Riot’s just released the newest addition to Valorant’s ever-expanding agent roster in the form of Chamber, a gentleman assassin by character and a new sentinel by role, with a set of abilities almost as sharp as his fashion sense.

For years, customers have been demanding more from their financial institutions. Covid-19, and the consequences that came from the pandemic only accelerated these customer demands. Consumers expect immediacy, personalized, and flawless interactions with their favorite brands and they expect the same from their banks.

The post Chatbots in Banking: The New Must-Have in Customer Care appeared first on Inbenta.

One of the last steps to buying a home is the final walk-through but what exactly is a final walk-through and is it even necessary?

I have been a professional speaker for a little over 20 years, with my first solid paid gig in January 2000. I have undertaken many other ventures over the years, but I have been speaking consistently throughout, with it often being my primary source of income given the frequently long payback period for startups. I […]

Automation is ecommerce’s greatest ally, and AI chatbots are its weapon. Explore winning ways to add them to your Black Friday strategy.

The post 9 Ways a Chatbot Can Help You Conquer Black Friday appeared first on Inbenta.

How do chatbots enable people and computer systems to interact using voice or text? Discover what is a conversational user interface and how to leverage it.

The post What Is A Conversational User Interface (CUI) & How to Leverage It appeared first on Inbenta.

The United States Department of Justice announced that medical device company Affordable Healthcare Solutions, LLC has pleaded guilty to charges related to unapproved prescription hyaluronic acid medical devices, as reported by a press release dated September 28, 2021.  The devices are “intended for the treatment of pain in osteoarthritis of the knee that must be injected by a doctor or other qualified health care professional.”  The company was sentenced for “Receiving Adulterated Devices in Interstate Commerce and Delivery for Pay with Intent to Defraud or Mislead, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 331(c) and 333(a)(2).”

21 U.S.C. § 331(c) prohibits “[t]he receipt in interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded, and the delivery or proffered delivery thereof for pay or otherwise.” According to the facts admitted during the plea, special agents with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) located and seized foreign-market Supartz, Euflexxa, Synvisc, Synvisc-One, and Orthovisc that were adulterated for lacking FDA approval for distribution and use in the United States.

According to the press release, a review of the devices seized from Affordable Healthcare Care Solutions confirmed various differences between the outer box and carton labels, patient information brochures, and instructions for use between the FDA-approved labeling for Supartz, Orthovisc, Synvisc, Synvisc-One, and Euflexxa versus the labeling included with the unapproved versions being distributed by Affordable Healthcare Solutions. While discussing the seizure, Special Agent in Charge, Justin C. Fielder, emphasized that the “FDA regulates the manufacturing and distribution of medical devices to help ensure the safety of American patients.”

As a result of the plea agreement, Affordable Healthcare Solutions pleaded guilty to a felony, was fined, and was ordered to forfeit $837,000 worth of devices seized by the special agents. Juan Antonio Gonzalez, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, announced the felony guilty plea and stated:

Medical device suppliers whose greed leads them to disregard FDA protocols and approval processes put the public in danger. . . . These are serious crimes and, in our district, companies that put profit over patient safety will be held accountable.

The post Medical Device Company Pleads Guilty to Dealing in Non-FDA Approved Devices appeared first on Knobbe Medical.

In a world first, a judge of the Federal Court of Australia has found that artificial intelligence is capable of being an “inventor” for the purposes of the Australian patent regime. Find out more about Justice Beach’s decision.

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As I recently (tentatively) predicted, on Friday 30 July 2021 Justice Beach in the Federal Court of Australia handed down a judgment giving Australia the dubious honour of becoming the first country in the world to legally recognise a non-human as a valid inventor on a patent application: Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879.  I would suggest that the remarkable speed with which this unnecessarily lengthy (228 paragraphs) decision was rendered, after being heard on 2 July 2021, may reflect the judge’s enthusiasm for issuing such a ground-breaking ruling.  Unfortunately, I do not share that enthusiasm, and I am confident that there are many others who are equally uncomfortable with the outcome.  My hope is that this includes officials within IP Australia and the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, and that the decision will be duly appealed to a Full Bench of the court.  It is, in my view, deeply regrettable that the Commissioner of Patents did not put on a stronger defence in the first instance because, even though an appeal was probably inevitable either way, the worldwide publicity that this decision is now generating is not necessarily beneficial for Australia.

The judge summarised his reasoning (at [10]) that:

…in my view an artificial intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of the Act. First, an inventor is an agent noun; an agent can be a person or thing that invents. Second, so to hold reflects the reality in terms of many otherwise patentable inventions where it cannot sensibly be said that a human is the inventor. Third, nothing in the Act dictates the contrary conclusion.

