Google and Tencent have announced a patent cross-licence deal that they say will pave the way for future technology collaboration. The pact is said to be “long term” and covering “a wide range of products and technologies”. Beyond that there are no…
At last week’s IPBC Taiwan conference, managing IP costs emerged as a key theme of conversation – with some suggesting that financial pressure could lead to more monetisation activity. One firm that has recently opted to go down the monetisation…
Amended patent examination guidelines will come into force in China next month that look set to make it easier to obtain patent protection on certain software-related inventions in the country. The final revised rules announced by China’s State…
Whichever way you look at it, the deal between Microsoft and Xiaomi which was announced earlier this week has to go down as one of the most significant of the year so far. There are the terms of the deal itself – Xiaomi gets 1,500 patents from the…
Writing in the latest issue of IAM, I take a look at the current state of play with regards to IP policy in India. Since the election of prime minister Narendra Modi in 2014, the Indian government has pushed development of the IP system up the…
Since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Alice, many in the US patent community have been searching for a case that provides greater clarity on the justices’ thinking or, at the very least, doesn’t simply see the Court of Appeals for the…
Chinese internet and software company Sogou has sued domestic competitor Baidu for patent infringement in a development that underlines just how rapidly the Chinese IP marketplace is growing in sophistication. Sogou – a subsidiary of online…
Even in a very frothy deals market, Dell’s proposed takeover of EMC is one that stands out. At $67 billion it’s the largest tech transaction ever announced, with Dell seemingly eager to lessen its relative exposure to the declining PC market and…
DJI – one of the leading manufacturers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones for commercial and recreational purposes – has made a couple of major announcements in the past few days. Both underline its efforts to expand its business and the…
Hewlett-Packard has agreed to sell the majority stake in its China-based networking, data storage and server businesses to state-run Tsinghua Holdings – the investment arm of Beijing’s Tsinghua University – in a deal worth at least US$2.3 billion…
No-one willingly pays to license patents is an old adage and a very accurate one. There are few to which it applies with more vigour than Cisco. So, the news a few days back that the company had entered into a cross-licensing agreement with…
In the latest issue of IAM we published a list, compiled by MDB Capital Group, of the 369 companies that as of the end of last year owned at least 1,000 active US patents. For anyone who closely follows the patent market the top 10 was a largely…
India’s six-member IPR Think Tank recently made public the first draft of its much-anticipated proposal for a ‘National IPR Policy’ (you can read the document in full here). Earlier this week, IAM’s sister publication World Trademark Review analysed…
Chinese consumer electronics company TCL - a member of IAM's China IP Elite - has announced plans to launch a line of products under the Palm name, confirming rumours that it has acquired trademarks and other assets relating to the pioneering…
With the Christmas and New Year festivities now done and dusted, it’s time to crank up the juice and to get the IAM blog fully rocking and rolling once more. And what better way to do it than by revealing our IP personalities of 2014? As always,…
