The Dolcera Blog

Ranking makes life easier. Be it top 10 companies, top 10 universities to study technology or to choose amongst top 10 sci-fi movies you want to watch on the weekends; ranking allow us to choose the best amongst the available. Time saver, decision influencer and extremely helpful are the ranked material.

At Dolcera, we thought of applying the ranking methodology to patents. We have ranked patents based on a variety of parameters. First factor amongst all remains the client focus, second, sufficiency of disclosed information in patents and third credibility of a patent to perform the same process/art with higher efficiency than any other patent with similar focus.

Let us consider an example, the first table in the image below show patents with similar focus of decreasing tumor volume using RNA interference (RNAi). The patent one has disclosed maximum information in this area and in addition to the desired data, it has also published a lot more supporting information derived from other experiments. Further, as the rank goes down the percentage decrease in tumor volume decreases. Some may argue that patent 2 has disclosed more decrease in tumor volume than patent 1 but then patent 1 has disclosed more supporting data, taking its overall weighted score higher. Of course, if the client is still interested only in comparing tumor volume, patent at rank 2 will come at rank 1. Hence the ranking is customized to suit the client requirements.

The ranking of patents is not that simple as it may sound. The analysis team has to encounter challenges and figure out the ways to overcome them. Graphs, charts, instrumental outputs etc. will not give you data in percentages which can be just copy-pasted to compare. They have to be calculated first using mathematical tools which may vary from calculating areas under the graphs or applying differentiation & integration on instrumental outputs, to allow the reader to compare results before making the final decision. It’s considered an absolute value add to the decision making process by the clients who have sought such a service from us.

Not all experimental data will be quantitative. For people familiar with biotechnology would know that there are experiments (such as gel electrophoresis, staining etc.) that give qualitative or quasi-quantitative results. I am sure, the same will hold true with other technology fields too. Second part of the figure above summarizes few patents which can not be ranked as there is no data yield from such experiments and hence comparison is not possible. But then why miss them? We provide a Dolcera summary table which will give reader an idea as these experiments were atleast conducted and disclosed in patents. This comparison will thus strengthen the decision to be taken from ranking matrices discussed above.

This systemic approach of collecting, sorting, analyzing, and finally ranking the data has the following advantages:

1. Saves time!
2. Easy comparative analysis.
3. Helps in competitive watch
4. Decision on in-and-out licensing can be made.
5. Strong baseline for future scientific investigations.

Who will be benefited?

Scientific community: Extensive experimental data, comparison matrix of data from different patents with same focus is a feast to researchers and scientists as it helps them to choose best technologies.

Patent attorneys: Allows competitor watch, supports their decision on in and out licensing.

Venture capitalists / investors: Patent ranking based on disclosed information helps investors to decide patents to further invest upon.

Which technology fields are covered?

Patents in all the technological fields can be ranked. You just need to tell us the focus area and we will rank the patents for you. The ranking and weighing scores can be customized to suit user’s requirements.

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Call them “patent terrorists” or “paten trolls” they are here to stay. It needs constant vigil and dexterity in analyzing patents to shield those companies that have no tangible assets, products or customers—just a team of lawyers who write demand letters, file lawsuits and watch the dollars roll in. And the trolls are only one of the hosts of issues in-house IP counsel are dealing with right now as IP comes to the forefront of business law. Hence the oft repeated slogan “prevention is better than cure” holds well even in this context.

A quick mention of Dolcera’s patent dashboard is worth mentioning here. The patent dashboard has served as an early warning system for the in-house legal professionals of many Fortune 500 and Global 1000 organizations.

Most of these professionals would acknowledge that the lack of prior art information has led to any patent troll case. The patent dashboard’s collaborative feature makes it possible for sharing the prior art / product clearance searches within the organization.

Further, a regular analysis of patent portfolios of the known trolls within the industry and any closely-related industries can be pivotal in the prevention of a troll impact. The use of patent dashboard during the product design stage can ensure that all patents held by a known patent troll cannot be asserted in good faith against the products. In addition to this prevention measure, organizations can be well informed with the opinions on these patents held by patent trolls. Unlike many other contemporary tools, patent dashboard has been developed with active inputs from legal professionals from various organizations.

The issues sighted above are to prevent any possible attack from a patent troll; hence the need for in-house counsels to sift through a zillion patent documents and other scientific literature is well ascertained. Patent dashboard helps the legal professionals to structure the documents and also provides a solution to read only the relevant documents from the entire set. This aspect of the patent dashboard is critical for a legal professional at every strategic crossroads that seeks a very important decision.

