ipmINDs

Chemicals and innovation: Strategies for R&D in emerging economies)

mais — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 06:01:53 +0000

Chemicals and innovation: Strategies for R&D in emerging economies

Courtsy by John Baker

Strategies for R&D in emerging economies

ICIS has run several roundtables recently where innovation has risen as a topic, particularly the growing move by chemical majors to carry out innovation in places like China and the difficulties encountered. Now consultancy McKinsey has carried out an industry survey to assess the current situation.It finds that many companies have not even addressed the issue of doing research and development in emerging economies like China, India and Brazil, even though these are the markets with vibrant growth prospects and the need for localised innovation in products that meet market demands.

McKinsey found that ”fully one-third of executives around the world say their companies are not doing any R&D work in emerging economies.” However, the good news is that companies that are active are addressing local needs, and not just attempting to shift innovation for developed markets to low cost regions.

Says McKinsey: “Of the two-thirds of respondents whose companies pursue such efforts, the largest shares say their R&D is focused on either global product platforms or local innovation in emerging economies, as opposed to R&D for developed markets only, which respondents say is not a major focus of emerging-market R&D operations. Moreover, companies appear to be aligning their goals, whether it’s seeking lower development costs or gaining better access to customer insights, with their specific R&D focus in emerging economies.”

You can read the full report here.

Indian brings “Minority Report” like hand gestures navigation called “SixthSense” to reality

mais — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:44:16 +0000

Remember the scene in the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise uses hand gestures instead of a mouse to interact with a computer screen displayed on the wall?

Pranav Mistry has brought this to close to reality with USD 320 devices..

Pranav Mistry is the creator of SixthSense, a wearable gesture interface that uses a camera and tiny projector to display data and information onto surfaces, walls, and even your hand. Special fingertip sensors let users manipulate the data and use their hands to interact with it. During a presentation at the TEDIndia conference this week, the PhD student announced plans to release SixthSense under an open source license in the coming months.

"I notice that it's hard to for these kind of things to market in some sense. . . because I don't want this to comply with some of kind of corporate policy," says Mistry. "Rather than waiting for that time to come, I want people to make their own system. Why not?"

"People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software…give them basic key software layers. . . they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything".

The device, which can be built for about $350, has fascinating implications beyond its infinite coolness. SixthSense has the ability to sense objects around you and displays content relevant to your environment. If you're in a bookstore, for instance, and hold up a copy of Learning the Vi and Vim Editors, SixthSense shows you pricing guides, information about the author, and so on. Mistry's device puts the Internet literally at your fingertips.

Image courtesy of Pranav Mistry and Sam Ogden.

MJ’s antigravity step secret is out

mais — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:19:29 +0000

MJ is known for many things- also as innovator, who invented and patented "system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes" (US patent5,255,452). A heel slot in the shoes gets hitched to retractable pegs in a stage floor. Wearing the shoes, Jackson (or anyone) could seem to lean past his center of gravity without toppling. The effect would be most striking in live performances, during which harnesses and wires would be too cumbersome or impossible to disguise.
Source: USA Today

Patent Application filing – India

mais — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:01:27 +0000

The Strangest Mobile Gadgets Never Made

mais — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:24:25 +0000

The Strangest Mobile Gadgets Never Made

via jkOnTheRun by James Kendrick on 9/14/09

We sure love our mobile gadgets, even those that never saw the light of day. It’s enough to get us pumped up to see the concepts that designers have come up with in the mobile gear space. Technologizer has rounded up 21 of the weirdest mobile gadgets from Google Patents and laid them out for our amazement. There’s the laptop with the integrated dot matrix printer and another with a detachable screen for putting it on a projector to make presentations. These never-produced gadgets are enough to bring tears to a geek’s eyes. OK, not really.

Image courtesy Technologizer

Who regulates whom in the financial world?

mais — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:03:40 +0000

Who regulates whom in the financial world?

via Indianomics by SriRam Vadlamani on 8/30/09

The importance of regulations and regulators would have been very clear by now. Especially after the Satyam saga. Regulators are the good people who know who should run in which way. If there is a deviation it is the regulators job to tell so and advise corrective action.

The external auditors for Satyam are PWC. It is the job of the auditors of PWC to actually check all the bank deposits and other instruments mentioned on the balance sheet. Since they haven’t done their job very well India has got its biggest corporate fraud. In the case of auditors, Institute of Chartered accounts in India (ICAI) is the governing body of all the chartered accountants in India. It becomes the job of ICAI in this case to put the auditors of PWC in the right place.

Another biggest regulatory body in the financial markets is Securities and exchange Board in India (SEBI). It has to step into action every now and then. Be it the ipo allocation fraud or the pledging of shares or the price-sensitive rumours. SEBI is the watchdog. If it lapses then the hell will break loose, literally.

