Competitive and Technical Intelligence ToolBox

Google has acquired GrandCentral , a company that provides services for managing your voice communications. GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. GrandCentral offers many features that complement the phone services you already use. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who's calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more. You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. Al

Global consultancy services provider KPMG and Nasscom today indicated that the Financial Services industry KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) is poised to be worth $5 billion in India by 2010. In a report brought out jointly and released by the Union IT&C Minister, A. Raja, KPMG researchers indicated that while there are various projections of KPO industry that range between $10 billion and $17 billion by 2010, India is well poised to garner about $5 billion worth of financial services business. Read Full Article

The market for KPO or Knowledge Process Outsourcing, which follows the success waves created by ITO (Information and Technology Outsourcing) in the 1980s and the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) in the 1990s, is expected to touch $10-17 billion by 2010 and India is well poised to grab a major share of the market, a research paper released by the global audit, tax and advisory services group KPMG has revealed. According to Zarrella, in financial services sector alone, the market for KPO is expected to touch $5 billion in the next 2-3 years and this form of outsourcing will extend to other industries in the near future. "KPO may still only represent a small percentage of the total outsourcing market but, with the financial sector demonstrating just what it can be used for, I think that all of these numbers are set to increase exponentially," Zarrella said. Read full report

Sapient Corp, a US-based business consulting and technology services company plans to enter into the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) sector. According to an article in Thomson Financial News, " Sapient to set up KPO facility in India before November ". According to the article company plans to add 2,000 people to its existing 6,000 strong workforce by the end of 2008.

Bioinformatics Institute of India (BII) offers various courses of IPR professional. Following are few of them, may be of use: Biotechnology Intellectual Property Management Biomedical Intellectual Property Management Bioinformatics Intellectual Property Management

The National Institute of Intellectual Property Management (NIIPM) is a Central Government Organization under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry engaged in conducting various Intellectual Property (IPR) training programs on Patents, Designs, Trademarks and Geographical Indications.The institute is conducting a 2 day and another a 5 day training programs on IP at Nagpaur. Two day program on fundamentals will be held on 2 5th &26th February ,fees Rs 500/- and for professionals a more intensive 5 day program will be held between 10th to 14th March , fees Rs 1250/- Contact: Sri Pankaj Borkar, Patent Examiner, ph: 9224425777. For more information click here .

Category “A” document defining the general state of the art which is not considered to be of particular relevance Category “E” earlier application or patent but published on or after the international filing date Category “L” document which may throw doubts on priority claim(s) or which is cited to establish the publication date of citation or other special reason (as specified) Category “O” document refereeing to an oral disclosure, use, exhibition or other means Category “P” document published prior to the international filing date but later than the priority date claimed Category “T” later document published after the international filing date or priority date and not in conflict with the application but cited to understand the principle or theory underlying the invention Category “X” document of particular relevance; the claimed invention cannot be considered novel or cannot be considered to involve an inventive step when the document is taken alone Category “Y” document of

In today’s competitive environment, success in the market depends primarily on strategic planning, early decision and understanding the competitors. Competitive intelligence provides knowledge of competitors, their marketing strategies, objectives, research activity, their strengths and weaknesses and other information. Competitor Analysis helps companies in understanding their position with respect to major competitors in the global competitive environment and provides actionable business competitive intelligence. Early and better understanding of the key competitors’ strategies helps to take proactive, planned and informed strategies business and R&D decisions in order to gain market dominance. Competitive intelligence is the process of discovering, analyzing and using intelligence from publicly available, non-proprietary information sources for the purpose of becoming more competitive. Competitive intelligence isn't simply about finding information. It's not about snoopi

There are many ways to define the limits of a claim towards related genes, nucleotides, or protein sequences. One way is through a direct comparison of two aligned sequences in order to determine if they are "similar" enough to each other so that the claim language is satisfied. Typically this requires a quantifiable comparison, often in the form of "% identity".. Read more

The specification, which is also called the disclosure, is a written description of an invention. The patent specification is drafted both to satisfy the written requirements for patentability, as well as to define the scope of the claims. While the layout of a specification varies from place to place, it is relatively consistent between the U.S. and Europe, except that B and C are unique to the U.S. For the purposes of this tutorial, the claims are described separately from the specification. The sections of a patent specification are: A. Title of the invention . The title of the invention is designed to describe the essence of the invention in a few words. B. Cross-reference to related applications. In the U.S., it is required that a patent applicant include a section titled "cross-reference to related applications". In this section, the applicant lists any provisional patent applications that they are claiming priority to, or if the application is a continuation

