Why is harmonization so important for patents and utterly laughable for health care?
Follow the money and the established players and you'll see why.
Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#12The scariest line is the one that says that if the patent office fails to respond in a fixed time, the patent is automatically granted. The golden question is how deferential US courts will be to a valid US patent with international precedent. Hopefully not at all because these patents are going to be complete crap.
The easiest way to do this is with a DDoS on the patent office. If everyone issues a bogus patent request every day, every patent will be granted :).
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#13I find this quite curious, how would it work with clothing? I mean most clothes designs are the work of high end fashion houses, the middle market and lower end then produce very similar styles, its an accepted system. Surely this mean the fashion industry would be subject to the same design patents and thus the middle market could be legitimately sued?
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#14What in the world does this photo: http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/shutterstock_9784... have to do with the article?
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#15What if mathematicians decided to patent all known geometric shapes.
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#16I find this quite curious, how would it work with clothing? I mean most clothes designs are the work of high end fashion houses, the middle market and lower end then produce very similar styles, its an accepted system. Surely this mean the fashion industry would be subject to the same design patents and thus the middle market could be legitimately sued?
Dseign patents theoretically apply to clothing, but are rare because proving the various elements is somewhat onerous. In any case, they are largely unnecessary. Fashion is almost entirely driven by branding, which is protected by trademark. People buy the brand, not the design. So the JC Penny copy isn't even really in competition with the high-end fashion house design.
Here's a theory: high end design houses have not created their own 'low end self-copycats' because they couldn't block the JC Pennys and Zaras and couldn't compete with their large-scale production, marketing and sales. If law now allows such blocking, then I could see that expansion into low end happening.
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#17We don't have to participate in this system. There are alternatives.
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#18Why is it that whenever they use the word "harmonize" it means we're going in a more restrictive direction instead of less?
Restrictive in what respect?
Re: Here come the design patents: new law boosts rights in shapes, designs
#19Why is harmonization so important for patents and utterly laughable for health care?
One is a legal framework and one is a service? Really, this is apples and oranges.