Did you know that Clash of Clans and Hay Day generated €2 million in revenue a day in 2013 for Finnish mobile game development company Supercell? And would you have thought that Supercell has 180+ published patent documents? I’ve looked through some of them in an Instagram Reel (in German). Some notable examples: EP 2 836 278 B1 “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING TECHNICAL...
“What advice would you give young lawyers and entrepreneurs?”, Priggya Arora asked me on her podcast. And now I’m feeling very old 🙂 It was a wonderful conversation with Priggya on The Priggya Arora show the other day. We covered topics like: How I got interested in technology and software before deciding to become a patent attorney How being in the patent field keeps things...
“How important is it for the technicality assessment to have exact formulations in software patent applications?” Great question by Wieland Reis on YouTube. Here’s my answer: What’s your burning question about digital patents? Tell me in the comments. And if you’re unsure about the exact claim wording to put into your next software patent application, download my free...
Many European Patent Attorneys still seem to struggle with getting software patent claims right. Maybe because they are experts in drafting claims for a physical product and the corresponding manufacturing method. But an algorithm needs a different approach. Is an algorithm a product or a process anyway? Things get even more complicated when the invention involves artificial intelligence and...
How come that two companies with the same target use case can have fundamentally different patent portfolio strategies? In this video, Prof. Alexander Wurzer explains a useful layer model to understand how companies can create value in Internet of Things environments. Source: IP Business Academy The video explains the 5-layer model by looking at Sonos and Spotify. Both companies serve the same...
There is no global patent, so patents are ultimately subject to national jurisdictions. Different patent offices have different legal provisions and different case law. From my European perspective, I’d say the EPO has a very stable examination framework for digital patents (or computer-implemented inventions, as they are called correctly) – from a birds-eye perspective. This allows...
How can I tell whether my outside patent attorney is competent for digital patents? The question came up during a conversation I had the other day with an in-house patent attorney in a large German corporation in the chemical industry. Here are some indicators I’d look out for: Is the outside patent attorney able to speak to your developers on eye level?Do his/her EP patent application drafts...
Can one patent DeFi in Europe? Well, you can’t patent the idea of providing financial services on public blockchains with smart contracts, because the fact that this enables financial transactions without a central regulatory entity is not a technical effect, but a business-related one.
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One question I get a lot lately is: “Now that we have G1/19, will it be more difficult to get software patents in Europe?” My answer: Probably yes, at least in the short term. Here’s why.
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Yesterday I was searching for an interesting patent to discuss in my next Software Patent Review. When I saw that Google’s DeepMind very recently received a European patent on “Reinforcement learning with pseudo-counts“, I knew the search was over. What’s the point of the patent? The patent covers a reinforcement learning technique which selects actions for a mechanical...