There is a governing agency for all the practitioners in the financial world. Here I am listing down the entity and its governing agency.

	REGULATOR
BANKS – ISSUE COLLECTION	SEBI
CREDIT RATING AGENCIES	SEBI
CUSTODIAL SERVICES	SEBI
DEBENTURE TRUSTEES	SEBI
DEPOSITORIES	SEBI
DEPOSITORY PARTICIPANTS	SEBI
FOREIGN BROKERS	SEBI
FOREIGN DEBT FUNDS	SEBI
FOREIGN INVESTMENT INSTITUTIONS	SEBI
INVESTMENT BANKERS	SEBI
INVESTOR ASSOCIATIONS	SEBI
MUTUAL FUNDS & ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANIES	SEBI
PLANTATION COMPANIES	SEBI
PORTFOLIO MANAGERS	SEBI
REGISTRARS & SHARE TRANSFER AGENTS	SEBI
STOCK BROKERS	SEBI
STOCK EXCHANGES	SEBI
SUB-BROKERS	SEBI
VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS	SEBI
BANKS	RBI
CHIT FUNDS	RBI
NBFCs	RBI
PRIMARY DEALERS	RBI
CO-OPERATIVE BANKS	RBI
INSURANCE BROKERS/ AGENTS	IRDA
INSURANCE COMPANIES	IRDA
AUDITORS	ICAI/CAG
COMPANIES – ALL	MCA/ROC
COMPANIES – LISTED	MCA/ROC/SEBI/SE
COMPANY SECRETARIES	ICSI
MUTUAL FUND BROKERS/ AGENTS	AMFI/SEBI
NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES	PCI
RADIO	MIB
TV	MIB
SOLICITORS & LEGAL ADVISORS	BCI

As you can see, SEBI is the regulator body for all the happenings in the stock market world. RBI is the regulatory body for all the banks, co-operative banks and the non-banking financial institutions. (Source : IEPF)

*image credit

Posted via email from ipminds’s posterous

Lithium Ion Battery breakthrough promises 100-fold boost in performance

mais — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:37:48 +0000

Lithium Ion Battery breakthrough promises 100-fold boost in performance
Researchers have developed a new advanced Lithium Ion battery that will allow mobile phone and laptop computers to be fully charged in seconds. Electric car batteries may be charged in as little as five minutes, removing one of the main barriers to wider uptake of EVs. Solar and wind power generation could also benefit as better batteries could be used to store surplus energy…

Tags: Batteries, Battery Electric Vehicle, Laptop, Lithium-ion, MIT, Mobile Phone, Solar, Wind Power

Related Articles:
MIT develops new fast-charging battery technology ideal for automobiles
Silver-Zinc batteries shape up to the Lithium-Ion incumbents
< http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GizmagEmergingTechnologyMagazine/~3/zi5lf1AcQOk/>

Hitachi’s new lithium ion-powered drill
ZPower’s silver-zinc rechargeable batteries promise efficiency gains
Subaru doubles the battery range on its electric car concept
New battery recharges in one minute

gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine
gizmag.com covers the full gammut of emerging technologies, invention and innovation – from automotive to aerospace, from handhelds to supercomputers, from robotics to home automation, the site reports on all major announcements across 40 categories.

Lithium Ion Battery breakthrough promises 100-fold boost in performance

Researchers have developed a new advanced Lithium Ion battery that will allow mobile phone and laptop computers to be fully charged in seconds. Electric car batteries may be charged in as little as five minutes, removing one of the main barriers to wider uptake of EVs. Solar and wind power generation could also benefit as better batteries could be used to store surplus energy…

Tags: Batteries, Battery Electric Vehicle, Laptop, Lithium-ion, MIT, Mobile Phone, Solar, Wind Power

Related Articles:

MIT develops new fast-charging battery technology ideal for automobiles

Silver-Zinc batteries shape up to the Lithium-Ion incumbents

Hitachi’s new lithium ion-powered drill

ZPower’s silver-zinc rechargeable batteries promise efficiency gains

Subaru doubles the battery range on its electric car concept

New battery recharges in one minute

New technology promisses charging of lithium ion battery in seconds

mais — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:29:35 +0000

MIT Researchers Byoungwoo Kang & Gerbrand Ceder have developed a new advanced Lithium Ion battery that will allow mobile phone and laptop computers to be fully charged in seconds. Researches have developed a method Lithium ion battery to charge and discharge like a supercapacitor.

Charging and discharging time of a battery depends upon the time taken by the lithium ions to travel cathode and anode. In normal course ions take time to move away from cathode.

