Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted businesses and business practices around the globe. Due to ongoing lockdowns, teams are increasingly shifting to working from home which creates its own challenges (and of course, opportunities). At Copperpod, to keep our clients, our employees and partners safe and healthy through this crisis, we have been working hard and working remotely for more than 2 months. We asked one of our senior team members, Chandan Aggarwal, on how he manages his new work environment and how he continues to ensure our valued clients receive industry-best research on their patent enforcement campaigns. How has the transition been to working at home - what worked and what didn't? A couple of months ago, I bought a study table and a revolving chair so that I can be more productive and formal while working in my 'spot'. Since I've started working from home, that spot has been fully utilized to its potential. In fact, I've made it personal by adding a family photo, a desklight, a bookshelf, and a pair of good speakers. All these have made my 'spot' idle place where I can spend countless hours. My family is happier now as they can see (and buzz) me anytime they want. Although it was a distraction in the beginning, by now I have planned my breaks and have learnt to keep the noise out of my head. My one-year-old daughter, having just learnt to walk, needs babysitting when others are unavailable. Managing my work along with babysitting has added to my learning curve on both professional as well as personal front. The biggest challenge was to dedicate continuous hours to work which was possible in the office but not at home owing to a number of distractions. This challenge forced me to delegate my work into chunks of time in order to deliver quality analysis in time. This included having a dialogue with my family clarifying that I need personal time even if I am home (being home doesn't mean it's a holiday). Do you have any new co-workers (roommates, partners, children, pets)? I have a 1 year old daughter who loves to stay around me while I'm working. Do you have a go-to activity to help you relax? I have a playlist of soulful Sufi songs that help me calm my mind when there are lots of thoughts quarreling among themselves. One song does all the magic and I'm back to work within a few minutes. What is your best tip for working remotely? Since we are physically at home, our behavior and approach towards work tends to go informal. Even if we are physically not in office, our mind should act as if we are still in office. To achieve that, there are a few ideas: Try to keep the same schedule at home, for example, having lunch/tea breaks at the same time as they were in office. Have a personal workplace in the house that makes us feel in the same posture/environment as we were in office. Stay in touch with team members just the way we were in office. Use audio/video calls often. Stay in touch with seniors who are clear with the vision and mission. Talk about the short term and the long term goals at least once a week.

Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted businesses and business practices around the globe. Due to ongoing lockdowns, teams are increasingly shifting to working from home which creates its own challenges (and of course, opportunities). At Copperpod, to keep our clients, our employees and partners safe and healthy through this crisis, we have been working hard and working remotely for more than 2 months. We asked one of our senior team members, Gagandeep Singh, on how he manages his new work environment and how he continues to ensure our valued clients receive industry-best research on their patent enforcement campaigns. How has the transition been to working at home - what worked and what didn't? My home is just five minutes at a distance from my office. So, getting up early in the morning and reaching at my work desk has not been affected that much by working from home. In the beginning, I used to work from any corner (such as sofa set, bedroom and/or lying down on the mattress) of the house, but sooner I realized that a separate home office is required. Quickly I grabbed my study table and a chair to make separate office space and it worked very well. Working from home office has been a bit challenging as my work requires a lot of concentration and silence. But as the time passed, I became used to the home environment and started enjoying the home office. I've become more comfortable with Google Meet for a conference call or weekly all-hands than going to the office or a conference room. Now, I can take care of my wife and her ill mother in these difficult times without affecting my work. As there is no pressure of running to the home early or staying late in the office, I am able to give more time to my family as well as my work. I guess my working hours and family hours have increased to the level of my satisfaction and surprisingly these are the same 24 hours of the day. Although, I miss meeting my team-mates in person, gossip and little indoor games (Coup) we used to play in the lunch time. To cope up with physical activities, I go for a walk with my wife in the evening. Do you have any new co-workers (roommates, partners, children, pets)? I live with my wife, sister-in-law and mother-in-law. To keep us all engaged we play some indoor games (Cards, Ludo and/or Carrom). The most enjoyable part is I get to eat freshly cooked food and snacks with my family members – my new co-workers. Do you have a go-to activity to help you relax? I love to feed birds, stray dogs and/or cows. To help relax myself, I listen and/or watch some Punjabi music video songs on YouTube. When the mind gets too heavy I sometimes go to the kitchen and love to cook up some snacks. What is your best tip for working remotely? Paste your To-do-List in front of your desk. Always maintain your body posture (like sitting straight on a chair) and keep noisy sources (like television or radio) away from your workplace.

Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted businesses and business practices around the globe. Due to ongoing lockdowns, teams are increasingly shifting to working from home which creates its own challenges (and of course, opportunities). At Copperpod, to keep our clients, our employees and partners safe and healthy through this crisis, we have been working hard and working remotely for more than 2 months. We asked our youngest team member, Sumit Negi, on how he manages his new work environment and how he continues to ensure our valued clients receive industry-best research on their patent enforcement campaigns. How has the transition been to working at home - what worked and what didn't? Working from home has turned out pretty well for me. I get my own space while working and I hardly face any difficulty as all the family members are tied up with their own work. There are no children in the house; which makes it easier. I get to live at my home back in my city which somewhat gives a relaxed state of mind among your closed ones for work. It has helped me to save a lot of time as earlier it used to take about 2.5 hours just in commute. The only thing that has troubled me so far is internet connectivity. My neighborhood gets choppy internet at times. Do you have any new co-workers (roommates, partners, children, pets)? I am home with my mother, sister and brother. Mother is tied up with her household chores while my siblings are engaged with their online classes. Do you have a go-to activity to help you relax? I listen to music and play games with my siblings. I am currently playing FIFA 19 and Assassin Creed Odyssey. What is your best tip for working remotely? Keep yourself engaged in your happy things if you are living alone. If you have someone living with you then interact with them like playing games, discussing any common topic to help you relax. What are you binge watching through the lockdown? I have been watching Indian epic Mahabharat with my family every night. I even watch Friends as it never gets old for me.

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Rev. Hyung "Sean" Jin Moon, a South Korean-American pastor has been accused of illegally using the decades old trademarked “Twelve Gates Mark” symbol of the Unification Church. The lawsuit against Rev. Moon was filed on Monday in the U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg by the Unification of World Christianity (also known as the Family Federation of World Peace). The plaintiff claimed that he had stolen the symbol for his own church, World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, to support his rather radical gun-centered theology. The plaintiff asserted that the political and religious ideologies on which Rev. Moon formed his cult were demeaning, and were worried it might degrade the reputation of the unification church among the masses – when it strikes them that the sanctuary is in fact, just a splinter group of the church. “Family Federation is in no way affiliated with Sanctuary Church", says Rev. Richard Buessing, president of Family Federation USA. "While we respect every individual's right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and other constitutional rights, we oppose violence and do not use weapons in any of our religious ceremonies. Rev. Moon Hyung Jin Moon has disregarded his father's teachings regarding the importance of true love and reconciliation in addressing the problems of the world." The red Twelve Gates Mark gives the appearance of a gleaming sun inside a square and a steering wheel. The symbol has been used in practice by the unification church since the past 5 decades, as the lawsuit claims. In contrast to this, the symbol which Rev. Moon uses is a derivative of the original – using a similar gleaming sun design but with a gold paint, with weaponry surrounding it. The Unification movement or Unificationism was officially established under the name Holy Spirit Association of the Unification World Christianity (HAS-UWC) in Seoul, South Korea by Rev. Moon’s Father Sun Myung Moon. The church was granted a U.S. patent for the symbol in 2009, 3 years prior to his death. ‘Moonie ‘ is a term used for anyone who is a member of the Unification Church. The plaintiff, in the filing requested the judge to order Rev. Moon to stop using the symbol, simply because of the contrast in principles both parties functioned on. The sanctuary exaltedly teaches that ‘rod of iron’ which means ‘Word of God’ as discussed in the Book of Revelation is best exemplified with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle or a weapon of similar potency. The defendants however, replied to this by stating that they too bred on the ideas laid down by Sun Myung Moon and had every right to use the symbol. Rev. Moon was the chosen heir to the church, but when his father Myung Moon died in 2012, he and his mother openly started expressing signs of non-compliance. He was eventually taken down as the international president of the family federation of world peace. Eventually, he started his own church in 2013 in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania which came to be known as the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church. A major altercation was brought upon the sanctuary church when Rev. Moon interviewed Paul Mango, a Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor. Rev. Moon was attired in a golden crown of bullets with an AR-15 resting on the table in front of him. The interview highlighted some discussions made on how schools were permissive fortifications where teachers promoted ‘homosexuality’ and ‘transgender’ political agendas and that colleges preached Sharia law. And of course, Mango who was seen responding in compliance of what Rev. Moon believed in, blew his shot at the GOP primary elections. In news that gained national attention, the sanctuary church held a marriage vows renewal ceremony and asked participants to bring their AR-15 rifles. This was considered extremely offensive, especially in light of the fact that the Parkland, Florida shootings that killed 17, had occurred only days back (which also involved an AR-15 rifle). Preceding this, there was also a thank you dinner with President Donald Trump organized by the Wayne County Church involving the same AR-15 rifle. Besides the whole argument around the issue of carrying arms in church, the bigger concern for America right now is to rework its law concerning the ownership of weaponry. If a person has got a clean criminal background check, buying a gun in the country is as simple as going grocery shopping. A total of 199 mass shooting incidents have been reported in America as of July 30,2018. If the strings on who can buy a gun aren’t pulled soon, the numbers are on an upswing. #trademarks #news

