http://www.sys-con.com/read/360713.htm
Maxwell Technologies, Inc. announced today that
a federal district court in the Southern District of California has issued an
order finding that Maxwell has established a likelihood of its success in the
patent infringement action it filed against Nesscap, Inc. and Nesscap, Ltd.
("Nesscap") in October 2006, accusing Nesscap's ultracapacitor products of
infringing two of Maxwell's U.S. patents. The court also determined that Maxwell
would be irreparably harmed if a preliminary injunction does not issue. As a
result, U.S. District Judge John A. Houston ruled that a preliminary injunction
will issue, prohibiting Nesscap from making, using, selling or offering to sell
its prismatic ultracapacitors in the United States while the litigation is
pending.
...On a related note, after Maxwell brought its infringement action against
Nesscap in San Diego in October 2006, Nesscap filed a patent infringement action
against Maxwell in federal district court in Delaware in December 2006.
So looks like NessCap does have one or more patents, I just couldn't find it. Too bad the patent # isn't referenced in the article.
I wonder if anybody came across some information regarding licensing of technologies. The Open Innovation book talks about most patents being near worthless, but then you hear about IBM's patent portfolio generating over a billion in revenues every year. So what do licensing agreements typically look like? % of revenue? Flat fee?
1 comment:
patent infringement is a very significant issue for the economy, the reason being that lately we have seen a weakening manufacturing sector in canada and even in US because of the out sourcing, this has put a lot of pressure on the technology driven sector to come up with newer technologies to compensate for the loss of manufacturing revenues. Finally the question arises... is the juice worth the squeeze? Is filing for patents actually rewarding for the companies? or is it the trade secrets that play a more important role in the profit generation?
going back to the issue of the importance of newer technologies in canadian economy, If the patent rights cannot be protected, as we have seen in some cases such as certain drugs (the recent novartis case where they failed to get a patent in another country) perhaps the whole economic vision is flawed...manufacturing sector is not in great shape and patent protection is a very grey area, if thats the case then perhaps its time to rethink the economic strategy. Is free market economy ( global economy) in favor of nations with low productivity (because of better labor laws and better wages)...such as canada?
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