Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

Consultation on fees by UK IPO

The UK Intellectual Property Office is consulting about fees for obtaining trade marks and, to some extent, patents, and other matters. For example a reduced fee if applicants file electronically and eanbling trade mark applicants to ask for help by telephone while filling in the application form.

More details are given in the consultation which also explains about how to respond. Anyone can comment, with the deadline being the 1 June.

The IEEE Spectrum Patents Scorecard

There have been quite a few attempts to measure patent strength or productivity for countries or companies. One I hadn't seen before is the 2008 IEEE Spectrum Patents Scorecard.

It takes American patents granted in 2007 and ranks the top 20 companies within 17 technology areas for their "overall patent power", using formulae explained at the bottom of the table. It's always interesting to see new ideas in measuring patents.

Rather confusingly, the page opens with the table for the aerospace category and you have to click on other sectors to see their own top twenty. Having a lot of patents isn't crucial to get a good score (have a look at the pharmaceuticals sector, where a small British company is second). 

The site has an interesting article, Patent prowess, discussing some highlights from the data, which was analysed by 1790Analytics.

The Spark.IP™ data-mining tool

I have just come across a data-mining tool for use in patent analysis, Spark.IP™.

In theory it is a place where people can advertise their willingness to license or sell their patents.

Much more interesting, I suggest, is the fact that this beta version, which at present is free, also offers the ability to mine patent data in US grants or published applications to create “patent landscape” information. The idea in such software is to make a visual display of interesting information about the patents, using data in them or relationships between them. I was aware that there exist companies which provide this sort of analysis for a price, but this is the first free one I’ve seen.

You could search for example for the term “wind turbine”. Numerous "cluster maps" appear, each for slightly differing wordings (and hence technologies). Within each, different wordings, shown by hexagons, are connected by lines. Larger hexagons indicate more activity, and darker colours indicate better matches.

This is what the help keys say, and I am not too sure what they mean. Apparently they rely on citations, where the search reports (as given on the front page of US patent grants) cite earlier patents as having some similarity. Presumably the bigger hexagons represent areas where there are lots of citations to the smaller ones, not the reverse. I had assumed that keywords were being used to link them, so that A has similar wording to B which has similar wording to C and so on.

“Assignees” (the owners of patents) can also be searched, where for example Google reveals cluster maps showing, not surprisingly, that their major work is in document information management and then in managing networked information. In this case I found it much clearer, if only intuitively, comprehending the data. In both cases further analysis is possible, such as the major companies involved for keywords, or a bar graph showing the numbers in each year. Titles of relevant patents can also be seen. It is possible to combine fields, so that for example an inventor in a company can be searched for.

It is not clear to me what exactly the maps are showing, and this (for me at least) limits the usefulness of the tool. I’d like to see the site offer a worked example where the precise implications of the links and the colours and size of the icons are explained in detail.

Duncan Bannatyne of Dragons' Den

I've just finished reading Duncan Bannatyne's autobiography, Anyone can do it. It makes the world of business seem very easy: just a few calculations on the back of an envelope, apparently.

Duncan is known to many as the Scottish dragon on Dragons' Den. Inventors or entrepreneurs deliver sales pitches asking for money in return for a share of the equity in the business. I'd noticed how he is a man of few words, obviously good at maths (unlike, sadly, some of those doing the asking), and skeptical about many inventions. At least, he does seem prone to bury head in hands when hearing some pitches, bragging perhaps about huge sales projections.

His own background is in services. Instead of the risks of a new product, his career has been in replicating high quality services, which involve dealing with people, where payment was by direct debit, and, preferably,  where there were government guarantees. OK, so ice cream selling doesn't fully fit this model, but the next ventures did: care homes, day care nurseries, and fitness clubs. There were government grants for the first two. He likes a 33% return annually on his investment, and watches the pennies.

I loved his stories about the series. There was cardboard beach furniture, where he asked what happened when it rains. He was told by the inventor (with a look of hatred, he states) that he was stupid, people don't go to the beach in the rain. He persisted: what happened when a child came out of the sea and sat in one of the chairs ? The reply was to keep the child under discipline. As so often, the inventor assumed that the product would only be used in perfect conditions.

She had spent £60,000 on intellectual property rights. I believe that this is the Portable article of furniture invention, where lightweight items collapse down to fit in a bag. Here is the main drawing.

Then there was the Baby Dream Machine, published as a Rocking Device (to nod babies off to sleep), where the 50% of the company that Duncan was offered for £200,000 turned out to be 8% of the royalties, as most of the equity had been sold off. Here is the main drawing.

I often ask inventors in talks if they ever watch the programme. About half do: to the other half I say, this is the kind of hard questioning that backers will use. Why should anyone risk their money for a poorly worked out idea ? Think about the motives of the person sitting opposite you.

All in all, a great read.

The UK's official trade mark database

As of today, there is a new look to, and new features in, the (free) official British database of registered trade marks. It contains both national marks and those international marks (Community, and Madrid Agreement Protocol) which apply to the UK.