Virtual Reality has come a long way - From merely being a technology for the future, to actually experiencing it at your disposal. Until recent years, the concept was said to be way out of reach for the kind of graphical capabilities required for it. Of course, there were high end computers optimized for it, but they were very costly, so everyone couldn’t get their hands on it. But with the popularization of VR headsets, the dream of living in virtual reality didn’t seem so far fetched. One such console was the Playstation VR. When Sony took a leap into this domain, they had a lot of expectations to meet. Oculus and HTC/Valve were already at the top of their game with their products Rift and Vive dominating the market. But thankfully, Sony came through. The company put together an impressive piece of equipment that not only aggregated well with its gaming console, but was also easy on the pocket. Sony’s platform offered a comfortable, easy-to-adjust head-mounting mechanism. The headset also became the preferred option for people who wear glasses, considering how comfortably it wrapped around the head. But despite the brilliance, even a great console can only do so much, if the technology it’s built for is still fundamentally weak. While research on head mounted VR for gaming can be traced back to the 1990s, its capacity for mass usability has only been realized recently. Now with so many eyes getting to experience what virtual reality is, the next task would be to fix everything the consumer felt is wrong with it. Issues have started to come forward in relation to VR sickness in head-mounted gaming devices. Virtual Reality sickness occurs when you’re under the influence of a virtual environment, and you start to experience symptoms similar to that of motion sickness. Of course the difference remains, that VR sickness is caused by the visually-induced perception of self motion and not real self motion. It obviously becomes a matter of concern, when something built to make you feel amazing, is actually doing the opposite. Well the good news here is that Sony actually took responsibility and is doing something about it. The company filed a patent back in 2017 to help alleviate the VR sickness, but has only recently been published. Before looking at how Sony intends to implement this, let’s try to understand the factors that may be responsible for the trouble in the first place. As of now, there is no concrete proof of what may be the root cause of this complication, but experts have come up with theories as to why virtual reality sickness occurs in particular. SLOW REFRESH RATE OF ON-SCREEN IMAGES - The images that are projected from virtual reality seem to have a major impact on the sickness.The slow refresh rate (repeated drawings of identical frames) of on-screen images could be one reason for the sickness . As the refresh rate is slower than what the brain processes, it causes disharmony between the processing rate and the refresh rate, causing the user to perceive glitches on the screen. Poor animation could also lead to disharmony between what is expected and what is happening on the screen. DISCORD BETWEEN EYES AND EARS - In virtual reality, the eyes could transmit a person running through a jungle, or moving in a roller coaster, but the ears transmit no such signs of actual movement occuring. This gives rise to a discrepancy between the apparent motion between the visual and vestibular stimuli, and is the underlying reason for both simulator and motion sickness. A possible solution for this could be making the headset wireless, and freeing the body’s reflex actions to reduce the discrepancy. POSTURAL INSTABILITY - This theory suggests that the related sickness occurs due to poor postural adaptations in response to unusual coupling between visual stimuli and motor coordination. This can be an explanation for situations in which the sickness did not occur due to sensory conflict. TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE If we take a technical viewpoint, there are numerous aspects that could induce the sickness, such as mismatched motion, field of view, motion parallax and viewing angle. The magnitude of VR sickness is also relative to the time spent on the console. Mismatched motion can be defined as the discrepancy between the motion of the simulation and the motion that the user expects. It is possible for VR sickness to occur if the frequencies of mismatched motion become equal to that of motion sickness in reality ( such as seasickness). Field of view is the extent of observable area through his/ her eyes, and on increasing it, the symptoms for motion sickness also become stronger. Altering motion parallax distances to those less than the distance between the human eyes in large multiple-screen simulation setups can induce oculomotor distress, such as headaches, eye strain, and blurred vision. Viewing angle has been shown to increase a user's sickness symptoms, especially at extreme angles. It’ll be interesting to see how Sony goes about fixing the problem, taking into consideration that there’s still no concrete proof about how valid the above mentioned possibilities are. The new Sony patent describes a head mounted system with a range of biometric sensors such as gyroscope, heart rate/ pulse sensor, blood pressure sensor etc. These sensors will be used to keep a check on the wearer’s health, taking note of factors such as pupil dilation, body temperature, muscle activity and breathing rate. The given headset would make use of this information to decide upon a “health threshold value” with the help of which it’ll be able to make out when the VR experience is becoming too intense for the user and calibrate accordingly. There would also be a microphone designed to target negative words that will signify that the user’s in discomfort. Another interesting aspect understood from the patent is that Sony is focusing more on the cure than preventing