Monthly Archive for October, 2006Page 2 of 4

Patent Law: Description and Types

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 30, 2006
in Law and Patent Law
. 0 Comments

From abblogger.com:

“As a general rule, patents are associated with things and processes which are vital to the world the only exception though are innovative designs. Patents also allow the creator of some inventions to preclude others from making use of it commercially without the permission of the creator. It is possible to acquire patent on technologies used in arts.

Nevertheless, the exceptions to the general rule are on product designs. It is thus theoretically potential to acquire design patent on the purely ornamental aspects of design while also having a copyright on same design.

Patents convey to the creator the right to exclude others from using or producing the former’s creation for a limited time. A patent for an invention is an award of a property right to the inventor. It is given by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A new patent may last up to 20 years from the date of application in the US. In special cases, it may start from the date of an earlier filed application. The application is subject to maintenance fees. It is also noteworthy to know that patent grants in US are only effective within US, its territories and possessions. If you want your patent grants to have extensions or adjustments, you can avail of the same under certain circumstances.

There are three types of patents. They are: a) Utility patents which may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers a machine, vital process, composition of matter, article of manufacture or any useful improvement thereof; b) Design patents may be granted to anyone who creates a new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; lastly c) Plant patents may also be granted to anyone who creates or discovers at the same time asexually reproduce any distinct and new variety of plant.

What is vested by the patent is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import but the right to EXCLUDE others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing said creation or invention. If the patent has already been issued, the patentee must enforce it without the assistance of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The gist of this statute is to grant authority to protect discoveries and creations. In order to be patented an invention must be novel, useful, and not of an obvious nature. Now, the creators/inventors can shun their worries about having works copied or used without their permission.”

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Young Law Students Getting Old Schooled

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 29, 2006
in Law School and Law Students
. 0 Comments

From z-wire.com:

The $1.2 million project for a new office wing at St. John’s University Law School’s clinical programs, which will provide students with better resources and more business like space, represents a commitment to the program’s law clinics, including its oldest, largest and most reputable—the school’s Elder Law Clinic—as interest in the field mounts.

Serving the borough’s low and no income seniors, the now 12 year old program began with the vision of merging the school’s mission of service with a recognized need for in the field law practice.

“It’s a population that is so easily overlooked,” said Afaf Nasher, an Elder Law Clinic alumni, of the program’s clients.

While the clinic has remedied the dilemmas of some of its 450 clients unconventionally - Nasher’s last client eventually had her house renovated by “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” after an underhanded contractor left it uninhabitable—the program affords students the opportunity to leave lecture halls and navigate traditional legal avenues. The students interview clients, stand beside them during court proceedings and work to unravel the webs of red tape in which seniors often find themselves entangled.

Just as environmental law emerged as a field in the 1980s with the growth of issue awareness, Ann Goldweber, the director of St. John’s Elder Law Clinic, explained that elder law is becoming an area students are increasingly considering as baby boomers age. This has come as law school deans are, like Daly, recognizing the importance of clinical law education.

Goldweber reported that while, in order to maintain ideal student supervisor ratios, the number of students admitted to the program has not changed, the applicant pool has steadily risen since her tenure began in 1998. Elizabeth Connolly, a second year law student enrolled in the Elder Law Clinic, reported that approximately 100 students interviewed for the 16 spots eventually filled this semester.

This interest at St. John’s has been mirrored at the City University of New York’s Law School. Associate professor and co supervisor of CUNY’s Elder Law Clinic, Joe Rosenberg, reported that increased demand for senior legal counsel started to noticeably translate into an increased interest in elder law approximately seven years ago.

Rosenberg explained that even those alumni who don’t directly enter professions of social service leave the clinic with the understanding of the need for attorneys today to diversify their offerings.

She reported that in a borough where so many sit on such enormous sources of equity, in the form of their homes, scams such as the one her current client has found himself caught in are not uncommon. Roughly 25 percent of the cases that St. John’s Elder Law Clinic takes on involve acts of impropriety, including predatory lending, home improvement contractor fraud and creditor scams.

For further information on St. John’s Elder Law Clinic, call (718) 990 6689.

LawVibe - Young Law Students Getting Old Schooled

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Businesses Seek Protection on Legal Front

Published
by
Michael Law
on October 29, 2006
in Law and Law News
. 0 Comments

From ny-times.com:

“WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Frustrated with laws and regulations that have made companies and accounting firms more open to lawsuits from investors and the government, corporate America — with the encouragement of the Bush administration — is preparing to fight back.

Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.

Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.

The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades.”

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