E-fuel 100 Microfueler developed by Floyd Butterfield and Thomas Quinn, offers the flexibility to generate biofuel (Ethanol @ $1/gallon) at your backyard. This system is compact like a washing machine and operates on sugar content and yeast. Read more on NYT coverage

Perhaps, innovative part of the system is an advance membrane distiller, which separates water from ethanol at lower heat and fewer steps than other ethanol systems

Critics flaunted the claims and said that sugar costs 20-cents per pound, and system requires 10 to 14 pounds to make a gallon of ethanol, hence it is not viable to produce ethanol But Butterfield and his Silicon Valley finance whiz/business partner Thomas J. Quinn swears you can buy “inedible sugar” from South of the Border for 2 to 3 cents per pound.

Anti-collision Device (ACD) branded as “Raksha Kavach” developed by Konkan Railways has been successfully granted patents by China, Russia, Singapore and South Africa. Konkan Railways has filed patent application in 124 countries.

Raksha Kavach is a self-acting device that warns the train driver of any impending accident-like situation within a 3-km range.The instrument will cost approximately Rs 5 lakh (500,000) for installation in trains and Rs 10 lakh (INR 1000,000) in planes. It has already applied for international patent rights for the product in 124 countries.

Sky Bus, an alternative of metro railways for urban transport, is also innovative solution.

Visit for all patents from Konkan Railways.

My experience with Konkan railways was superb particularly in term of cusine.

A nice brief compilation by Vinod Kumar Singh of Competitive and Technical Intelligence Toolbox (CTIB)

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Bangalore City Municipal Corporation (BCC) is enthusiatic for its technical innovation in road construction technology, specifically used for development of underpass, surface pass and overpass. It is planning to secure patent protection for the same. It is going to file the patent for the Concrete Elements as product and erection of such structure as installation process.

The technical innovation also claims to reduce the cost of such constructions from INR 200 Mn to mere INR 10 Mn. Other municipal authorities from Chennai, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh and Mumbai have shown their interest in the promising technology.

BCC sees this as an opportunity to overtake Banglore Development Authority in Infrastructure development.

 Marico innovation foundation has announced winner for 2008. It has recived 146 nominations from business category and 64 for innnovation in Social Sector.

Y 2008 winners under various categories are given below.

On 5th and 6th April 2008, Technology Transfer Group, a student initiative of IIT Kharagpur has  organised exposition IndAc’08.  Thanks Dr. A.S.Rao of  INDIA INVENTS for this information.

There were 59 technologies ready for transfer from sectors

•  Foods & Beverages (13),
• Agricultural engineering & Farm machinery (5),
• Chemical (3),
• Medical devices & Biotechnology (23),
• CSE, Electronics & IT (7),
• Metallurgy & Materials (8).

 Food & Beverages

1. Production of Mango-milk based fruit bar
2. Process technology for manufacture of Dahi (Curd) Powder
3. Process to Manufacture Tomato Powder.
4. Mango soy Fortified Yoghurt Powder
5. Novel Technique for Manufacture of Instant Tea
6. Novel Functional Fruit Juices.
7. Lipase Mediated Synthesis of Acetates.
8. Lipase mediated synthesis of Vitamin C stearate
9. Production of Natural Coconut Water With High Storage Life
10. A Process for Continuous Production of Chhana
11. Jacketed Scrapped Surface Vessel for Kneading, Heating and Concentration of High Viscosity Liquids and Pastes
12. A device for cryogenically individually quick freezing of fish, marine products, meat, fruits and vegetables
13. A device for cryogenic grinding of spices, vegetables, food grains, plastic, and polymers.

Agricultural Engineering & Farm Machinery

1. Production of Biodiesel from Vegetable Oils
2. Self Sustaining Technology for Preservation of Betel Leaves
3. Mechanical Loading-Unloading System for a Withering Trough
4. Betel Leaf Oil Extractor
5. Preparation of Polysacchride-Blended Slow Release Urea
6. Passive-Passive Combination Tillage Implements for 2WD Tractors
7. Automated Organic Roof Garden
8. Membrane Based Water-Extraction of Polyphenols from Green Tea Leaves

 Chemical

1. Membrane Based Water-Extraction of Polyphenols from Green Tea Leaves.
2. Extraction of Natural Sweeteners from Stevia Leaves.
3. Production of Organic Fertilizer from Tannery Effluent.

Medical devices & Biotechnology

1. Anti-Hyperglycemic Polysaccharide from a Probiotic Bacterium
2. Bench-Scale Technology For Manufacture of Pro-Biotics
3. Herbal Skin Nourishing Gel and a Bio Process for Preparation of the Same Gel.
4. Air Bolus Projection Type Spot Thermoelectric Cooling
5. Palposcope
6. Robotic Male Vas Deferens Intraluminal Injection System
7. Heart Sound Analyzer
8. Portable infusion pump
9. A Knee Joint Simulator
10. Microneedle for Painless Blood Extraction or Drug DeliveryC
11. Strategic technological approach for exploitation of heterosis in cultivated rice through plant genetic engineering.
12. Second generation of insect resistant transgenic field crops against major lepidopteran pests.
13. Technique for generation of high tensile strength jute fiber through microbial retting process.
14. Generation of genetically modified oil-seed plants to yield altered composition of seed  
15. Technology for production of virus-free pure seeds of potato.
16. Strategic use of gene transfer technique for generation of marker-free and site-directed alien gene integration in plant genetic engineering of crop plants for improvement.
17. Smart-Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (Smart-RISUG)
18. Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (RISUG)
19. A Pumping System for increasing Pressure of Blood or a Fluid in a Controlled and Stepwise Mode.
20. Green Chemistry for recovery of Lead oxide from scraped storage Pb-bettery.
21. Foliate Tagged nano-particle for delivary of cancer drug  
22. Removal of mercury vapor from gases (natural gas, hydrogen gas, exhaust gas from power plant based on coal).  
23. Nano-composite of hydroxyapatite and chitosan derivative for bio-implants.
24. Magnetic nano-particle for cancer diagnostics.
25. Compact Disc (CD) based System for Bio-chemical and Bio-medical Analysis 

