Showing posts with label Trademarks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trademarks. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Intellectual property rights and SEO: Today's relevance

What to Learn from IPR and Patent concerns if you are an Online Marketer?

Apple and Samsung are in cold war since long. Both are high tech industries offering mind-blowing and thought provoking gadgets such as smartphones, laptops, tablets and many more. These companies are strong competitor and leaves no stone unturned. Recently, everyone must have heard about Apple Vs. Samsung case. Samsung was observed to have dishonored and violated Apple’s trade dress in manufacturing smartphones that look clone to the iPhone.  Moreover, Samsung has also violated many of Apple’s software patent layering fundamental attributes of iPhone user interface. Apple is the first company on the planet earth who has introduced a touch screen mobile phone that features zoom in and out ability just by pinching fingers.Apple also keeps patents on few aspects of the screen scrolling behavior such as the specific way of scrolling display bounces when it is pushed too far.

Who win the battle?
Obviously Apple won the case and unfortunately, Samsung lost. Jury made the decision that Apple will be awarded with $1.5bn by Samsung for infringing Apple technologies, software and designs.Android OS (Operating System) has no doubt, made a tremendous entry in smartphone industry and has captured mammoth growing share of cell phone market. Google Android earnings are minimum and among android phone manufacturing companiesonly Samsung is enjoying huge revenues. Winning a billion dollar case from rival in smartphone game is no doubt, a gigantic win for the founders.  And the reality that the trades dress breaches upset Samsung’s production and distribution chain marks it a chief solid blow.

The jury foreman was 67 years old chief technology general of Multicast Labs naming Velvin Hogan. He got worldwide fame by designing web video technology and has deep understanding about US patent rules. Hogan after careful calculation reached to this dollar amount using his own calculations based on the fact that how much Samsung hurt Apple in profits from the sales of invading Samsung gadgets and adding the royalty total to attain a final fair number. Decision of the issue was taken after careful consideration of public and media and was inherently unbiased.He also made it clear that this decision was not made to hurt any party.

Understanding of IPR
This case has made it clear that the increasing popularity of internet and infinite amount of online workers and users IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) can be taken away effortlessly from the owner. Whatever might be the idea, innovation or product you present itcan be viewed and imitated within no time. Efforts should be made to keep all the trademarks, patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights of your software, technologies and products intact and enjoy the sole proprietorship of your innovations and ideas. Moreover, it enables you to safeguard the originality and relish monopoly.

Understanding Intellectual Property Rights, Trademarks and Violation of Copyrights is a must for all Online Marketing Consultants - SEO, SEM, PPC, Social

Friday, January 2, 2009

Verizon Vs. Cybersquatters : Intellectual Property Case

Domain name booking and cyber-squatting is a creating a new legal problem as the web has crossed any country's limit.

Keeping the legal control over the un-lawful activities over the web, most of the countries are modifying the IT laws including India, US and the European union.

Here is a recent IPR (intellectual Property Rights) case of domain name booking by cybersquatters against the popular telecom service Verizon and the trademarks registered by the company.

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is taking it to cybersquatters, and the telecom said it has been awarded $33.2 million from a company trying to intentionally confuse Web users.

The ruling, which the telecom said is the largest-ever cybersquatting judgment, said OnlineNIC "unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical or confusingly similar to Verizon's trademarks." The telecom was awarded $50,000 per domain name, which included the likes of iphonefromverizon.com and treoverizon.com.

OnlineNIC is a San Francisco-based domain registrar, and no representatives showed up to court. The company also faces similar lawsuits from Microsoft and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)

Source : InformationWeek

I would suggest to check the brand names and trademarks before you register a domain and avoid committing such activities.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Trademarks / Patents Violation in India

Trademarks in Healthcare:
SC restrains Dabur from using trade mark 'Glucose-D'
New Delhi, May. 21 (PTI): Leading ayurvedic products manufacturer Dabur India LTD has been restrained by the Supreme Court from using the trade mark "Glucose-D" for its popular health drink as it was packaged on the lines of Glucon-D owned by rival company M/s Heinz Italia.
Source :The Hindu


Trademarks in Education :
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), India’s technical education regulator, has ordered the CFA Institute “to cease operations in India”. AICTE’s order is the latest chapter in an ongoing fight between the CFA Institute and the Hyderabad-based Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (Icfai) over the use of the terms—CFA and chartered financial analyst.

On 18 May, AICTE issued a notification that said the CFA Institute and its programme were not approved by it.

Source :Live Mint

Patent Exploitation in Yoga:

As has happened in the past with several plant products like turmeric and neem used in traditional Indian medicines, yet another application has been filed in the US for patenting a form of indigenous knowledge from India. An NRI is aggressively claiming patent for a sequence of yoga asanas. And with the US Patent and Trademark Office issuing 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks, any one teaching these patented asanas might have to pay a royalty to the American patent holder.

Source: Times of India