What are Claims? The claims are the most important part of a patent application. The goal of the claims is to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the applicant regards as his or her invention. There must be at least one claim in a patent, and the reasoning is that possible infringers must be able to understand what is and is not protected based on the claims. Parts of a Claim A claim is generally presented in three parts, the preamble, a transitional phrase (or word), and the body. Preamble : The preamble is an introductory statement that names the invention that is to be claimed. For example, "A method for making a genetically modified plant." Transitional Phrase : The transitional phrase (or word) specifies whether the claim is limited to only the elements listed, or whether the claim may cover items or processes that have additional elements. Commonly used transitional phrases include "comprising"and "consisting of". T

A patent is only in force during its term and in its jurisdiction. When the patent term runs out, or if it is abandoned or invalidated in a particular jurisdiction, unless there is a continuation in force, the matter in the patent enters the public domain. For utility patents issued in the USA: * If the application from which the patent issued was filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term begins on the patent issue date and ends 20 years after the effective filing date of the application. Not the day before (though probably few would want to go to court about conduct occurring on 11:59 PM that last day). * If the application is a continuation, continuation-in-part or division of a prior application, then its effective filing date is the filing date of the earliest filed non-provisional application in the chain of applications. * Remember, if the earliest application filed was a provisional application, that filing date does not count as the earliest date. This is also true for

1. Since the Uruguay Round Agreements in 1994, many countries have enacted laws providing that the enforceable term of patent protection begins on the date of grant of a utility patent (durations may differ for other types of patents such as industrial design and plant cultivar patents), and ends 20 years from the filing date of the application. The 20 year term is a minimum for compliance to TRIPS Article 33, but nations may choose to grant longer terms. Some countries, such as the USA, have provisions for limited recovery for infringement occurring between the date of publication of the application and date of grant. 2. For patent applications filed prior to the adoption of conformity to the Uruguay Round, laws varied. For example, in the US patent term was 17 years from issue date, unrelated to the filing date. " Submarine" patent applications, chains of applications filed perhaps many years previously but on which patents had not yet issued, could be an unknown quantity

"Freedom to operate", abbreviated "FTO", is usually used to mean determining whether a particular action, such as testing or commercialising a product, can be done without infringing valid intellectual property rights of others. Since IP rights are specific to different jurisdictions, a "freedom to operate" analysis should relate to particular countries or regions where you want to operate. If you want to commercialise a new variety of lentil seed in your own country, for example, you might have complete freedom to operate if there are no patents, plant variety rights, trademarks or other IP rights covering the seed, the process used to make it or the way you wish to market it or in your country. However, you might not have the same freedom to operate if you want to export the seed to another country, where patents or other IP rights may have been issued covering the plant genotype, methods, etc. Determining whether there is freedom to operate in any parti

The rules for calculating patents terms changed when the US implemented policies set forth by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Prior to this implementation, the term of a US extended 17 years from the issue date. However, to be consistent with the TRIPS recommendations, the policy in the US changed in 1995. The current patent term is extends 20 years from the earliest filing date instead of 17 years from the issue date. Rather than retroactively changing the patent terms for patents that were pending or in force prior to the policy change, the US has adopted a scheme in which the patent term is calculated based on the longer of the two possible patent terms (17 years from the issue date, or 20 years from the earliest filing date). This makes the calculation of patent terms for older patents somewhat complicated. June 8, 1995 was the "magic date" when the patent term calculation changed. In terms of patent term calculations, US pa

Invengine ™ is a web-based software application that can save you hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on your patent research projects. It utilizes the latest technology in semantic analysis, Invengine ™ provides the means for the qualitative and economical analysis of large amounts of patent information.

IPCentury develops innovative software based on AI-systems for use in research and development and in patenting (Intellectual Property Management). The business activity of the company covers the computer-aided knowledge management based on associative data structures (AI-systems) and related products and services for administration, search and analysis of knowledge. Economic / commercial independence of the publicly accessible central AI-server is granted by the company. DECOPA can secure the knowledge supply concerning similarities of developments and dependencies upon patent rights of third parties in the whole product development process. The knowledge base already provided by IPCentury AG is actually containing the knowledge of millions of patents of the most important economy areas. For this reason, the DECOPA system is immediately ready for use in patent search and analysis and makes the online execution of patent infringement searches possible the first time.

Searching of granted Indian Patents is now made easy. Indian Patent Office has developed another interface to search Granted Patents date back from. https://210.210.88.164/patentsearch/ Best part is that you can get the PDF copies of full patents, just click on the APPLICATION NUMBER .