NEWS Brazil and Europe sign bilateral patent deal
European individuals and companies will find it easier to apply for patents in Brazil after a bilateral deal was signed on April 12, 2012.
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and the European Patent Office (EPO) agreed to exchange patent documents in English and Portuguese. These documents will be freely translated on the EPO’s website.
EPO president Benoît Battistelli said the translation service will disclose large amounts of technical information that inventors, scientists and engineers in both regions can freely use.
The closer relationship follows an increase in the number of European companies filing patents in Brazil. From 2010 to 2011, the number of French applications increased by 7.7 percent, while those from German companies rose by 14 percent. According to Battistelli, Europeans are some of the most active users of Brazil’s patent system, currently accounting for 38 percent of all applications.
The offices expect European filings at INPI to increase and Brazilians to step up their use of the EPO. n
YouTube, Viacom copyright lawsuit reignites
removed copyrighted videos when notified, it was protected by a provision under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But the most recent decision will be an obvious blow to YouTube, which reaffirmed that it removed the disputed videos when asked. Viacom welcomed the decision, saying it was confident of prevailing in the lawsuit.
The $1 billion copyright lawsuit being fought between Viacom and YouTube has reignited after a court overturned an earlier ruling that favoured the video-sharing website.
The Manhattan-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said a “reasonable jury” could find that YouTube executives did
know that users were posting material that infringed Viacom’s copyright.
Media company Viacom sued Google-owned YouTube in 2007, alleging that material from shows such as South Park was illegally shared between 2005 and 2008. In 2010, a judge ruled that because YouTube had promptly
Oracle and Google in court over Android patents
Database-maker Oracle took Google to court on April 16, alleging that Android smartphone software infringes patents owned by its subsidiary company Sun Microsystems.
Oracle, which acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in 2010, claims Google copied elements of language-programming software Java—owned by Sun—and failed to take a licence. Google has denied the claims, saying Sun does not own the disputed application programming interfaces.
The lawsuit, under which Oracle wants $1 billion and an injunction to block Androids using the software, has been dubbed the
“world series of IP cases” by district judge William Alsup, who will oversee the jury trial.
Java enables the writing of programs for various operating systems and computers. Developed in the mid-1990s, it runs on billions of mobile devices, including on nearly all 150 million Androids, according to Oracle.
Talks between the two companies broke down despite several attempts to resolve the dispute outside court. The trial, to be held in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco, is expected to last eight weeks. n
10 World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2012
www.worldipreview.com
The latest ruling comes only days after Google signed a deal with Paramount Pictures, owned by Viacom, to provide films on YouTube’s online rental store. Viacom and Google also clashed this year over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While Viacom lobbied in favour of the controversial SOPA, which proposed handing greater powers to law enforcement officers, Google participated in an online protest against it. n
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