India: the big outsourcing hub of patent ideas

this is how the world is changing around us... India: the big outsourcing hub of patent ideas - The Economic Times: India: the big outsourcing hub of patent ideas NONA WALIA TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SUNDAY, JANUARY 04, 2004 01:04:38 AM ] NEW DELHI: Sample this - the Intel team in Bangalore is developing microprocessor chips for high-speed broadband wireless technology, to be launched in 2006; at GE's John F Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore, engineers are developing new ideas for aircraft engines, transport system and plastics. Be it Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, a 'weighty' amount of intellectual property is being created for US companies here. Indian units of Cisco Systems, Intel, IBM , Texas Instruments, GE have filed 1,000 patent applications with the US Patent Office. Texas Instruments has 225 US patents awarded to its Indian operation. It's the Year of the Idea, and the newest and busiest hub for innovations and intellectual property is India. Indians are parenting patents like never before in 200 R&D labs. (Can India become the R&D backyard for global MNCs?) "India is the new hub for patents, and soon, the world will be outsourcing R&D from India," says P Gopalakrishnan, director, IBM India Research Lab, IIT. Here's a list of patents passed in India: a moulded toothbrush with flexible bristles; a process for preparing a cell culture composition; a safety device for motorised two-wheelers with shock absorption; a process for isolation and purification of protein P17 for HIV. Intel, Bangalore has photographs of company engineers who have applied for patents hanging on the wall of fame. "We're making innovations in Bangalore, like we would in the Silicon Valley," says Siddhartha Das, Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd. "Our 1,400 engineers are constantly innovating chip hardware design, communication technologies. Now, we even have a well-developed Intellectual Property strategic program. In 2003, we made 125 invention disclosures and several patent filings from India," he says. There's even a BPO for patents - Evaluserve in Gurgaon. "We file patents for Fortune 500 companies across the world. But even Indian companies are waking up to the Big Idea. More and more companies are inviting us to evaluate innovations and file patents," says Ashish Gupta, COO, Evaluserve. "Indians want to be creators of intellectual property and not just own it."

How about it??

Patently Obvious: MBHB Patent Law Blog: "ANDA Filing is not per se willful patent infringement Glaxo v. Apotex (Fed. Cir. July 27, 2004) Apotex appealed the district court judgment, which found that Apotex's filing of an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for a generic version of the antibiotic Ceftin� willfully infringed Glaxo and SmithKline Beecham's patents. (U.S. Patents 4,562,181 and 4,820,833). On appeal, the Federal Circuit (GAJARSA) affirmed the infringement holding, but refersed the the district court's finding of willful infringement. We hold that the mere filing of an ANDA cannot constitute an act of willful infringement compensable by attorney�s fees under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, also known as the Hatch-Waxman Act. Because, the ANDA filing did not constitute an 'exceptional case,' the willfulness holding was reversed In dissent, DYK argued that the case was moot and thus should not be decided. The questions of infringement and invalidity are moot since, as the parties conceded at oral argument, there are no past damages being sought for infringement, and the patents have expired. I dissent from the majority�s decision to address the issues of infringement and invalidity in the absence of a live case or controversy."

Segway Inventor to speak at Inventors Conference

Patently Obvious: MBHB Patent Law Blog: Segway Inventor to speak at Inventors Conference: "Segway Inventor to speak at Inventors Conference The USPTO has announced that Dean Kamen, one of the world�s best known and most successful inventors, will be the keynote speaker at the opening session of the USPTO�s annual Independent Inventors Conference in Concord, N.H. on Friday, August 20. Dean Kamen is Chairman of Segway LLC, an inventor and a physicist. 'His inventions include a portable dialysis machine and the Segway� Human Transporter.' Registration is available online. "

Ousourcing Patent Serches

Publishing Technology News: "Wednesday, March 10 Quality Assured Patents The US government has approved a bill that allows outsourcing of prior art searches as part of the patent examination process - sounds like a good idea? I don't think so. The bill stipulates that the maximum that can be paid for searches is $500 and that small companies should be favored when placing the searches (US companies/nationals only need apply). So we're likely to have a raft of new patents granted whilst the patent examiners figure out who can do decent searches and the quality is likely to be even more erratic than it has been to date. Rather than go through all this, why not just require that patent attorneys ensure, to the best of their determination, that patent applications are novel? I do not believe this happens at the moment; doing so would greatly reduce the burden placed on patent examiners and shift some of the costs of the search filtering onto those applying for patents. "

IQ matters!

The Bell Curve revisited

Driving back and forth to Nashua, NH yesterday I listened to The Bell Curve as an abridged book on tape (picked it up for $5 in a used bookstore in San Diego).  This book created quite a stir in 1994 because of its discussion of average IQ differences among races but I had never read it.  It turns out that even if you leave out all the controversial stuff about race the book is potentially very relevant to our times.

