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 ...