The patent system faces many challenges, but right now a need to grant more patents in a wider range of circumstances in not one of them.  We are in the grip of a global pandemic, and very serious questions are being asked about whether patents deliver a net benefit to the people of the world by incentivising the development of new vaccines and treatments, or whether they have the detrimental effect of denying affordable access to vital care and protection in poor and developing nations.  While I am firmly in the former camp, it only becomes harder to defend the patent system when opponents see the law expanding access to allow inventions generated by machines – potentially including those owned and controlled by giant corporations.

The standing and reputation of Australia and our patent laws are also at risk.  The country is already the target of criticism – rightly or wrongly – for declining to support calls for a waiver of IP provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).  The Federal Court’s decision in Thaler is receiving global attention, and not all of it is positive.  One tweet (in Spanish) compares Australia’s patent-friendly approach unfavourably with the infamous incident of an early innovation patent being granted for a ‘circular transportation facilitation device’, a.k.a. the wheel.

Just because patents are (or, at least, can be) good, it does not follow that more patents, generated in more ways, by more entities, must be better.  Australia should not think that we will necessarily come across as a socially and technologically progressive nation by ‘leading the way’ on allowing patents to be granted for inventions generated by non-humans.  On the contrary, we risk being left out on our own and looking like chumps.  The United States will not follow our lead – there are Constitutional, statutory and procedural barriers to permitting US patent applications naming non-human inventors.  The European Patent Office will not follow in the foreseeable future – it has already established its position via an academic study and discussions with member states of the European Patent Convention.  The UK has so far rejected any expansion of inventorship to non-humans.  And, contrary to recent reports (and the claims of the Artificial Inventor Project’s Ryan Abbott), the recent grant of a patent in South Africa naming DABUS as inventor indicates nothing about that country’s law or position on the issue.  As South African patent attorney Pieter Visagie has explained, the application effectively avoided any scrutiny of the legitimacy of the inventor by virtue of being filed via the international (PCT) system.

So what does Australia gain by being the first – and possibly only – country in the world to legally recognise non-human inventors?  Nothing, as far as I can see, other than a whole lot of unneeded publicity and global scrutiny of our patent laws.  If we are lucky, we will not receive many serious patent applications for inventions generated by machine inventors, and little practical harm will be done.  At worst, however, we could become the only country in the world to grant patents on such inventions, mostly filed by foreign applicants, creating exclusive rights that are enforceable only in Australia to the relative detriment of Australian innovators and consumers.

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It is common to summarise patent filing numbers over calendar years – back in January I reported on various filing statistics for 2020, and IP Australia did likewise in April.  For most Australian businesses, however – including patent attorney firms – the more important reporting period is the financial year ending on the 30^th of June.  It is therefore interesting to look at patent filing numbers over the 12 month period commencing at the beginning of July, overall and for individual firms.  In this article I will report on filing performance in the 2021 financial year (‘FY21’), which ran from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021, as compared with the previous (and, to some extent, earlier) financial year.

Surprisingly, despite the global pandemic, and a decline in filings over the 2020 calendar year, the number of Australian standard patent applications filed in FY21 grew by 3.6% over FY20, largely due to a very strong first six months of 2021.  Innovation patent applications surged ridiculously, to more than three times their numbers in FY20, for reasons that have nothing to do with either the pandemic, or a genuine interest by most applicants in obtaining enforceable rights.  Unfortunately for the health of the Australian innovation ecosystem (and the patent attorneys that support it), filings of new provisional applications declined by nearly 5% in FY21.

The leading firms for patent filings in FY21 were mostly the well-known names you would expect to see, although a couple of smaller firms have slipped into the top 20 on the strength of large numbers of innovation patent filings, primarily made on behalf of Chinese applicants.  The benefit of the growth in standard applications has not been shared equally, with a couple of big name firms experiencing a decline in new filings, while others did much better than the overall 3.6% growth rate.

I have also looked at the numbers of some key prosecution events – namely new examination requests, responses to examination reports, and acceptances – over the past few financial years.  These indicate that the overall prosecution workload increased slightly in FY21, ensuring that patent attorneys (and examiners) were kept busy with the examination of earlier-filed applications, despite the ongoing pandemic.  Strong numbers of examination requests filed in FY21 suggest that this work will continue to flow into, and beyond, the current financial year.

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This is a guest contribution from Mike Lloyd of Patent-Insights.  Mike has previously contributed articles on the impact, from an Australian perspective, of COVID-19 on international patent, trade mark, and registered designs filings, and on what patent data can tell us about the Australian government’s plan for local manufacturing?  Further details about the author can be found at the end of the article.

There is an increasing realisation that a successful economy is also a smart economy, and a smart economy is strengthened by having companies and organisations innovating and commercialising their inventions.

Luckily Australia is full of companies and organisations doing exactly this.  But who are these companies, and in what areas are they innovating in?

To answer this question with the most recent yet reliable data, I have looked at patent global publication data for Australian companies filed in the 12 months prior to 31 March 2021.  I have chosen this period as it is the latest quarter for which reliable data is available. By coincidence this is also the 12 month period after COVID-19 made its impact known, but maybe it is too soon to fully understand the effect of COVID in this area.

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