The Bell Curve starts out by talking about how we live in an era where people get sorted by cognitive ability into socioeconomic classes.  In 14th century England if you were a peasant with a high IQ or a noble with a low IQ it didn't affect your life, reproductive potential, or income very much.  In our more meritocratic and vastly more sophisticated economy a smart kid from a lower middle class might make it to the top of a big company (cf. Jack Welch, who paid himself $680 million as CEO of GE) or at least into a $300,000/year job as a radiologist.  For the authors of the Bell Curve the increasing disparity in income in the U.S. is primarly due to the fact that employees with high IQs are worth a lot more than employees with low IQs.  They note that we have an incredibly complex legal system and criminal justice system.  So you'd expect people with poor cognitive ability to fail to figure out what is a crime, which crimes are actually likely to be punished, etc., and end up in jail.  (A Google search brought up a report on juvenile justice in North Carolina; the average offender had an IQ of 79.)  If they stay out of jail through dumb (literally) luck, there is no way that they are ever going to be able to start a small business; the legal and administrative hoops through which one must jump in order to employ even one other person are impenetrable obstacles to those with below-average intelligence.

The trend that the decade-old Bell Curve book misses is telecom and outsourcing.  The authors assume that an American with high IQ will have a higher income and better standard of living than an American with low IQ.  That's the sorting function of an advanced economy.  They don't get into the question of whether it is sustainable that an American with low IQ should have a higher income than someone in India or China with a high IQ.  Statistically, due to their sheer hugeness, you'd have to expect that there are more really smart people in India and China than the total population of the U.S.  If the sorting-by-IQ process were efficient across international borders you'd expect that an American with an IQ of 100 should be making less than an Indian with an IQ of 120.  Given that a lot of brilliant well-educated people in India are getting paid less than $5,000 per year, this is a bit worrisome those of us here who are fat, dumb, and happy.  [Imagine that you were running a company.  Would you rather employ a local high school graduate with an IQ of 90 or an Indian college grad with an IQ of 130 via Internet link?]

For us oldsters, one unexpected piece of cheerful news from this book is that younger Americans are getting genetically dumber every year.  Even if you ignore the racial and immigrant angles of the book that created so much controversy back in 1994 it is hard to argue with the authors' assertion that smart women tend to choose higher education and careers rather than cranking out lots of babies.  As a middle-aged (40) guy whose own cognitive abilities are beginning to fade due to neuron death I felt sure that there would be no place me for in the America of 2050.  Our population is predicted to reach 450 million or so, i.e., the same as India had back when we were kids and our mothers told us about this starving and overpopulated country.  An individual person's labor in India has negligible economic value--the American firm Office Tiger gets 1500 applicants, many of whom are very well qualified, on a good day in Chennai.  It would seem that no enterprise would need an old guy's skills in a country of 450 million; why bother when there are so many energetic young people around?  And how would we be able to afford a house or apartment if there are 450 million smart young people out there earning big bucks and putting pressure on real estate prices?  But if the book is right most of those young people will be dumb as bricks.

[Update:  The Sunday New York Times has a long article in the Business section "Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises" about how American workers in jobs that don't require high IQs are losing ground compared to the middle class and compared to inflation.  Raw labor isn't worth very much right now.]

# Posted by Philip Greenspun on 7/16/04; 4:18:31 PM - Comments [20] Trackback [1]

Software patent---- for whoes benefit

Will Software Patents Destroy The U.S. Software Industry? :: Manageability ::

There's a pretty disturbing thread going on a TheServerSide.  It was supposed to be a discussion about Hibernate, unfortunately its degenerated into an extremely heated and personal shouting match between the Ward Mullins (CTO of ThoughtInc) and Gavin King (co-author of Hibernate).  Apparently, Ward is taking the playbook out of SCO, and playing the Patent FUD game.  That is, if you're not a commercial entity, then the software you're distributing hasn't been cleared by the lawyers and it just might be possible that you might be violating someone's intellectual property (i.e. IP).  Software Patents is now a weapon of choice to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Disinformation against a competitor.  It doesn't matter that your patents will hold up in the court of law, it doesn't matter if you can extract compensation, what seems to matter is that you can make customers of a competitor think twice.  It's an extremely bad situation, where business is won, rather than competing on merits, but on mudslinging. 

In fact the trend looks like it's turning for the worse as evidence by two recent articles from CNET.  Overture's business strategy to leverage its patent portfolio. Pinpoint, a company who's sole business model is suing other companies for patent infringement.  We are now seeing the horrible consequences of the US patent office misguided policies to allow the patenting of software and business practices and to compound it with turning the office into a money making business rather than a public trust.  The US software industry could eventually consist mostly of intellectual property lawyers trying to untangle the patent mess.  The reality is, the rampant approval of questionable software patents has made it impossible for any software written to avoid infringing on an existing patent. 

The only reason why we don't see even more rampant lawsuits is that its simply not worth it to sue someone without deep pockets.  That however doesn't prevent companies for making unsubstantiated threats.  So far things have remain relatively sane, that's because the bigger companies don't risk suing each other, afterall they all have something to lose.  However, what happens if you've got companies with nothing to loose, that is companies whose sole business is not making software but rather suing companies.  They aren't worried about a counter suit, you can't sue a lawyer for suing you. 

