As a SaaS founder, your company’s intellectual property (IP) is one of its most valuable assets, but do you know how to protect it? IP includes everything from the name of your company to the software that powers your SaaS. Ensuring that you take steps to protect your IP is critical to safeguarding your hard […]

The post 5 Things Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know About IP Protection appeared first on The Rapacke Law Group.

Filing a patent application is only the first step toward receiving a registered patent. Next, the USPTO assigns a Patent Examiner to review and analyze the patent application for patentability and compliance with legal formalities. The Patent Examiner will issue a report on patentability of the patent application, including one or more rejections and/or legal […]

The post Patent Office Actions: The Must-Have Guide to Responses appeared first on The Rapacke Law Group.

Filing a patent application is only the first step toward receiving a registered patent. Next, the USPTO assigns a Patent Examiner (Examiner) to review and analyze the patent application for patentability and compliance with legal formalities. The Examiner will issue a report on the patentability of the patent application, including one or more rejections and/or […]

The post Software Patent Office Actions: The Must-Have Guide to Responses appeared first on The Rapacke Law Group.

Doing competitive intellectual property (IP) analysis is like playing poker while everyone else is showing their cards. It lets you know how your hand will fare and helps you better predict the rest of the cards in the deck. Here, the cards are intellectual property assets, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. The deck represents […]

The post Build a Better SaaS with Competitive IP Analysis appeared first on The Rapacke Law Group.

In this week’s patent news – Delhi High Court notifies final Intellectual Property Rights Division Rules 2022 and Rules Governing Patent Suits 2022; Need for Stronger Enforcement Provisions in cases of IPR Infringement, says CJI NV Ramana; EU files case against China at WTO; No company currently dominates the 5G technology realm, says USPTO; Activision and Blizzard settle patent dispute; European Commission to consider new time limits for FRAND licensing negotiations; ICC Centre of Entrepreneurship and WIPO collaborate to empower…

The post No single leader in 5G tech, finds USPTO; DHC sets up IPR Bench, notifies final rules and more patent news. appeared first on BananaIP Counsels.

Intellectual property law watchdogs anticipate major decisions from the Supreme Court in 2022. Fast-evolving pharmaceutical and technology sectors have brought several key questions regarding patent law, fair use, and copyright...

The post Intellectual Property Cases to Keep an Eye on in 2022 appeared first on IP.com - IP Innovation and Analytics.

Short Answer: Yes. And if you already created your MVP (Minimum Viable Product), you should probably hurry. Click here to find strategies for protecting your SaaS business intellectual property. Not sure about patents, SaaS, or MVPs? This article explains why most businesses should patent their SaaS MVP as soon as possible, even before starting research […]

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Each January, there is great interest in the leading recipients of US patents issued during the previous year and, in particular, whether IBM will once again retain the leading position it has held for over two decades.  The answer to that question for 2021 is ‘yes’, although the size of IBM’s lead depends upon which data provider you choose to believe.  IFI CLAIMS Patent Services – which has provided an annual summary for many years – has IBM receiving 8,682 US patents in 2021, comfortably ahead of Samsung Electronics on 6,366, followed by Canon with 3,021.  In comparison, Harrity Patent Analytics – which began publishing its own independent reports in recent years – has IBM on 8,540, with Samsung nipping at its heels on 8,517, and both comfortably clear of LG in third spot with 4,368.  (Harrity has Canon in fourth, with 3,400 US patents issued in 2021, while IFI CLAIMS has LG at eighth, on 2,487 US patents.) 

So, who to believe?  My guess is that they are both right-ish – subject to the challenges of correctly identifying and matching applicant and assignee information in the raw USPTO data – but that IFI CLAIMS and Harrity are probably accounting differently for patents granted to related companies, such as subsidiaries and corporate group members.  It is notable that the two largest discrepancies among the top patent recipients are between Samsung and LG, both of which are South Korean chaebol – family conglomerates – which can be notoriously labyrinthine in their structures, and diverse in their product offerings.

