July 26th, 2009 at 06:41pm
Under intellectual property
It takes years to conceptualize and develop software products, but not much effort to replicate the software if it has not been patented. Have you come up with an idea, or an innovative process, or developed a neat little prototype around it? Are you totally excited about it and want to release it in the market and test it out? Hold on a bit, because you need to first protect your intellectual property. It takes years to conceptualize and develop software products. However, once the product attributes are well defined, it does not take significant effort to replicate the software on a different platform or language if it has not been patented. Can a copyright protect a new software product idea or process? A copyright on the software only protects the exact replication of the software code. A copyright does not protect another from replicating the core process, functional aspects, or idea of the software product. Also, a copyright provides no security if a similar code is proved to have been independently developed. Patents, on the other hand, provide an impregnable protection for software products and processes. The grant of a patent for a software product or process grants to the owner the right to exclude others from making, using or selling software that perform similar functions. In simplest terms, a software patent protects innovative software products and processes. The valuation of a software product company is increasingly dependent on the strength of its patent portfolio. Software patents level the playing field between small and large sized software product companies. A small software company with cutting edge patents such as Research In Motion can command a significant presence in their market or domain. A startup with a strong patent portfolio can carve out a niche market and securely position itself. Take the case of the Bangalore-based startup, Textual Analytics. Focused in the area of contextual search in the Internet, this startup developed a strong patent portfolio. Madan Pandit, CEO of Textual Analytics says: “Our filed software patent applications give us the confidence to enter the internet search markets that have large and well established players”. Alan Kay, the inventor of object-oriented programming, once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Organizations, big or small, use patents as a means to protect their inventions. For instance, Microsoft holds about 5000 patents, and IBM about 40,000 patents. Approximately 145,000 software patents have already been granted by the US patent office and about 17,000 new patents are issued every year. Trade secrets may be used to protect an idea in some industries. Coco Cola Inc., for example maintains its Coca-Cola product composition as a trade secret. However, it is difficult to maintain software processes as trade secrets primarily because the inventive idea in a software product can be reverse engineered. A significant part of the intellectual property of a software product is exposed on the release of the new product. There is a direct and transparent relation between the functional aspect or features of software and the software’s internal processes, which requires less effort to reverse engineer the product. The breadth of intellectual property that can be captured by a software patent is significant Software patents can be obtained for inventions that disclose physical components, or for function that it performs that are new and non-obvious. Software on its own is not patentable but the functions it performs are patentable. It is the machine, process, or manufacturing action utilizing the software that is patentable. Some examples of patentable software processes are editing technologies, control functions, compiling functions, user interactive software and operating system technologies. Business methods and mathematical algorithms, which use new manipulation of language-specific codes to obtain a predetermined result, are also patentable. The above mentioned software processes, business methods and mathematical algorithms covers almost anything one can think of in the high technology industry.
Ash Tankha, US patent attorney, works with inventors to develop their ideas into patent applications for worldwide filing and patenting. Contact Ash Tankha
ash@ipprocurement.com or visit
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By Copyright Law
July 13th, 2009 at 06:42am
Under intellectual property
Embitel and DMC, world class providers of embedded technology and e-commerce solutions have recently launched a unique online portal called ipsupermarket.com.
Ipsupermarket is a revolutionary online portal which allows developers, companies or individuals to license, buy and sell various kinds of software intellectual properties (ip) like audio, video, speech & image codecs, reference design or device drivers. It is a unique and customized portal in which sellers can list their new inventions, patents or trademarks. Users can access the variety of codecs, ip or patents listed in ipsupermarket.
Ipsupermarket.com enables individuals or companies to find their need for technology solutions by bringing them with the seller or owners of technologies. In other words, Ipsupermarket brings buyers and sellers together in one platform, which helps them to communicate directly.
The ip, technology or codecs that sellers would like to list can be from any industry or business as telecom, media, mobile and wireless communication. It could be also from equipment manufacturers, design houses, services companies, engineering companies, semiconductor companies or individual developers.
At ipsupermarket.com
Sellers can list their software ip, codecs or reference design which describes technical specification and description for sale or license.
Seller can also show their catalogs or demos to prospective buyers and hence buyers can take their final decision.
