Canada's pharmaceutical industry and the European Union have been quietly lobbying for changes that could give brand-name drugs several years more patent protection here -- and potentially add hundreds of millions of dollars to Canadian medication costs annually. The EU has reportedly proposed the measures be included in a landmark free-trade agreement now being negotiated between the jurisdictions, with the fifth round starting last week in Ottawa. The changes would delay the entry of cheaper, generic copies of medication onto the market, but brand-name companies and some provinces say the measures are needed to restore fairness to the complex patent system, and generate more drug research in Canada. The generic industry, however, is voicing outrage at the proposals, insisting they will do nothing positive for Canada. "This would be a nasty piece of policy if it went through," said Jim Keon, head of the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association.

PARIS (Dow Jones)--French smart card maker and digital security company Gemalto NV (GTO.FR) Monday said it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the U.S. against Google Inc. (GOOG), HTC Corp. (2498.TW), Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Samsung Electronics CO., Ltd. (005930.SE) and Samsung Telecommunications America LLC. The lawsuit concerns the use of Gemalto's innovations in the Android operating system, Dalvik virtual machine and associated development tools and products, the company said in a statement. The patented technologies in the lawsuit, in particular Gemalto's Java Card Technology, were developed in the 1990's at Gemalto's research and development facilities in Texas, Gemalto said. According to the complaint on the website of the U.S. law firm hired by Gemalto, McKool Smith, the Java Card Technology enables Java applications and applications developed in other high level programming languages to run on resource-constrained devices such a

Federal prosecutors say a former DuPont chemist has been sentenced to 14 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from the company. Forty-four-year-old Hong Meng was sentenced Wednesday. He pleaded in June. Authorities said Meng, whose work involved research on organic light emitting diodes, accepted a position at Peking University in China in 2009 without DuPont's knowledge. He then transferred information about DuPont's work with OLED displays to his Peking e-mail account and his personal computer. Authorities say Meng also lied to investigators about sending DuPont chemical samples, some considered trade secret compounds, to a colleague at Northwestern University with instructions to forward them to China. Source: Businessweek

Report The intellectual property facilitation centre (IPFC) for MSMEs at the National Institute for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (ni-msme) is expecting 25 IPR (intellectual property rights) fillings by March 2011. The centre, which was set up in August last year to protect copyrights, trademarks, patents and geographical indications (GI), has received a good response on IPR enquiry from the industry and individuals, N Srilakshmi, coordinator - IPFC, ni-msme, said. “So far, we have received 11 filings from 10 small and one micro industry, including two trademarks, eight national patents and one copyright filing,” she added. Stating that IPR awareness was quite low among the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), she said, “The MSMEs are usually not aware of their innovation and protection, so we are constantly working on creating awareness programmes,” she said. The centre had conducted IPR awareness programmes for four clusters — imitation jewellry cluster at M

HYDERABAD: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today made a forceful plea for fostering an environment that promoted scientific advancement in the country to help it become a "world leader" in creating intellectual property . Singh also said that scientific and technological prowess was key to the country's development, "The scientific and technological prowess of the nation is a major determinant of its state of development. Innovation and knowledge will be the key-factors in our progress in the 21st century. We must, therefore, foster an environment that promotes and nurtures scientific achievement and makes us a world leader in creating intellectual property", he said. The Prime Minister was speaking after laying the foundation stone of a campus of the prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) here. For

The JPO has announced changes to the layout of patent certificates and trademark certificates to mark 125th anniversary of the industrial property rights system. Main Changes The layout and font size have been changed to improve readability. The font size used for the name of the patentee and inventor has been adjusted. The registration date has been specified. These certificates are used by the JPO to inform applicants that the relevant patent, utility model, design or trademark right has been registered in the official registry, and also serve as a kind of honorific recognition of the inventors’ achievement. The new certificates will be issued for patent, utility model, design and trademark rights registered after October 1, 2010. Notification and sample certificate images can be viewed at http://www.jpo.go.jp/torikumi_e/hiroba_e/notifi_change.htm