I have conducted a corresponding analysis for Australian patent grants in 2021, and while Samsung and LG also both feature among the top recipients, the number one spot goes to China’s Huawei Technologies, which received 193 Australian patents last year.  As far as counting is concerned, I keep things simple – named applicants are treated as the same entity if they have the same name, the same corporate identity, and the same country of residence, otherwise they are different.  The Korean entity LG Electronics Inc placed second, receiving 186 Australian patents, while Samsung Electronics Ltd placed 10^th, with 68 patents. 

After Huawei and LG, the top five places were filled out by Qualcomm, Apple, and Adobe – all US entities – with 170, 157, and 103 patents, respectively.

The leading Australian resident patent recipients were the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), with 48 patents (coincidentally, the same as the number of new standard patent applications it filed in 2021) and Aristocrat Technologies, with 47 patents, placing them 23^rd and 24^th respectively.

In 2021, IP Australia granted 17,155 standard patents.  While the total number of standard patent applications filed has generally increased over the years – from 25,563 in 2011 to 30,343 in 2021 – the number of patents granted has not followed the same trend.  In fact, between 2018 and 2021 there were slightly fewer patents granted each year, on average, than between 2011 and 2013.

US resident entities are by far the largest users of the Australian patent system, receiving 7,629 standard patents in 2021.  Second and third places were taken by China and Japan.  Chinese applicants had the largest growth in patent grants, of nearly 24%, surpassing Japanese applicants, whose total grants fell by 5% in 2021.  Australian residents – despite having consistently been the second largest filers of patent applications – are only the fourth most common recipients of granted patents, reflecting the fact that they are more likely than non-resident applicants to abandon applications before grant. 

Read on for all the facts and figures.

After two years on top of Australian patent filing charts – including a remarkable (by Australian standards) 435 applications in 2020 – Chinese telecommunications manufacturer OPPO dropped back to third position in 2021.  The top spot was taken by last year’s runner-up, South Korea’s LG Electronics, which filed 251 new Australian standard patent applications, up from 236 in 2020.  China’s Huawei Technologies took second place, with 243 new applications, also increasing its filings, up from 229 in 2020.  Huawei now owns nearly 1,300 live Australian patents and applications, which is a significant investment for a company that is effectively barred from the Australian market.  It is likely, however, that many of these patents and applications cover standardised mobile and data communications technologies that are implemented across the industry, and which therefore provide Huawei with a substantial stream of licensing income.

The top Australian resident applicant, once again, was electronic gaming system developer Aristocrat Technologies.  However, from a peak of 252 applications filed in 2018, Aristocrat’s filings have declined significantly.  It filed only 72 new standard patent applications in 2021, falling to equal 21^st place in the annual ranking (alongside the University of Texas System).  Over the same period, Aristocrat has been engaged in a Federal Court battle with the Australian Patent Office in an effort to establish the patent-eligibility of many of its gaming-related inventions, recently suffering a setback in the form of a loss on appeal to a Full Bench of the Court.

The leading antipodean applicant is now New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel Healthcare (which is separate these days from the well-known maker of home appliances).  Fisher & Paykel Healthcare filed 127 Australian standard patent applications in 2021, up from 94 the previous year, to take 7^th place in the rankings.  Ironically, the leading filer of New Zealand patent applications in 2021 was Australian medical device manufacturer Resmed, with 142 filings, while Fisher & Paykel Healthcare appears to have no interest in patent protection in its domestic market.  Meanwhile, Resmed followed the opposite trans-Tasman strategy, filing just 25 applications in its home market of Australia.

No other Australian (or New Zealand) applicant appeared in the top 30 filers for 2021.  The next highest Australian applicant, after Aristocrat, was the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), with 48 applications, followed by NewSouth Innovations (the University of New South Wales’ commercialisation arm) on 29.  The Australian top five was rounded out by Breville (26) and Resmed (25).

The top three filers of provisional applications were CSIRO (56), Resmed (51), and NewSouth Innovations (47).

Innovation patent filings were dominated, in the final few months of full operation of the system, by Chinese and Indian applicants, of which the top two were China’s Qingdao Agricultural University, and the delightfully-named Lovely Professional University in India.  The leading ‘credible’ filers of innovation patent applications in 2021 were US-based Calerpillar Inc (31 filings), agricultural chemical developer Imtrade Australia (26 filings), and Australian radio technology company Benelec (14 filings).

Read on for full tables of the leading filers for each application type.