This software has made it historical to exchange patent PDF documents through emails. Dolcera’s patent software holds all the relevant documents of the legal department in a central place for any in-house legal counsel to refer at any given time. The https enabled secure patent dashboard simply opens in any web browser. This award winning patent software helps in easy collaboration amongst geographically distributed teams inside large organizations.

“We had TMI — Too Much Information — going on here. This (Dolcera Dashboard) is a nice hybrid,” says says Michael Jaro, Chief Patent Counsel, Medtronic.

This patent analysis software aka patent dashboard has more to it. The rating and tagging feature of the document makes the future references of a document easy. The drag and drop feature further enhances the usability of the software.

“We have specific futuristic road-map carved out for the patent dashboard so that the lives of patent attorneys are made easy. At Dolcera, we believe that the current version of the patent dashboard is the first step towards making robust patent software” says Samir Raiyani, CEO of Dolcera.

The use of patent dashboard as described by one of the power users Mr Jaro himself “Each month, the Internet-based dashboard culls recent patent grants and applications from around the world and separates them by topic into different “buckets” so attorneys with different specialties don’t have to wade through irrelevant material. The culling is a result of both an automated search algorithm and human review performed by Dolcera’s Indian employees.”

“We have many tools to choose from, but there is more information out there than any single human being can feel comfortable digesting,” Jaro says. “This is just one way we thought we could do a better job of keeping up.”

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The PharmaCI conference is scheduled to be held on 15^th - 16^th September 2009 at New York. Ed Rozenberg, one of the founders of Dolcera will present a talk on “Unlocking the hidden potential from the abandoned molecules. - A systematic CI driven approach!”

 With the advancement of pharma industry there are two trends which we have witnessed that each company is focusing on a handful of therapeutic areas and exiting from other therapeutic areas resulting in “orphaned” and “abandoned” molecules. More so, many other companies are targeting smaller subpopulations in many therapeutic areas based on the latest scientific understanding.

Dolcera will unfold that how competitive intelligence can help to utilize the accumulated knowledge (clinical trials, toxicology analysis etc.) of the abandoned molecules to bring them to the market very quickly. The strategy will be a combination of scientific, market and patent intelligence to help unlock very valuable opportunities.

We sincerely hope that this presentation from us would help the research community from some of the world’s top pharma, biotech and health care companies such as Global Pharma Alliance, Zymogenetics, Pfizer, Boehinger Ingelheim, Roche Diagnostics to name a few.

We welcome all our blog readers to be part of this conference and contribute to the knowledge shared.

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The US India IP conclave on Information technology organized at Taj Krishna, Hyderabad started on a low note with the news of death of YS Rajasekhara Reddy, Chief Minister Andhra Pradesh in helicopter crash on 3rd September 2009.
The two days event organized by CII (confederation of Indian Industry) in association with USPTO Global Intellectual Property academy soon started to blaze as reputed panelist, both Indian bureaucrats and members of US embassy started addressing the audience. Welcome address was given by Shakti Sagar, Vice Chairman CII_AP & MD ADP Inida Pvt LTd. Theme address was given by Dominic Keating, IPR Attaché where he applauded Indian IT industries for their contributions to Indian economy. He mentioned that IT business has grown from 150 million US $ in 1991 to 50 billion US$ in 2007 and is further expected to rise to 900 billion US $ by 2020. Hyderabad alone exports IT worth 163 billion US $ and has shown a growth of 323% from year 2002.

GS Ragahavender, Registrar of copyrights, Copyright office, Government of India in his key note address discussed about legislation, management and enforcement as three pillars to assure working of IP laws. Cornelis M Keur, Consul General, US Consulate admired Andhra Pradesh as third state after Maharashtra and Gujarat in terms of growth in Economy. Concluding remarks of the inaugural session was given by Dr. S Chakravarthy, IAS(R), Advisor-APTDC.

Soon after a short coffee break the conference resumed on special plenary: The digital dilemma: Intellectual property in the information age. Dr. A Garg, Director-IPR department of Information technology, Govt of India emphasized that SMEs (small and medium enterprises) has to play a leading role in innovation. Incubation parks, multiplier grand scheme, SIP-EIT (support international patent protection in electronics and IT) have been started by government to support innovation. Under SIP-EIT, a financial support of upto 50% of total patent processing cost including Attorney’s fees, patent office filling fees, examination fees, patent search cost and additional cost for entering national phase up to grant/issue will be given. The support will be in the form of reimbursement of expenses in actual to the applicant. Support will however be limited to Rs. 15 lakhs or 50% if the total incurred on filling each invention, whichever is less.

