congress continues to mull over the Patent Act of 2005, and the Act is subjected to ever increasing scrutiny, what some believe are serious flaws in the legislation have surfaced, creating considerable cause for concern. A previously published companion article highlighted various provisions of the proposed legislation, which bill sponsor Congressman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) extolled as being necessary “to bolster the United States economy and improve the quality of living for all Americans” as well as to “create new jobs.” While these objectives are clearly inviting – particularly in light of growing criticisms regarding Patent Office inefficiency, the lack of qualified patent examiners, the poor quality of issued patents, and the corresponding escalation of profoundly expensive patent litigation – some believe that the legislation may result in fixing current patent procedures that are not broken, which will create more chaos than stability in an already stressed system. Two hotly contested provisions in this regard concern the Act’s redefinition of “prior art”, and the provision governing the issuance of injunctions. Continue Reading The Patent Act of 2005 Remains Hotly Contested And Under Intense Scrutiny

By R. Todd Wilson

All businesses have trade secrets. Stated slightly differently, every business has information that it would rather keep confidential. A trade secret can be any useful information that is not generally known. Trade secrets encompass both technical information such as formulas, designs, tools, manufacturing processes, and computer source code as well as business secrets including customer lists, employee lists, financial and accounting data, product plans and marketing plans. Such “confidential” or “proprietary” information is usually essential to the success of the business. Often, however, companies do little or nothing to protect that knowledge. Continue Reading Trade Secrets: Protection Best Practices

By R. Todd Wilson

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on July 13, 2005 that the export of software from the United States to foreign computer manufacturers which copy and install the software and then sell computers loaded with the software abroad constitutes an infringing supply of a patented component in violation of Section 271(f) of the United States Patent Act. The case is AT&T Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., 2005 WL 1631112 (Fed. Cir. July 13, 2005). This case, considered together with Eolas Technologies Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 399 F.3d 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2005), lays out the Federal Circuit’s current interpretation of Section 271(f) regarding the exportation of software code. Continue Reading Exported Software Copies Are Infringing Supply of Components in Microsoft Cases