Researcher have devised a novel method of reducing this time by glassy coat on the small tunnels carrying these ions.These glossy surfaces work as speed-highways for ions and thus reducing the travel time.

Electric car batteries (15Kwh) may be charged in as little as five minutes, removing one of the main barriers to wider uptake of EVs. Solar and wind power generation could also benefit as better batteries could be used to store surplus energy

courtesy- Gizmag

Patent Strategies in Light of the New Rules

mais — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:08:29 +0000

Courtsy Russ Krajec’s Anything Under The Sun Made By Man

In Patent Drafting and Claim Writing, Patent Drafting Theory, Practical Tips for Patent Drafting, Patent Strategy, Patents in Business, Business Theory for Patents, The USPTO

The latest rules from the US Patent and Trademark Office are quite sweeping. The new rules have several facets. On one hand, the PTO is limiting the number of continuation and continuation in part applications, as well as requests for continued examination (RCE). On the other hand, the PTO is limiting the number of claims you can have by forcing the applicant to file an Examination Support Document if you exceed the claims.

Another twist is that the Examination Support Document may be forced where two applications are filed nearly simultaneously. The PTO may assume that they cover the same patentable material and force an Examination Support Document unless you can prove that the applications do not cover the same material.

(As a side note, I have spoken to several patent attorneys/agents about the new rules and I have not yet found one who would even agree to write an ESD, no matter what the cost. The reasoning is similar to why I will not file accelerated examinations.)

Each of the various requirements put on the applicant presents several problems, including the specter of patent invalidity and possibly inequitable conduct if the various support documents and petitions are not properly done.

In some situations, I used to espouse a kitchen sink approach to patent prosecution, where you load up a patent application with as many ideas as possible, get an early filing date, and file many continuation applications as possible. This strategy can blanket an area of technology very effectively and makes the best use of early disclosure. The strategy also could be used to tailor claims to an infringer so that lengthy and costly court battles may be averted entirely.

In view of the new rules, I think another strategy may be better suited.

This strategy is very targeted and narrow, and looks to find specific areas that may be infringed in the future, but does not include any more than it needs.

The targeted strategy is driven from the need to avoid overlapping applications and avoid the potential that a continuation application may need to be filed.

The steps are as follows:

1. Define a very specific strategy for patent coverage over the entire scope of the technology you wish to cover. The strategy must be driven by the current and potential business needs of the client, as well as the possible turns a technology may take.

2. Draft a complete set of claims for each targeted area. Each element of the claims should be carefully and thoughtfully considered for the language, the scope of coverage, any way the claims may be construed or misconstrued, how an infringer may infringe, and for how it differentiates from the known prior art.

3. Only after the claims are completed, analyze the claims with the inventor and the business manager, reviewing the areas described in step 2.

4. Draft a specification that addresses each and every claim and every feature of every claim, and avoid any additional material if at all possible. Each feature must be described completely, but avoid adding other ideas that may be patentably distinct and that you may wished were a stand-alone patent.

One interesting twist to the new rules is to attempt wherever possible to force a restriction by including patentably distinct sets of claims. Each divisional application is a separate family of applications for the purposes of continuation applications and RCEs.

The new rules may tend to force less disclosure and much more tailored specifications that may stand or fall on the first couple Office actions, rather than specifications with all sorts of material that may keep an application alive through several continuations. This may lead applicants to perform good searches based on the claim set of step 2 prior to drafting the specification of step 4.

The net result is a shift from large, comprehensive patents that may disclose a broad range of concepts to those which are very narrow and even skeletal. Instead of ‘promoting the progress’ by encouraging as much disclosure as early as possible, I think the new rules encourage the exact opposite.

This discussion is by nature very broad and sweeping, but based on the strategies that the new rules seem to favor. I am sure that many situations may cause other strategies to be used within the new rules, and I will discuss them as they come up.

Indian Patent Office -invited public opinon on Cigearette patent

mais — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:54:41 +0000

The controller general of patents, designs and trade marks has invited public opinion on a patent sought by Godfrey Phillips on a cigarette packet-cum-match box designed and developed by the company.

Godfrey Phillips, which manufactures leading cigarette brands – Four Square, Stellar, Red and White and Cavanders – aims at giving smokers an option to do away with a separate lighter or match box.

According to the company, which filed application on October 31, 2005, the improved cigarette packet with match box comprised a slide having side flaps on two longitudinal sides and end closures at the two transverse sides. The packet would be equipped with a shell accommodating the slide having flaps on two longitudinal sides, a bundle of cigarettes wrapped in a foil and a match box with sticks in a tray.

courtsy Competitive and Technical Intelligence Toolbox