Patents

Patents

Freedom to innovate – did Government get the message?

Posted on Apr 16, 2017

Freedom to innovate – did Government get the message?

On 27 April, Freedom Day, we will pause to mark the most significant moment in South African history and commemorate the day when freedom, above all else, became the nation’s guiding principle. The day before, World IP Day, we celebrate the achievements of our brethren that influence our every-day lives and the ability of free human intellectual endeavour to improve our lives. In recent years, Freedom Day celebrations have been reduced to the favourite grandstanding occasion for politicians. While celebrating, many public figures will repeat the customary refrain of this day – remark...

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Reviewed: IP Consultative Framework 2016

Posted on Aug 24, 2016

Reviewed: IP Consultative Framework 2016

Summary: While the Department of Trade and Industry’s recently published Intellectual Property Consultative Framework promises that future legislation will be the result of a thorough examination of the matters of concern by experts, and stakeholders, in the field, it should also consider undoing the potential damage which may have already been done to our intellectual property laws as a result of the failure to proceed with such rigour in the recent past. To read the IP Chair’s full review of the IP Consultative Framework click here. Follow Share on...

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Licencing of Patent Applications – Pre-Grant Royalty Earning

Posted on Dec 7, 2015

Licencing of Patent Applications – Pre-Grant Royalty Earning

Research and development is costly. International patent portfolios even more so. The business strategy of most corporations, when filing a patent application, is to seek some return on R&D investment, mostly through self-exploitation of the products of R&D, or through royalty earnings from intellectual Property (IP). The time frame between filing a patent application to grant can take many years. Patent offices’ backlogs often result in a three year (or longer) delay before any office actions are issued or an application is reviewed. Legislation provides for the licensing of...

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Google’s Silver Bullet for Patent Trolls

Posted on Aug 3, 2015

Google’s Silver Bullet for Patent Trolls

Technology companies take note: Google may have found a way to beat patent trolls, and you are invited to join them. The term “patent troll” refers to an entity which exists for the sole purpose of enforcing or licensing patent rights which were not the result of its own innovation. Although the term “patent assertion entity” is preferred by policy makers and academics, the more colourful and emotive “patent troll” has firmly entered our lexicon and has recently even appeared in a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Google, SAP, Uber and other leading technology companies have banded...

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Intellectual Property and the Constitution

Posted on Jul 14, 2015

Intellectual Property and the Constitution

Section 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, provides that it is the supreme law of the country and that any law inconsistent with it is invalid. This provision creates the necessity to interpret the Copyright Act in a manner consistent with the Constitution at the risk of the Act, or particular provisions of it, being declared to be invalid. On the other hand, section 36 provides that the rights in the Bill of Rights (Chapter 2 of the Constitution, comprising sections 7-38, which detail the fundamental human rights) may be limited in terms of law of general...

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A Spoon Full of Sugar for Plain Packaging

Posted on Jun 9, 2014

A Spoon Full of Sugar for Plain Packaging

History has taught us that the South African Government, and the Legislature in particular, will not hesitate to make bad law. The volume of carelessly drafted, ill conceived, unconstitutional and overtly political laws that the public has been force-fed in recent years is so great that recourse to the Constitutional Court has become a pedestrian matter. In fact, the alarm felt over perpetual ham-handed law making is only outstripped by Government’s brazen disregard for public cooperation in the democratic process. This even after the public, who are expected to prop up and thereafter obey...

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