| Insurance IP
Bulletin
An Information Bulletin on
Intellectual Property activities in the insurance
industry
A Publication of - Tom Bakos Consulting, Inc. and Markets, Patents and Alliances, LLC |
August 15, 2006 VOL: 2006.4 |
||
| Adobe pdf version | FEEDBACK | ADD ME to e-mail Distribution |
| Printer Friendly version | QUESTION | REMOVE ME from e-mail Distribution |
| Publisher Contacts
Tom Bakos Consulting, Inc.
Tom Bakos: (970) 626-3049 tbakos@BakosEnterprises.com Markets, Patents and Alliances, LLC Mark Nowotarski: (203) 975-7678 MNowotarski@MarketsandPatents.com Announcement Frank Cuypers Joins AIPPI as
Executive Director It is a politically neutral, non-profit organization, domiciled in Switzerland which currently has over 8,000 Members representing more than 100 countries. The objective of AIPPI is to improve and promote the protection of intellectual property on both an international and national basis. It pursues this objective by working for the development, expansion and improvement of international and regional treaties and agreements and also of national laws relating to intellectual property. Information on AIPPI can be found at: http://www.aippi.org You can find information about the 40th World Intellectual Property
Congress
under meetings on the AIPPI web site. The
Congress is at the Gothenburg Convention Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden starting on Sunday, October
8, 2006 and ending on Thursday, October 12, 2006.
Publicizing Your Invention Question: I just filed my patent application. Is it OK to tell people now about my invention?Disclaimer:The answer below is a discussion of typical
practices and is not to be construed as legal advice of any kind. Readers are
encouraged to consult with qualified counsel to answer their personal legal
questions. Answer: This is a
tough one. Once a patent application is on file, an inventor will
theoretically be protected from unauthorized copying when his or her
patent issues (assuming it does). This presumes, however, that a patent
will issue quickly, that no one else has made the same invention earlier,
and that all patentable aspects of the invention are disclosed and
claimed. Failure in any of these areas can leave an inventor exposed to
copying by those that might learn about his or her invention.
Link to Complete Article Is it Insurance? The chart from the last (June, 2006) issue which portrayed insurance as a process of processes is updated to the right. Invention in insurance addresses processes because, basically, that’s what insurance is. Some of these process inventions may enable new forms or types of insurance. For example, let’s say an automobile insurer through one of its inventive employees comes up with a method to encourage people to buy and keep buying automobile insurance from that auto insurer. The method involves putting insureds who pay their premiums on time into a special pool of insureds who are eligible annually to win a free car through some random selection process. The method is made more complicated by providing additional credits (and, therefore, a higher probability of winning) if policyholders satisfy certain conditions related to policy duration, driving record, claims experience, etc. Policyholders are also given the option to elect a premium reduction in lieu of participating in the car giveaway. Is that insurance – or is it a lottery? Another example - Say an airline decides to offer,
for a fee or premium, the opportunity for members of the frequent flyers
program who die to transfer the miles in their account to a beneficiary.
Is that life insurance – or is it merely a refinement in a frequent flyer
program?
Link to Complete Article An Update on Current Patent Activity The table below provides the latest statistics in overall class 705
and subclass 4. The data shows issued patents and published patent
applications for this class and subclass.
Class 705 is defined as: DATA PROCESSING: FINANCIAL, BUSINESS PRACTICE, MANAGEMENT, OR COST/PRICE DETERMINATION. Subclass 4 is used to identify claims in class 705 which are related to: Insurance (e.g., computer implemented system or method for writing insurance policy, processing insurance claim, etc.). Issued
Patents Since our last issue, 10 new patents with claims in
class 705/4 have been issued. All 10
of these newly issued patents have an assignee indicated.
Patents are categorized
based on their claims. Some of these newly issued patents, therefore, may
have only a slight link to insurance based on only one or a small number
of the claims therein. The
Resources section provides a link to a
detailed list of these newly issued patents.