Besides incorporating the former beta search option, it includes some other useful features. I will describe them in order as you move down the search page (much the best thing to do, to avoid error messages). Helpful advice is given in the right hand margin.

Searches will be assumed to be for words alone (and not images such as an owl or mountain) unless this is altered in the box at the top of the search page. Images, or images and words, can be selected.

Next you select any words wanted. The search will default to the maximum found, "contains string", unless altered. Hence a search for "teruni" will find Manchester United. This was the beta feature.

Next you select the images, a new feature. This is based on the Vienna Classification. You click open three successive boxes to drill down to a specific class. Hence mountains would be found by asking category 06, Landscapes, and then 01, to make 06.01. A further image class can be requested.

Next the Nice Class can be requested. This is the area of activity in goods or services. The Classification link in the left hand margin offers an excellent, in-house tool for identifying possible classes.

Finally you can limit the search by filing date or by status (registered, applied for and so on). Only registered, applied for and recently lapsed applications will be present.

The hit lists are presented in an attractive manner, with any images present appearing even if a word search was requested. A search for Paramount as a word together with Vienna class 06.01 gave me 19 results, some looking rather unusual. A useful feature is that you can add specific marks to a "picking list" for later study. I would encourage running different searches (by spelling, or by criteria requested) to build up a list, rather than a too hasty one-off search.

All this makes quite a useful package. It is important, though, that users are aware of what is lacking. The Companies House database should also be searched to look for similar marks among registered company names. A search for proprietors (owners of marks) will give, as explained, only those in the UK system. And inevitably, there will be bugs in the system.

Lots of information on trade marks is given by the UK Intellectual Property Office.

Jimmy Choo wages war against copiers

My colleague Maria Lampert has just passed me a newscutting about Jimmy Choo winning damages for having their designs copied. It was news to me: I admit I don't keep a close eye on fashion.

What is officially J.Choo Limited secured £14,000 in an out of court settlement from Warehouse over £650 "clutch bags" being imitated by £20 versions. The remaining stock of offending bags will also be destroyed. Warehouse claim that they never set out to copy anyone's design.

The head of legal at Jimmy Choo says "We will not tolerate copies of our products being sold, as we spend significant sums on creating unique and novel designs".

That's clear. What is not so clear is what rights are being protected. It doesn't look as if the company has registered designs, and they are claiming design right, which is an automatic, limited term form of copyright. It has a maximum duration of 15 years. As it is automatic, there is no fuss about paying fees or registering, but also no database to search. The idea is that people should not copy it, while registered designs cannot be used at all, full stop.

Jimmy Choo's has won a number of disputes over the past year or so, including against New Look in a shoe dispute which won them £80,000, and also against Oasis and Marks & Spencers. In that case a £9.50 handbag was found to be imitating a £495 product.

It used to be that it was very hard to win these sort of cases, whether in or out of court. The difference is new legislation from Europe. Gary Assim, a partner at the appropriately named Shoosmith law firm which advises Jimmy Choo, has said that formerly you had to prove that the item was identical, which was virtually impossible. Now you could "take an aspect of design, such as a quirky buckle or a heel, and to show that it had been copied."

Good news for innovators in design: but it makes the work of those looking in databases such as the ones we list a lot harder.

Teenage entrepreneurs and inventors

Next Wednesday evening we have an event here at the British Library, Teenpreneurs, which is aimed at teenagers who are entrepreneurs or inventors.

There will be speakers, who include 18-year old Emily Cummins, an inventor who has won a prize. There will be plenty of opportunities for questions on "how you did it", followed by a reception. There should be plenty of soft drinks on hand, as we are hoping that teenagers themselves will come, with or without their families.

I suspect that this is one of those events that the Americans are very good at -- I certainly have never been to an event of this scale aimed at teenagers. I will be there, and will blog about it the next day. The UK Intellectual Property Office already has a web site aimed at that market, called Cracking Ideas, featuring a certain fictional Yorkshire inventor and his smarter but mute dog.

The Business Startup Show

On the 2-3 November Olympia hosted the Business Startup show, an exhibition with lots of talks. The British Library had a stand there.

To say that we were busy is putting it mildly. The place was heaving (partly because the event was free).I spent much of Friday and Saturday on the stand, talking non-stop to people about how our collection and the databases in our reading rooms could help their businesses. A lot, though, was talking specifically to inventors.

I hope that I was able to give useful advice to help people progress their ideas. There were also several inventors who claimed that everyone, including patent attorneys, was out to steal their inventions and that they could not trust anyone. The UK Intellectual Property Office's brochure on Confidential Disclosure Agreements was, it seemed, a waste of time, and the idea of mailing details of your idea to yourself by registered post (and not opening it), as proof that you had those ideas before a meeting, was little thought of as well. There was little I could suggest to help -- if you feel that you cannot trust anyone you are in a difficult position.

It is one reason why I encourage people to network and to join inventors' clubs. Not only do they learn a lot from others who have been along the same route earlier, but they also get to meet people who they feel they can work with.