CSE, Electronics and IT

1. Realization of a Constant Phase Element and Its Performance Study in a Differentiator Circuit
2. See-Saw Bio-Reactor
3. E-Procurement
4. Online Integrated Materials Management System (OLIMMS)
5. Indian Language Speech Recognition
6. SYMBOLS Shakti - An object oriented hierarchical hybrid modeling, simulation and control analysis software
7. CNC software package for milling of 2-D contours
8. Micro Heat Pipe for Efficient Chip Cooling
9. Non-mechanical Valve that manipulates the Motion of a Micro-droplet Using Light
10. Traction Force Microscopy on Chip
11. Metallurgy & Materials
12. Biodegradation of Low-density polyethylene film
13. Polyimide Nylon Blend Film As a Substitute of Kapton
14. Processing a Single Phase c-ZrO2 Nanopowder from a Transparent Amorphous Ceramic Gel
15. Reclaimed Rubber by renewable resource material–>Disposable management
16. A Stable CrO2 Nanoparticle and A Process for Its Manufacture
17. A quick setting polymer composition and a method for the preparation of the same
18. A Process for production wear resistant cast iron by smelting reduction of waste products like red mud and de-silicated sand
19. An Highly Stable gamma-Al2O3 Mesoporous Structure and Its Process for Manufacture.

Yet to be launch motorbike sparked patent row among the two major Indian players. Bajaj auto’s “XCD” pronounced as Ex-cee-d’ has locked horns with another TVS’s “’s “Flame” on the patent of engine technology. Both the bikes would be competing each other other in same segment i.e. 125 cc engine bike market.

Bajaj auto’s accused TVS’s ” for infringing its patented Digital Twin Spark Swirl Injection “DTS-Si” technology for motorbike engines. Bajaj auto’s’s in house technology has already been adopted in some of its successful models Palsar, Avenger and Platina.

TVS’s ” veraciously denied the charges by stating that its technology “CCVTI” is completely different, from Bajaj auto’s. CCVTI engine has three valves unlike the Bajaj auto’s DTS-Si. It also stated that use of “twin spark” in four-stroke motorbike engine was first patented by Japanese auto major HONDA. It has developed this technology in collaboration with Austrian firm AVL, holding patent on use of three valves in internal combustion motorbike engines.

TVS’s ” & Bajaj auto’s has developed in-house R&D facilities to compete domestic and global motorbike players, in one of the fastest growing bike market, INDIA.

Bajaj auto’s had successfully refrained chinese bike maker to sell copy-cat verison of its bikes in sri-lanka and African countries.

Bajaj auto’s is waiting for launch of TVS’s “’s FLAME to initiate legal action, while TVS’s ” threaten to file INR 25 Bn defamation suit.

California-based ultramobile PC firm DualCor Technologies filed a suit accussing Intel of misappropriating the DualCor trademark.  DualCor applied for a trademark on its name in May 2004 and was granted the same by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in July 2006. read more on this from google news

Swiss pharma giant, Novartis, faced another blow in India, when Chennai High Court rejected its writ petition challenging the validity of Indian Patent Laws.

Novartis had sought to declare Section 3 (d) of the Indian Patents Act as substituted by Patents (Amendment) Act (2005) as being “unconstitutional as it is vague, arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the constitution (right to equality).”  The section denies patent protection to the discovery of new form of known substance which does not result in enhancement of the known efficacy of that substance.

Novartis also rasied concerns over the discretion of patent authorities to define and determine the “enhancement of efficacy”. The Bench rejected the concerns by saying that the amended section cannot be invalidated solely on ground that there was a mere possibility of misuse of power.

Since Novartis’s 1993 patent effectively disclosed both the free base, imatinib, and the acid-addition salt, imatinib mesylate and the crystalline forms of imatinib mesylate. The crystalline forms of imatinib mesylate claimed in the application in question does not differ significantly in properties with respect to efficacy. In fact, with respect to efficacy, the current specification of Novartis itself admits that wherever β-crystals are used the imatinib free base or other salts can be used. The various forms of imatinib mesylate can, therefore, very well be considered the “same substance” under section 3(d) of the Patents Act.   view of IP practitioner Swarup Kumar

Novartis unlikely to challenge High court ruling in Indian Supreme Court. Novartis faced first setback  in January last year, when the Indian Patent Office rejected a patent application of its leukaemia drug Gleevec. It had filed appeal against the patent office decision to Intellectual Property Appellate Board and a writ petition in Chennai High Court.

Doctrine of Equivalents was set forth by US Supreme Court in 1950 to extent the protection of patent rights to a good patent holders beyond the literal meaning of the claims i.e. literal infringement. US Supreme Court also established Function-Way-Result test with the objective to ensure the fundamental fairness to it to all.

Reverse of the doctrine is also hold good, i.e. if the claim elements did not Function is the same Way to accomplish the same Result then there would not be actual infringement under the doctrine.

Till date, neither US Supreme Court nor Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal had reversed a finding of non-infringement based on reverse doctrine of equivalence.

read more from ipfrontlines authored by Jay Sandvos