Eamonn Neylon, Publishing Consultant, RCP Consultants, Richards House, 81-83 Broadway, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 8AJ, United Kingdon; Tel. +44 (0) 1235 510116, Fax: +44 (0) 1235 515302, E-mail: eamonn@rcp.co.uk.
Intellectual property is the legal right of ownership in the creative process. It exists to encourage and nurture the effort required to create and innovate. Protection is granted through the devices of patents for industrial ideas and processes, trademarks to protect brand identity, and copyright to cover the expression of ideas. Intellectual property also exists in the forms of trade secrets and de facto standards where secrecy can be leveraged in a competitive environment. To reflect these different aspects, this column has been extended in scope to encompass intellectual property issues rather than just patents.
On the trademark front, Thomson & Thomson has announced the release of a print report version of its new SiteComber Search product - a tool designed specifically for searching web pages for common law occurrences of trademarks. SiteComber Search provides a means of identifying trademarks on the Internet. These common law trademarks are not registered, yet still possess legal rights because of their use in the marketplace. By using SiteComber Search before the launch of a new trademark, intellectual property professionals can avoid infringing upon existing names.
Why should we care if a patent is awarded to a large corporation? Surely patents are only of interest to corporate lawyers and research and development organisations seeking to justify investment. In fact patents affect all of us. As an illustration of this consider the development of the technically excellent but hardly used graphics file format PNG. PNG was forced into existance because of the possibility that Compuserve could claim royalties on the GIF format that it had patented.
A number of new patent applications have appeared since the previous issue:
WO9746957 A1 Multimedia presentation generation method - in which dynamic objects defined by SGML object language are created, such that display presentation is responsive to user's input to system. Patentee: Tallpine Technologies; Inventor: Sampson J R
J09305604 A Logical structure analysis apparatus for electronic documentation - has analysis unit that produces document structure by providing suitable compensation for insufficient components. Patentee: Fuji Xerox
J09282310 A Data editor for SGML documents - has data conversion unit which refers to correspondence intent data when mark document data is converted to document data based on different marking rule. Patentee: Toppan Printing
J09265431 A Electronic document edit method for page description language e.g. HTML, SGML - involves using conversion rule which consists of series of first edit information and second edit information showing document extraction part and expression addition part Patentee: Nippon Telegraph & Telephone
EP-810534 A2 J09305475 A J09305579 A J09305581 A J09305623 A Document display method for enabling word in electronic document to be looked up in dictionary - involves retrieving electronic document with dictionary access information attached from dictionary-access-ready document store if dictionary-access mode is selected again Patentee: Oki Electric; Inventor: Ikeno A
EP-809197 A2 J09311870 A Hypertext document system for retrieving interrelated documents - has hypertext documents analysed in conjunction with parent documents and evaluates combination for relevance to search words. Patentee: Matsushita Electric, Matsushita Denki Sangyo KK; Inventor: Hoshida M; Ishikawa M; Noguchi Y; Sato M; Yasukawa H
EP-742666 A2 J09325963 A Information retrieval device with form analysis unit for receiving selected form - has retrieval unit which starts retrieval of data from a start position designated by required data to access partic. information objects, and new form generation device Patentee: Fuji Xerox; Inventors: Nakagawa Y; Ohki N; Sasaki H; Takeda M
WO9629663 A1 EP-815519 A1 Remote editing of HTML documents for client-server system - has client machine with editor that uses TCP/IP messages and server has control script allowing retrieval and storage of files Patentee: Microsoft; Inventors: Amstein P R; Blumer T P; Drellishak S F; Forgaard R J; Schulert A J.
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
