For some time now, it has been known that the Chinese government provides financial incentives to Chinese nationals and Chinese companies that file domestic and foreign patent, utility model, registered design, and trade mark applications. The Chinese government, for example, subsidises official fees and attorney fees, offers tax breaks, provides financial support, and issues rewards for patent and utility model utilisation. The idea of this generous arrangement is to increase the awareness of IP in China and to encourage Chinese innovators to learn how to protect their IP.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has created a worldwide shortage of ventilators, and in the UK, the NHS is soon expected to require significantly more ventilators than are currently in circulation. As a result, on Monday 16th March, the UK government called for businesses to help make ventilators and ventilator components in an attempt to dramatically increase the number of ventilators available to the NHS in a matter of weeks. In response, both existing manufacturers of ventilators are increasing production and other manufacturing businesses are joining the effort.
read moreIn a report of 12 March 2020 titled Digital technologies take top spot in European patent applications, the European Patent Office reports overall European patent applications were up by 4% in 2019 compared to 2018. Best performer in 2019 was digital communications with an almost 20% rise pushing medical technologies off the top filing technology spot for the first time since 2006.
read moreThe German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has announced its decision that the planned UPC does not comply with German constitutional law.
read moreBritish Science Week is here, a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics for children in the UK. This year children are being introduced to the world of training artificial intelligence data sets. 2020’s eagerly anticipated Citizen Science “Zooniverse” partnership ramps up the “zoo” and shrinks the “universe” to a few chunks of South America. The public are being asked to help save spider monkeys, a lovable group of primates under threat from our insatiable appetite for palm oil.
read moreAt the time of writing, over one hundred and eighteen thousand cases of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) have been confirmed worldwide and this number is expected to rise significantly. In response to the outbreak, pharmaceutical companies and research organisations are racing to develop new vaccines and repurposing existing anti-viral drugs.
read moreThe World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has recently issued a report summarising IP facts and figures for 2018. For this blog, we’ve picked out some interesting statistics from the data on patents. Record numbers of patent applications are being filed 2018 saw the number of new patent applications being filed in a calendar year exceed 3.3 million for the first time. This is an increase of 5.2% over 2017 and it is the ninth straight annual increase.
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