Published Patent
Applications Again, a reminder - Patent applications have been published 18
months after their filing date only since March 15, 2001. Therefore, there are many pending
applications that are not yet published. A conservative assumption would be
that there are, currently, about 200 new patent applications filed every
18 months in class 705/4. The published patent applications included in the table above are not reduced when applications are issued as patents, rejected, or abandoned. Therefore, the table only gives an indication of the number of patent applications currently pending. Resources Recently published issued U.S. Patents and U.S. Patent Applications with claims in class 705/4. The following are links to web sites which contain information helpful to understanding intellectual property. United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) : Homepage - http://www.uspto.gov/ United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) : Patent Application Information Retrieval - http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair Free Patents
Online -
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ Patent Law and Regulation - http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/legis.htm Here is how to call the USPTO Inventors Assistance Center:
Mark Nowotarski - Patent Agent services – http://www.marketsandpatents.com/ Tom Bakos, FSA, MAAA - Actuarial services – http://www.BakosEnterprises.com |
In this issue’s feature article, Protecting the Look and Feel of Your Insurance Illustration with Design Patents , co-editor Mark Nowotarski addresses how design patents can be used to protect another form of intellectual property in the insurance industry – look and feel. Design patents are put in perspective with respect to utility patents, copyrights, and trademarks.In our Patent Q/A section we address the question of Publicizing Your Invention. The answer points out things that should be considered before going public. This issue’s Basic Ed. Feature, Is it Insurance?, discusses another practical aspect of inventing in the highly regulated insurance industry. How do you know that your "insurance" invention is really insurance? The Statistics section updates the current status of issued US patents and published patent applications in the insurance class (i.e. 705/004). We also provide a link to the Insurance IP Supplement with more detailed information on recently published patent applications and issued patents.
Our mission is to provide our readers with useful information on how intellectual property in the insurance industry can be and is being protected – primarily through the use of patents. We will provide a forum in which insurance IP leaders can share the challenges they have faced and the solutions they have developed for incorporating patents into their corporate culture. Please use the FEEDBACK link above to provide us with your comments or suggestions. Use QUESTIONS for any inquiries. To be added to the Insurance IP Bulletin e-mail distribution list, click on ADD ME. To be removed from our distribution list, click on REMOVE ME.
Thanks, FEATURE ARTICLE Protecting the Look and Feel of Your Insurance Illustration with Design Patents By: Mark NowotarskiPatent Agent, MPA LLC A lot of hard work goes into getting a computer based insurance illustration to look just right. The aesthetics of the presentation can be as important in making the sale as the information provided. How frustrating it must be, therefore, to invest considerable resources in getting the look and feel of a computer illustration just right, only to be immediately copied by a competitor. Design patents can help keep that copying from happening. A design patent is a special type of patent used to protect the aesthetic features of a manufactured object. It consists simply of a drawing of the object and a single claim. The claim says "The ornamental design for an object, as shown and described". Anyone that makes uses or sells objects with essentially the same shape is infringing the patent. Many common objects are protected by design patents. They include cell phone designs, furniture designs, food container designs and more recently, computer image designs. The original Coke® bottle, for example, was protected by a design patent (See Fig 1). The familiar Windows® security shield icon is also protected by a design patent (see Fig 2). Hundreds, of design patents, as a matter of fact, have been issued not only on computer icons, but entire layouts of computer screens as well. 
Financial service companies are just beginning to use design patents. Citicorp and Wells Fargo, for example, have design patents covering the layouts of their cash machine screens. See figure 3 for a comparison. The designs don’t have to be complicated. They only have to be new and not obvious in light of earlier designs. The protected features include the layout, shading and other ornamental aspects. The numbers, words, phrases and anything shown as a doted line are not part of the design and not protected. 
We have yet to find any insurance related design patents, but in principle, there is nothing to keep insurance inventors from getting them. Design patents exist at an interesting intersection between utility patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Utility patents (i.e. regular patents) protect the functionality of an invention but not the aesthetic design. Copyrights protect creative works of art but only if the artistic aspect of an object can be separated from the functional object itself. Trademarks uniquely identify the source or provider of an object or service creating, in effect, a brand. However, like copyrights, trademarks do not protect the object or service itself. More than one type of intellectual property can protect the same object. The shape of the Coke® bottle, for example, was protected by a design patent (now expired) and a trademark (still in force). The Statue of Liberty was protected by a design patent and a copyright. By having overlapping forms of protection on the same object, an inventor has more than one option for enforcement. As Russ Pangborn, head of Microsoft’s copyright and trade secret practice, put it in a recent interview with the author, "Adding design patents to our portfolio gives us a ‘belt and suspenders approach’ for protecting our IP". Design patents can be powerful marketing tools. The word "patent" gets a lot of public attention. Design patents are the fastest and least expensive way to get patents on your invention. They testify to your customers and the public that your product is unique and inventive. It takes a significant investment in creativity and artistic talent to develop a computer based insurance illustration or web site. Design patents help inventors protect this investment. They provide an additional measure of protection in addition to more conventional utility patents, copyrights and trademarks. Major software companies and, more recently, major financial institutions, are obtaining design patents on their computer based user interface designs and novel icons. These patents can be important marketing tools and are relatively inexpensive and easy to get. With the importance of creating the right look and feel of a computer implemented invention, design patents can be a valuable addition to an overall intellectual property portfolio. (For more information you can contact the author at mnowotarski@marketsandpatents.com) |
Complete contact information.