Prof M Sridhar Acharyulu, MHRD IP chair professior, NALSAR, Jennie Ness, Regional Inteleecual propery Attaché for South east Asia US embassy Bangkok and Madhukar Sinha, Prof-IPR, center for WTO studies, IIFT shared their knowledge on various dilemmas to be confront in the rapidly growing age of IT.

Third session on strategies for protection of incremental innovation and patentability of software: challenges for IT/software industry started after high-lunch. The session was mainly headed by corporate professionals enlightening on Indian, US and European laws on software patenting and copyrights. BLV Rao, VP- corporate affairs, Infotech enterprise Ltd initiated the session with a focus on incremental innovations. Dawn Jos, Pat Engg-Asia, Texas instrument was next speaker in the session. Himanshu Goswami, IP attorney, Microsoft India and Santanu Mukherjee, lead-IPR attorney, Qualcomm India discussed intrinsic details on IT and Indian patent article 3 (k), European article 52 (2), 52 (3) and US laws on software patenting.

Dominic Keating unfolded the legalities of patenting software and business methods in US. Anil Sharma, Knowledge scientist Dolcera took the stage and discussed one of the most talked about cases in US, “In re Bilski & its implications on software patents.” The presentation kindled interest amongst the audience from the word go. The talk showcased the research work that Dolcera had undertaken in collaboration with Medtronic in Bilski case and its impact on software, medical devices and pharma method patents.

The last session of the day was on open source software: who needs IP, was chaired by Venkatesh Hariharan, Director, corporate affairs, Redhat Asia-Pacific, Prof. KS Rajan, IIIT-Hyderabad and Pavan Duggal, leading advocate in the Supreme Court of India. The panelists presented their views on pros and cons of free software versus paid software in context of IP and public interest.

The conclave was a major success and big boost to the city of Hyderabad. The city being an IT hub and IPR industries and law firms already budding, conferences like such will enhance awareness amongst the professionals. Overall, the conclave was a great experience and CII - USPTO effort to increase IP awareness in India is definitely commendable.

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Dolcera has worked with Mike Jaro, the Chief Patent Counsel, to create the Patent Dashboard platform that is now used by dozens of Fortune 500 companies around the world.

Here is an article on InsideCounsel describing Medtronic’s requirements and the Dolcera-powered solution.

Some quotes:

“We have a lot of different technologies that we work with, and as the amount of patents has been escalating, it became more and more difficult to make sure we had good current awareness,” says Chief Patent Counsel Michael Jaro. “We had TMI—‘too much information’—going on here.”

“We knew we needed to do something different,” Jaro says. “We had tried machine-based categorization, but it was not altogether acceptable, because we were getting overinclusive or underinclusive lists.”

“Human beings are much better at categorizing documents into meaningful topics than machines are,” he says. “This is a nice hybrid.”

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This is in continuation to my previous post on Patenting Landscape in India which could be read from the link given below
http://blogs.dolcera.com/blog/2009/07/18/patenting-landscape-in-india-a-view-on-patenting-trends-in-india-a-dolcera-analysis/

In this post the Analysis concentrates on finding the Top companies who have maximum publication in the Indian Patent Office. The Top Companies were searched for the patents published between 01st January 2005 -21st July 2009. The patents filed in all the 4 Indian Patent offices are considered

The Top 15 Companies

From the Graph one can conclude that Qualcomm leads in the race for Publications in the Indian Patent Office with 2118 publications followed by Philips Electronics and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Qualcomm deals with electronics and communication products. Since India is a major market for Mobile/ Cell phone, Qualcomm has a good advantage for its patents filed in India to get protection for its inventions

The Top Indian Assignees

From the Graph one can see that Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) is the Top Indian Assignee when it comes to publications in India with 1541 publications followed by Hindustan Unilever Ltd. with 523 publications. But CSIR still trails with Qualcomm and hence it is necessary to encourage more research to be the Top patent filer in India.

Of the Top 100 Companies that Dolcera has analysed, 8 Indian companies happen to be in it while the rest of them are Foreign companies. It means 92 % of the Top publications in India are by MNCs. This scenario should be looked upon since the domestic Patent filers in other countries like the US, Japan, China are neck to neck with the International Filers. This should be seriously be looked upon by Indian Companies since it shows that most Indian companies concentrate/Invest only a small part of their budget to R&D activities. The Indian Government should also encourage Indian Universities to carry out R&D activities so that India could become a recognized country in R&D developments.