The future looks pretty grim, it doesn't help that a lot of companies are already outsourcing IT work outside the US, maybe that's just the only place to legally do innovative software development.  U.S. Software firms for all intents and purpose would end up as subsidiaries of law firms.  The consolation maybe that you can still make a living programming only using "standards".  Just make sure you don't innovate, that's something you either have to clear with the lawyers or done offshore!

Outsourcing Knowledge Processing

India is putting more values yo it BPO service chain and a concept of Knowledge Process Outsourcing is coined specially for the advantage india. Here is an article pointing such changes in favor of india. Outsourcing Business: Evalueserve provides services for patent writing, evaluating and assessing the commercial potential for law firms and entrepreneurs. Its market research services are aimed at top-rung financial services companies, to which it provides analysis of investment opportunities and business plans. Another major product is multilingual services--Evalueserve trains and qualifies employees to communicate in Chinese, Spanish, German, Japanese and Italian, among other languages. That skill set has opened market opportunities in Europe and elsewhere, especially with global corporations. Experts say these new trends are significant, and they will continue to grow over time. "Activities considered for 'offshoring' have moved up in value and begun to touch core functions, such as highly analytical processes," says Stefan Spohr, a principal in the financial institutions group of A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm in Chicago. "More complex customer services are substituting simple data processing and call center activities." Spohr adds that the higher-end functions being performed offshore these days include information research, financial portfolio analysis, customer data mining, statutory reporting and inbound insurance sales, among others. . . . Cutting costs is not the only reason why outsourcing such tasks makes sense for its clients; it’s also about higher quality of work, says Aggarwal. "Among the more unusual emerging developments is that business process offshoring is not merely a way to reduce cost by migrating core functions," adds Spohr of A.T. Kearney. "It is also a strategic initiative to take advantage of technological advances and the human capital available offshore to fundamentally restructure an organization's operating model." Evalueserve's model works on a mixed system where anywhere between 50 percent and 80 percent of the work is handled out of an Indian facility, while the rest is done at the client's location. For example, a patent filing assignment from a U.S. corporation may involve the Indian staff writing the patent in English or say, Japanese, and evaluating its commercial potential. But the client or its law firm would do the actual filing in the United States. Us coders carp about outsourcing/offshoring all the time. Among other things, we always think it's witty to suggest outsourcing CEO's, managers, and other business positions. Well, there ya go. Yay capatalism!

New rules of US patent practice

New Rules for US patent Practice this is quite an Interesting artice by William F. Heinze mailto:Bill.Heinze@tkhr.com Effective December 28, 2001, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has changed its Rules of Practice in Patent Cases with regard to claiming the benefit of prior-filed applications. The changes were made in order to implement provisions of the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 for eighteen-month publication of patent applications. Here is a brief analysis of these changes announced in the Federal Register Notice of December 28, 2001.

Indiatimes Email - the most evolved email service

Indiatimes Email - the most evolved email service

Necessity's Progeny -- Nipper's Patent Law Blog: Caselaw

this link offers a good information on a latest case.. have a look over it,.... Necessity's Progeny -- Nipper's Patent Law Blog: Caselaw06038004L.jpg is a good website for a comprehensive web search.

Patent Examiner Training-USA

I found it Interesting ...... well with the wide spreading globalization .. perhaps we would see the day of globl IP Agent Necessity's Progeny -- Nipper's Patent Law Blog: Patent Examiner Training: "Patent Examiner Training"

Necessity's Progeny -- Nipper's Patent Law Blog

Necessity's Progeny -- Nipper's Patent Law Blog

hi all

NEW ALZHERIMER'S TREATMENT METHODS PATENTED NEW ALZHEIMER'S TREATMENT METHODS PATENTED Elan Corporation and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals' joint venture, Neuralab Limited, has been issued three patents for its research on immunotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. U.S. Patent Number 6,750,324, entitled "Humanized and chimeric N-terminal amyloid beta-antibodies," claims pharmaceutical compositions comprising an antibody that specifically binds to a region within the beta amyloid molecule. According to the abstract of the invention: The invention provides improved agents and methods for treatment of diseases associated with amyloid deposits [i.e. a protein aggregation] of A.beta. in the brain of a patient. Such methods entail administering agents that induce a beneficial immunogenic response against the amyloid deposit. The methods are useful for prophylactic and therapeutic treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Preferred agents including N-terminal fragments of A.beta. and antibodies binding to the same. U.S. Patent Numbers 6,743,427 and 6,761,888, entitled "Prevention and treatment of amyloidogenic disease" and "Passive immunization treatment of Alzheimer's disease" respectively, claim methods of prophylactically or therapeutically treating Alzheimer's disease, including the administration of a pharmaceutical composition comprising an antibody that specifically binds to a region within the beta amyloid molecule. In layman's terms, a patient is injected with an antibody (from Wikipedia: "An antibody is a protein complex used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects like bacteria and viruses.") that binds to a specific region within the amyloid molecule within the brain. Once the antibody binds the amyloid molecule, the patient's own immune system can attack and destroy the amyloid deposit and/or bind with precursor proteins and block the production of the amyloid deposits.