The Andhra Journal of Industrial News, October 2005, Issue 19, Vepachedu Educational Foundation

Contents
Hindu Knowledge - Western Exploitation - Copyrights
Indian Company Decides to Copy
Patent Litigation in UK
Transaction Invalidates Patent
Watch Your Tense in Patent Applications
Importance of Following Procedures
Pfizer patents
Vaccine for Sexually Transmitted Cancer
Generic Nexium
Revised MPEP
New USPTO Guidelines
Mittal Steel

Hindu Knowledge - Western Exploitation - Copyrights
Yoga is a $3 billion-a-year industry in the United States, including instruction and equipment. Nike has even marketed a shoe for yoga, which is done barefoot. How can anyone stake a claim to something that's been around for thousands of years and innovate? Nevermind, people will always try, especially when money is involved. And the lofty Indian goal is to stop it, stop making money using ancient Hindu knowledge!

Influenced by Western knowledge, successive leftist governments in India have shown nothing more than apathy and disgust towards Hindu culture and knowledge, while Hindu rightist governments miserably failed to protect and spread it for the benefit of the society. However, recently having watched Western entrepreneurs use ancient culture for years and make billions of dollars, claiming new and old, claiming everything from yoga-poses to yoga-shoes to Basmati rice as their own, the Indian government is fighting back to stop the spread of the Hindu culture and wealth. The fallout, strangely, is leftist government support for the Hindu culture and knowledge.

The Indian government started working on a database, known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, when Western businesses started borrowing from Ayurveda, India's Hindu holistic system of medicine, and plants were being patented and copyrighted. Indian officials have turned their efforts to preventing the copyrighting of actual yoga poses, or asanas, that have been part of Indian culture for thousands of years, but shunned by majority of Indians. For the last two years, a team of 50 researchers has been compiling information on yoga's origins in the Indian culture. So far, more than 1,500 yoga poses have been entered into the database. Indian researchers are poring through thousands of pages of ancient texts and are cataloging the information into a database. The government came up with the idea for the database as a way to protect the country's culture from opportunistic businessmen who would spread it and make money by robbing the poor Indians of their forgotten heritage.

One such copyrighting case involves Bikram Choudhury. The charismatic yoga guru moved to the U.S. from India in the 1970s and copyrighted a series of 26 prescribed poses and two breathing exercises as his own intellectual property. Those uncertified by Choudhury are prohibited from using even a small number of consecutive postures in the sequence or practically any modifications to the procedure. Questions about the legality of Choudhury's claim have yet to be answered. So far, all alleged violators have settled the claims out of court. Choudhury may argue that he is claiming the specific sequence of 26 poses and compare it to a songwriter's melody or a novel. All the notes or words are available to anyone, but not their arrangement in a melody or a novel, respectively. Anybody can write a new novel with the same English words and get a new copyright, but cannot prevent another new novel!

Indian Company Decides to Copy
In the midst of a global panic over a possible bird flu pandemic, an Indian drug company has decided to produce a generic version of Roche Pharmaceuticals’ Tamiflu treatment without permission from the patent holder.

Patent Litigation in UK
Patent litigation in the U.K. may become quicker and less expensive, due to a new service implemented by the Patent Office. On Oct. 1, the Patent Office began issuing non-binding opinions on the validity or infringement of any of its patents.

Transaction Invalidates Patent
A patent for disease-diagnosing probes, asserted by Enzo Biochem Inc., is invalid due to a controversial transaction made more than a year before it was issued, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled.

Watch Your Tense in Patent Applications
In Novo Nordisk v. Bio-Technology (Fed. Cir. 2005), the district court held Novo’s patent covering a synthetic human growth hormone (hGH) unenforceable due to inequitable conduct during prosecution. The inequitable conduct was due to:
A prophetic example in the past tense hiding the fact that the example was merely a prediction,
Novo never alerted the PTO to the prophetic example during the nine years of prosecution and Novo was never able to produce hGH using the described methodology,
Novo failed to inform the BPAI that it was unable to produce hGH using the described methodology even though it presented extensive expert testimony regarding use of the methodology during interference.
On appeal, the CAFC affirmed the district court’s decision and rejected Novo’s argument that its attorneys should not be charged with inequitable conduct because the inventors had not fully informed the attorneys. The Federal Circuit's decision will derail the company’s bid to keep a generic version of the hormone out of the U.S.

Importance of Following Procedures
In Medrad v. Tyco (W.D. Pa 2005, the district court agreed with the defendant that Section 251 (Reissue) can only be used to correct an error in the specification, drawings or claims and cannot be used to correct a procedural error that is not reflected in the patent grant itself and found Medrad’s reissue patent invalid because the reissue was filed for a purpose other than that enumerated in the statute. So, the plaintiff wasted its money in filing for reissue, obtaining it and asserting it, which was outside the scope of reissue.

Pfizer patents
A U.K. court has upheld one of Pfizer’s patents for billion-dollar drug Lipitor and has ruled another invalid. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case against Pfizer Inc.'s blockbuster antidepressant Zoloft, letting stand an earlier decision that clarified the meaning of “actual controversy” in the pursuit of declaratory judgments.

Vaccine for Sexually Transmitted Cancer
Sexually transmitted virus Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer and painful genital warts. About 20 million Americans have some form of HPV. HPV 16 and 18, two of the 100-plus types of HPV, together cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers. Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women and No. 2 cause of cancer deaths in women. Cervical cancer results in about 3,000 deaths in the United States and nearly 300,000 around the world each year. At least half of sexually active persons become infected with genital HPV at some point, unless both partners are monogamous for life. Prevention is the only effective measure as there is no cure for HPV. Gardasil, a genetically engineered vaccine, blocks infection with HPV 16 and 18. The first major study of Gardasil, an experimental vaccine, to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective, in the short term, at blocking the disease and lesions likely to turn cancerous, according to Merck & Co. The study, which was funded by Merck, was presented at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Generic Nexium
Indian drug maker Ranbaxy has applied to manufacture a generic version of AstraZeneca’s Nexium, in a move that is likely to incite a second court battle between the two companies over ulcer drug patents.

Revised MPEP
The Complete MPEP, including the latest revisions dated August 2005, is provided at: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/index.htm

New USPTO Guidelines
USPTO issued new business method guidelines available at its site: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/preognotice/guidelines101_20051026.pdf

http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/10/uspto_releases_.html

Mittal Steel
In October Mittla Steel cemented its dominant position in the Eastern European steel industry by buying Ukrainian steel mill for 24.2 bn hryvnya (~ $ 4.8 bn) in a televised auction, outbidding Arcelor of Luxembourg. Mittal Steel group already owns assets in Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Macedonia.

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