-Anil Sharma

Knowledge Scientist

Dolcera

© Dolcera 2009, All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication should be copied without the permission from the authour or from Dolcera.

Disclaimer:  There can be manual errors and the author or the company(Dolcera) takes no responsibility for the damage caused due to the data provided.

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Introduction:

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations.

Unique characteristics of a WSN include:

•     Limited power they can harvest or store
•     Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions
•     Ability to cope with node failures
•     Mobility of nodes
•     Dynamic network topology
•     Communication failures
•     Heterogeneity of nodes
•     Large scale of deployment
•     Unattended operation

Efficient power management

Several techniques are used for efficient power management

• Dynamic power management (DPM): Dynamic power management (DPM) is an effective tool in reducing system power consumption without significantly degrading performance. The basic idea is to shut down devices when not needed and wake them up when necessary.
• Data-Driven Power Management (DDPM): A new power management framework called Data-Driven Power Management (DDPM) is used as the infrastructure for integrating various energy efficient techniques, such as approximate querying and sleep scheduling.
• Efficient Sleep Scheduling based on Application Timing (ESSAT): Another technique Efficient Sleep Scheduling based on Application Timing (ESSAT), a novel power management scheme that aggressively exploits the timing semantics of wireless sensor network applications. ESSAT protocols have several distinguishing features. First, they can save significant energy with minimal delay penalties. Second, they do not maintain TDMA schedules or communication backbones; as such, they are highly efficient and suitable for resource constrained sensor platforms.

Low power operation on batteries :

Networks of sensors are widely used for monitoring and control applications. In a communication network, deployment of wires is expensive and causes hassles during normal operations and maintenance. This led to the development of wireless networks. Wireless sensor networks not only eliminate the need for wires, but also open many new application domains. Reliability and low-power consumption are the two important factors, which determine the performance of a WSN. Though messages are exchanged without any data cables in a WSN, power cables are required for powering sensor devices. Power is fed to the WSN via mains supply. But, this concept is now replaced by batteries and energy harvesting devices. If batteries are used, replacement and maintenance issues cause concern. Power management techniques (low-power/ultralow-power WSNs) seem to be the viable solutions in improving the lifetime of the batteries and various low-power technologies are being developed in this spectrum. Power/energy harvesting is an emerging technology, which eliminates the need for batteries.

Energy Harvesting technologies :

Energy harvesting technologies are required for autonomous sensor networks for which using a power source from a fixed utility or manual battery recharging is infeasible. An energy harvesting device (e.g., a solar cell) converts different forms of environmental energy into electricity to be supplied to a sensor node. However, since it can produce energy only at a limited rate, energy saving mechanisms play an important role to reduce energy consumption in a sensor node.
Energy harvesting technologies such as piezoelectric, thermoelectric and others will have potential applications in wireless sensor networks and low-power devices.

Products:

The Wireless sensor networks have Microcontroller kits which controls all motes in the network and especially for low power harvesting in the network we have different kind of batteries and energy harvesting and converting modules like thermal energy harvesters and solar energy harvesters

• NI WSN-3212(4-Channel, 24-Bit, Programmable Thermocouple Input Node)
• EnerChip EH CBC5300 Energy Harvesting Module
• Solar Energy Harvesting Wireless Demo Kit
• JenNet Protocol Stack
• JN5148 Wireless Microcontroller - ZigBee PRO Platform
• JN5139 Wireless Modules (IEEE802.15.4 and ZigBee)
• PhyNet Wireless Sensor Networking Platform
• Arch Rock Energy Optimizer
• GreenPeak Emerald GP500C Communications Controller chip
• Micropelt Thermogenerator
• SmartMesh
• Wireless Sensor Hub (Battery)
• Powercast Powerharvester module

Market research:

World Market projection:

*Wireless Sensors and Transmitters market is growing worldwide. The below figures indicates there is a drastic change in last few years and these number increases in future.

*Last 5 Years: Market growth is huge in the last 5 years increased from 180 million dollars in 2005 to 380 million dollars approximately (200 % growth).

*Future: Market forecasts reaches to 1800 million dollars by 2012 approximately (45% growth)

Global Market projection:

*The below graph shows wireless sensors and Transmitters market in different regions North America, Europe, Asia pacific, and other countries of world.

*Major market growth in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

*Last 5 Years: In North America the market increased from 20 million dollars to 160 million dollars approximately, in Europe the market increased from 15 million dollars to 130 million dollars approximately, in Asia-Pacific the market increased from 8 million dollars to 120 million dollars approximately.