Buyers can list their software codecs or ip requirements and customized descriptions of technology.
User can view and search various listed ip including audio, video, image and speech codes, reference design, device drivers and patents.
Ipsupermarket is also involved in advertising, promoting and marketing of listed ip or technologies through various internet marketing channels.
About Ipsupermarket
IPSuperMarket.com is unique portal that provides convenient way of trading Intellectual Properties, software codes or codecs. IPSuperMarket.com provides a much needed online venue for people anywhere in the world to go online to purchase or sell the any kind of software patents, technology, reusable codes, formats or design elements. For more information kindly send a mail to webmaster@ipsupermarket.com
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By Copyright Law
July 9th, 2009 at 06:43pm
Under intellectual property
The 21st century has created a new world order to manage businesses more effectively. Companies are actively looking for ways to improve operational efficiencies. The new business mindset is—‘If there’s a method by which something can be done quicker or cheaper, why not use it’? This trend initially paved the way for outsourcing as a means to significantly reduce the cost of services. Similarly, Software Intellectual Properties (SIPs) are now making gradual inroads. SIPs represent an innovative and promising new approach for engineers to speed up the design and development cycle. During the course of a software development project, most companies find themselves racing against time, in order to meet the tight deadlines that they have committed themselves to. Deliver within An end-to-end software development project involves a range of intermediate software components, which have to be developed by qualified programmers, debugged, and customized as per the client’s business requirements. The whole process takes up resources such as trained manpower, development and testing time, computing time, and other associated overheads. As a technology professional handling a software development project, if you were offered ready-to-use software components that could instantly fit into an application and remove the need for developing them from scratch, surely it would go a long way in speeding up your software development cycle. This is actually possible now, through software intellectual properties.
What is Software Intellectual Properties (SIPs)?
Software Intellectual Properties are ready-to-use software components and source code for various technology applications. A range of reusable components and code are available as SIPs: audio codecs, video codecs, speech codecs, image codecs, wireless technologies, embedded software, reference design, device drivers, RTOS (Real-Time Operating Systems), etc. Instead of allocating resources to developing such software components in-house, you can actually buy them and then tailor them to an application. A SIP is therefore a time-saving solution.
Who Creates Software Intellectual Properties (SIP)?
Reusable software components and code are developed by technically qualified individuals or companies. These reusable components and code are the intellectual property of the individual developers, or the company for which they work. They are offered for a price, and companies can purchase the IPs and then adapt them to suit a particular application. If a technically-qualified developer has already spent time and effort in creating a reusable and customizable software component, it is certainly worth exploring and evaluating. Trading in SIPs is gradually gaining acceptance worldwide as a viable way to achieve operational efficiencies. It is a logical progression in the software industry, where there is a large talent pool of trained individuals constantly experimenting with innovative software components. For example, in the process of developing a Bluetooth software component for a wireless embedded application for a customer, some of the developer’s priorities would be to:
- Create a product that fits the customer’s environment in terms of programming language.
- Customize it to suit the customer’s business application;
- Match the memory requirement to the customer’s product;
- Create a component with low MIPS (million instructions per second) requirements, so that it can run on small mobile devices. Such products have a wide range of applications, with the differentiation mainly required through customization for particular business applications
How to identify right product for your business needs?
As is evident in the two examples cited above, developers build in a certain amount of adaptability into their SIPs, to ensure that they are easy to integrate into a software project. Adaptability is a key factor in SIP selection, so the key phrases to look for include: OS-independent, conforming to coding standards, scalable, customizable to the application, optimized for various hardware platforms, adaptable programming languages, optimized for any application, etc. Online search for SIPs opportunities can be explored at portals like IPSuperMarket.com (www.ipsupermarket.com) or designandreuse (www.designreuse.com) – and their services are available worldwide to businesses, technical experts and software developers. IPSuperMarket.com is a portal that connects buyers and sellers of software-related IPs. In other words, Ipsupermarket brings buyers and sellers together in one platform, which helps them to communicate directly for various software codecs, ip, patents or reference design. It has a powerful search feature that can narrow down your search to the exact specifications that fit your requirements. If you are a seller, you can list your products with precise technical parameters, to ensure accurate matching with buyer needs.
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By Copyright Law