New IP Scam Alert: Fraudsters Now Impersonating Registered Attorneys

In a concerning development, the authority that regulates the Australian and New Zealand IP professions, the Trans-Tasman IP Attorneys Board (TTIPAB), has warned attorneys about an ongoing scam involving the impersonation of registered IP attorneys to defraud IP rights owners.  Specifically, the TTIPAB has warned that ‘IP Australia became aware of a scam that is currently circulating, where applicants are pressured into filing a trade mark via emails fraudulently purporting to be from a well-known registered attorney.’  Of course, this type of scam could easily target any type of IP right. The threat is particularly worrying because it undermines one of the traditional safeguards against IP-related scams – checking whether correspondence comes from a registered attorney.

While I have not seen the emails in question, it appears that what makes this new scam especially disturbing is that the fraudsters are not simply creating fictitious firms, attorneys, or official-sounding registration authorities, but are actually impersonating a real registered attorney.  Since the Register of Patent and Trade Marks Attorneys is publicly accessible, scammers can easily obtain legitimate attorney details to make their communications appear more credible.

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Tags: Australia, Fraud, New Zealand, Patent attorney profession, Scams

USPTO Rightly Grants Patent to Disgraced Korean Researcher

In the last couple of weeks the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been subject to some harsh criticism after granting a patent naming Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk and 13 co-workers as inventors.  Managing Intellectual Property provides a brief summary of the ‘controversy’, noting that the grant of the patent (no. 8,647,872) has been described as representing ‘staggering incompetence’ on the part of the USPTO, which has supposedly been ‘embarrassed’ by its actions.

I doubt the USPTO is embarrassed.  At least it has had the courage to follow the law as it stands, and let the cards fall as they may, which is (as I will explain) more than can be said for IP Australia.  The reasons for which the Hwang patent was granted (or, perhaps more to the point, could not be rejected) are worthy of discussion. 

In 2011, the Canadian Patent Office granted a patent to Dr Hwang and his team.  Yet earlier, in 2008, the Australian Patent Office initially accepted a corresponding application before subsequently nullifying that decision in circumstances that, to my mind, were themselves highly controversial.

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Tags: Australia, Canada, Cloning, False suggestion, Fraud, Genetic technology, Korea, Patent Office, US, Utility/usefulness

Patent Spam and Other Scams

It is a fundamental feature of the quid pro quo of the patent system that details of patents and applications are made publicly available.  With the (usual) exception of the US, where applicants not filing elsewhere have the option of delaying publication until grant, in almost all other cases globally applications details are published at around 18 months after the initial priority date.

Obviously all of this patent data is very useful.  It provides a large part of the "prior art base" used to assess the novelty and inventiveness of subsequent patent applications.  It is a source of technical information in relation to the activities of individual inventors and corporations.  It can be mined to provide competitive intelligence regarding the commercial activities of companies in particular industries, or even to identify market opportunities in technologies that are not being fully exploited.  And, of course, it can be searched to identify potential infringement risks or to establish freedom-to-operate.

On the other hand, we have recently witnessed a notable rise in patent-related spam and scams, some of which is based upon the ease of availability of patent information through free online databases provided by national patent offices, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), and privately operated services such as Google Patents.  We discuss below two common examples, and one other recent experience.

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Tags: Fraud, Scams, Trolls

The Continuing Saga of Faked Korean Stem Cell Research

H Bion Inc v Commissioner of Patents [2010] FCA 539 (1 June 2010)

Summary: Application refused for an extension of time within which to appeal a decision of the Commissioner of Patents relating to acceptance of a patent under s49 of the Patents Act 1990.

Patentology does not require any special interest in cloning technology, or stem cell research, to recall the scandal that erupted back in late 2005 over faked research results published in the journal Science by Dr Hwang Woo Suk and his team from Seoul National University, claiming to have successfully obtained stem cells from cloned human embryos.  The controversy was covered extensively in the mainstream media (see, for example, this summary from the New York Times).

Of somewhat less general interest was the fate of international patent aplication no. PCT/KR03/002899, which included claims allegedly supported by those same falsified research results.

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Tags: Australia, Cloning, Fraud, Nullification of acceptance, Patent law, Stem Cells