*Future: Market forecast reaches to 600 million dollars in North America, 500 million dollars in Europe and 400 million dollars in Asia pacific approximately.

Contributing Authors

Rajeshwari, Haritha, Garg and Sateesh

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Case background    Avandia is the popular drug name marketed by GSK had strong sales of 2.3 billion USD in 2007 till reports of its cardiovascular risks came out in the market place (forcing lots of physicians to change prescriptions to their patients, though the data was proclaimed as inconclusive by FDA).
    Avandia finds strong applications for glycemic control or in others words for diabetes type II treatment. Its active ingredient is a compound called Rosiglitazone, and a variant of this chemical compound was patented by GSK with expiry in 2005  (US5741803).

GSK Indian strategy

—————————–

Per change in the Indian patent act in 2005, GSK filed a patent for the same active ingredient as disclosed in US 5002953 as an Indian patent 00295/DELNP/2003 trying to claim the ethanesulfonate salt of the active ingredient. This patent was subsequently rejected by the India Patent office citing no evidence of the complex showing substantially different clinical efficacy than the available pharmaceutical version of Rosiglitazone.

However, it is interesting to note that GSK has not given up. It has at least three more pending application before the IPO for the same compound Rosiglitazone and we will have to see how the IPO deals with that. These applications are:- 
    a) IN3546/DELNP/2004 in which GSK has tried to patent a cyclodextrin complex of rosiglitazone and

    b) IN4030/DELNP/2005 in which GSK has tried to patent the process for manufacture of a rosiglitazone polymorph (the maleic ester form as patented in US7358366)
    c) IN6569/DELNP/2007 in which GSK has tried to patent a novel method of delivering rosiglitazone (enmeshed in nanofibres)

To counter this threat, Cadila and Dr. Reddys have also filed process patents for manufacture of amorphous Rosiglitazone maleate.

Only time will tell, who will win the Rosiglitazone turf war in India.

Source:

FDA Orange book - http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/docs/patexclnew.cfm?Appl_No=021071&Product_No=002&table1=OB_Rx

Indian Patent office

US Patent Office

Economic times

—

Lakshmikant Goenka

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NOTE: Click on the graphs for enlarged view

1. The complete picture

In 2006 total number of application filled across the world were 1,764,633 which were 4.9% more than filled in 2005 (1,681,596).

There is 91% increase in patent filing from 1985 to 2006 and 67% increase from 1995 to 2006.

2. Top 10 patent filing countries

Japan remains the undisputed number 1 country filling maximum patents across the world. Number of filling has increased by 5.1% from 2000 (489,187) to 2006 (514,047).

USA is the top second country with an astonishing increase of 42.5% increase in patent filling from 2000 (274,317) to 2006 (390,815).

3. Top 11 patent filing offices

USPTO displaced Japan patent office from its number 1 position in 2000 to number 2 in 2006. While US showed a gigantic leap of 44% Japan came down by 2.6% during the same period.

China patent office was at number 3 and showed enormous increase in patent filing of 305% from 2000 to 2006. The neighbor country India (global number 11) also showed 188% increase in 1 year from 2005 to 2006.

4. Patent filing trend: Rise and Fall

Countries on RISE: China, USA, Netherlands, Switzerland and Republic of Korea
Countries on FALL: Japan, Russian Federation, Germany, France and United Kingdom

Compiled from World Patent Report: A Statistical Review (2008)

- Harit Mohan

Knowledge Scientist, Dolcera

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A recent pre-marketing survey has shown that 6 out of every 10 companies surveyed are planning to skip changing to MS Windows 7. Windows 7 is scheduled to be launched on 22nd October this year. But the good news is, Windows 7 has better reviews than Windows Vista atelast!

Many of the companies rejected to switch to Windows 7 because it will cost them extra penny in recession period and they are unsure will their existing applications be compatible with Windows7.

The survey found about 60 percent of those surveyed have no plans to deploy Windows 7, 34 percent will deploy it by the end of 2010 and only 5.4 percent will deploy by year’s end.

This may turn out happy news for Google who are also planning to launch their OS, Google chrome by year 2010. Analysts have said that Google which will challenge to Microsoft’s decades-old dominance of computer operating systems and business applications will take years to get significant share of the market, but startups might be their way in.

However Microsoft’s Windows still dominates. It remains the operating system software for about 95 percent of PCs, with more than 950 million copies running worldwide. It may not turn out be a cake walk for Google but the consumers can hope that cake will get sweeter as Google rivals Microsoft in the battle for creating user friendly OS.

Edited from Reuters.

- Harit Mohan
Knowledge Scientist
Dolcera

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