Happy Holidays!

Holidays mean different things to different people.  Sometimes, quite literally.

Holiday Detector

Did you know, for example, that a flaw in a coating intended to protect a pipe, or other conduit, from corrosion is known as a 'holiday'?  It is therefore important to be able to reliably check a coated pipe for any such flaws before it is buried in the ground or dropped to the bottom of the ocean.  So if you thought that a 'holiday detector' might be a device that sounds an alarm on or around 10 December each year, then you may need to think again!  One particular form of electronic holiday detector was the subject of US Patent No. 3,259,893.

'Holiday' Plums

'Holiday' is also, apparently, a distinct cultivar of the Guzmania plant, and is the subject of US Plant Patent no. PP15,924, as well as a plum tree subject of US Plant Patent No. PP15,553.

Guzmania 'Holiday'



Tasmania - the 'Holiday Isle'

While not patented, Tasmania has somehow earned the name 'Holiday Isle'.  We imagined that this was just the result of a marketing campaign, but it has stuck sufficiently to earn an entry in the Macquarie Dictionary!



Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and
a Vespa share a Roman Holiday



A 'Roman holiday' originally referred to an event or spectacle, in which the suffering of others is used to provide entertainment.  Fortunately Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn managed to give this rather gruesome term a positive makeover.

Billie Holiday

And any catalog of famous holidays would be incomplete without jazz singer Billie Holiday!

But the type of holiday we wish for all of our readers this year is a Happy Holiday!

All the best from Patentology for the festive season - however you may spend it - and for the New Year!

Holidays Down Under!

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Tags: Patentology admin

Australia’s National Broadband Network Business Plan Released

The Patentology blog is – appropriately enough – primarily about patents, law and practice.  But patents (or, at least, those patents worth having) are essentially incentives for, and by-products of, innovation.  And we believe that innovation will only happen effectively and efficiently when supported by appropriate infrastructure.

This is why we think that Australia’s proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) is an important project.  It is why we identified broadband policy as the major innovation-related issue in the recent federal election, and why we agreed substantially with the views expressed by Jonathan Coppel (Economic Counsellor to the OECD Secretary General) when he said back in September that:

Good infrastructure facilitates trade, bolsters market integration and competition, fosters the dissemination of ideas and innovation and enhances access to resources and public services. These benefits are particularly important for Australia because of its size, geographical dispersion of the population and production centres and distance from other major markets.

Australia cannot rely upon open competition to deliver universal access to quality broadband service, because there are vast areas of the continent where it is simply not profitable to deliver such a service at prices that are affordable to the local communities.  Additionally, a population of 22 million people cannot reasonably afford to pay for duplication of expensive infrastructure in order to facilitate ‘competition’ in those geographic areas where there are substantial profits to be made.

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Tags: Australia, Broadband, Innovation policy

Australian Senate Inquiry Seeks Submissions on 'Gene Patent' Amendments

On 25 November 2010 we reported on the introduction of a Private Senator's Bill, the Patent Amendment (Human Genes and Biological Materials) Bill 2010, to outlaw the patenting of human genes, and other biological materials that are 'substantially identical to such materials as they exist in nature'.

It has now come to our attention (thanks to AusBiotech) that the Bill was almost immediately referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee for inquiry.  The Commitee is due to report on 16 June 2011, and is currently seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations.

The deadline for submissions is 25 February 2011, and the preferred method of submission is online, although submissions may also be made via email to legcon.sen@aph.gov.au or post.

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Tags: Australia, Genetic technology, Patentable subject matter

NZ Patent Office Issues Draft Guidelines on Computer-Implemented Inventions

Is this a comment, or merely
an illustration? You be the judge!

As we have previously reported (here, here and here), the Patents Bill currently before the New Zealand Parliament proposes that computer programs be excluded from patentability.

Naturally, this proposal caused some controversy, and even many of those generally opposed to the grant of so-called 'software patents' felt that it was important that the provision not exclude microprocessor-based products having functions implemented using 'embedded software'.

Rather than attempt to encapsulate a definition of 'embedded software' into the Bill, NZ Commerce Minister Simon Power asked the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) to 'develop guidelines to allow inventions that contain embedded software to be patented.'

On 20 December 2010, IPONZ issued draft guidelines in response to the Minister's instructions.

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Tags: Computer programs, New Zealand

What ‘Means’ Means

Aspirating IP Limited v Vision Systems Limited [2010] FCA 1061 (30 September 2010)

Construction – scope of claim features expressed in ‘means-plus-function’ form – Validity – whether claims (as construed) novel – whether claims involve an inventive step

It is not uncommon to claim features of an invention in terms of their functional purpose, rather than their specific structural form.  This has particular consequences in the United States, where interpretation of such ‘means-plus-function’ language is expressly dictated by 35 USC 112, paragraph 6, which states that:

An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.

As a result, this form of claim language is interpreted relatively narrowly in the US, and indeed the absence of sufficient disclosure of structure within the specification can result in a claim being found invalid, for lack of written description support.

In Australia, no such problem arises.  As in Europe, and many other jurisdictions, features defined in terms of function are interpreted broadly.  However, a broad interpretation is not without its potential pitfalls.

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Tags: Australia, Claim construction, Novelty, Obviousness