Wednesday whimsies

Linguistics & Claim Construction - A limitation on harmonization? With this year's CIPA Congress getting ever closer, the IPKat has been hearing from one of its prize participants, Greg Corcoran (ASML Netherlands BV), about his talk at the event.  Says Greg:

"There is an assumption that a patent application will lead to a patent with claims of similar scope worldwide. However, the claims of equivalent patents in different countries may differ in language, interpretation and therefore scope. A systemic cause for this inconsistency is the linguistic differences of grammar and vocabulary between the language in which the patent application was drafted and the language of the granted patent. 

A simple test can be a translation of Japanese or Chinese claims derived from an English language first filing back into English. Sometimes unexpected features that may not relate to the intended invention can be found in the claim, such as the presence of an item of the human anatomy in a claim which clearly is not an essential feature of the invention, such as a human leg in a claim for a table. Besides ambiguous terms, other typical fundamental problems can include: conceptual differences between expressing singulars and plurals, the unfortunate appearance of method steps in apparatus claims [the chair infringed only when it is sat on … ], and working with functional claims.

Various strategies can be adopted to avoid the occurrence of such surprises; and in my session the panel will be looking at some of these fundamental problems through an interactive discussion using some worked examples. Our discussion will not just be about the cause of these problems and increasing our awareness of them, but about how we can take steps, where possible to avoid them".

Sounds intriguing, says the IPKat, and definitely worth sniffing around.  Programme details here; register here.

Around the weblogs. Kingsley Egbuonu's return to the official IP websites of Chad on behalf of Afro-IP makes this Kat wonder whether that weblog's attempt to raise awareness of the deficiencies of many African states in furnishing IP information on their official websites hasn't actually caused them to stagnate.  Meanwhile, over in Geneva, where many a fine African IP person is currently deployed, Nick Ashton-Hart, writing for Intellectual Property Watch, gives a surprisingly detailed set of constructive suggestions for helping the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) dig itself out of its current difficulties in a reasoned, well-balanced critique. This Kat isn't sure he agrees with them all -- and the fact that the Secretariat's activist role hasn't always come off doesn't suggest to him that it should retreat into a role that is entirely demand-driven -- but he sees a lot of sense in them. Finally copyright expert Simon Clark, guesting on the 1709 Blog, seeks to dismiss talk that the NLA v Meltwater litigation in England and Wales has anything to do with breaking the internet"


Employee invention compensation schemes again. A reader who prefers to remain anonymous has emailed the IPKat with the following question:

"I saw an article on IPKat recently indicating that you did some research on employee-inventor compensation schemes a while ago.

Do you have any up-to-date sources of information for how private companies operate such schemes? I found some details for University schemes on WIPO's website, but haven't been able to find a set of examples for companies".

This Kat can't help, since his own research was oh, so twentieth century and he has nothing current to which to refer. Can any readers offer examples of private sector compensation schemes? If so, this Kat will be happy to pass them on or, if requested, make them available online. You can email him here.