the illness from occuring in the first place. This means that instead of working on a system to diminish the effects of motion sickness, they will let people get ill in VR and then help them when they start getting nauseous. So it seems that Sony doesn’t plan to downgrade the console’s performance in any way, and is rather focusing more on a foolproof system that would alert the wearer if he shows symptoms of distress. Some of the features mentioned such as eye tracking, is considered essential for the next generation VR. Foveated rendering, which only fully renders the parts of display you’re directly looking at is a good example of how a feature like eye tracking could be beneficial. Furthermore, this headset is also fitted with a battery, which could be mean the possibility of an autonomous system. If the PSVR 2 has wireless connectivity, it could help ease the effect of motion sickness, by reducing the discrepancy between the visual and vestibular stimuli. Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida seems confident that there will be significant improvement related to the VR’s comfort, and believes this patent would play an important role in it. #sony #virtualreality #patents #emergingtech

It’s quite aggravating, having to run across the room to address a ringing phone, just to find out that it was actually a spam call. 4.5 billion spam calls were made in June 2018, which is nearly 18 spam calls per person. It’s not hard to figure out why spam calls may have ranked top in the number of complaints filed to the Federal Trade Commission in 2017. A grand total of 7,157,370 complaints were made against robocalls and telemarketers. Looking at these numbers it’s evident that the users aren’t happy but thankfully, Apple gets that. (source) The iPhone maker has come up with a new software patent, that could help cancel out robocalls and spams, and notify the users for “a spoofing caller”. Filed back in 2017, the patent was made public Thursday, last week, and talks about a system that would let the phone examine a phone call for its legitimacy. The mobile device is claimed to check parameters using some templates that will evaluate the consistency of the invitation (incoming call), with respect to a database in the mobile device. These templates include session protocol, network topology, routing, and social templates. The patent further describes what it means by a “Spoofed call” - fundamentally a spam call. "An example of a spoofed message is one in which a person with bad intentions, a 'spoofing caller,' or a machine under the control of the spoofing caller, pushes forward a financial scam by inserting a caller ID value in the message that the called party will trust," the patent says. (source) It also explains that the caller could be associated with law enforcement, an electric company, or even a family relative of the called party. The spoofing caller may also try to induce the called party to some financial action which may prove out to be damaging. In some countries, this is a common problem faced by everyday users of mobile devices. The aftermath of a situation in which it is determined that the call is spoof is also explained in the patent - "If the result of the evaluation is that the message is spoofed or the likelihood that the message is spoofed is substantial, then a warning is provided to the called party,". In some cases, a media session (connecting the call) may be commenced at the called party’s discretion, after the warning. (source) This is a very important patent, taking in viewpoint the prevalence of spam calls in the recent years. The number is only expected to grow, as First Orion points out that by 2019, it is expected that nearly half of all U.S. mobile traffic would be spam calls. First Orion CEO Charles D. Morgan noted that the Federal Communications Commission has partnered with several technology companies, including First Orion to ward off spam calls, but "we still see rampant increases" as scammers become increasingly more sophisticated and "invade our privacy at new extremes.” Spam call blocking is one domain in which Google has always had an edge over Apple. The google Pixel phones already have an impressive system devised to block spam calls, and now with their latest baby, the Pixel 3, they are about to go a notch further. Google has added another layer of security, which would let the google assistant address and screen questionable calls for the use, deciphering the call in real time, which will make the whole reporting and blocking the number task much more convenient. Apple doesn’t claim to be on the same grounds as Google, nor do we know whether the patent would see the light of day, but it certainly will be better than what the iphone users currently have - relying on their phone carriers (paying extra sometimes) to safeguard their phones from the spammers. #apple #patents

With hiring at Copperpod IP's in full swing for our India office, I've come across the phrase "bridge the gap between academia and industry" on almost a daily basis. The gap no doubt has plagued the Indian education system for decades - but practically speaking, it’s a gap that will perhaps never be bridged. Academic research is this huge elephant that needs to be fed and washed for years, while industry runs like horses on the battlefield. An elephant will definitely change the course of a battle but by the time it will reach the battlefront, the battle has usually moved ahead. In real world terms (not that elephants and horses aren’t real), the industry innovates on a breaking neck speed, while academia follows. In an ideal technocracy, it would be the other way round. Of course, the biggest blame falls on lack of monetary resources as well as long-term brain drain on the Indian economy. Yet, the biggest problem with bridging this “gap” is even more fundamental. Almost every single time I have heard this phrase, it was spoken by a university professor, training & placement officer, or a bureaucrat. The students themselves either don’t know enough to realize there is a gap or simply don’t feel there is a gap to begin with. If you think about it, students today have exponentially more exposure to technology and information than 10 years ago. Their sources are not limited to books from 20 years ago - but are real-time. The only thing they do lack is the proprietary knowledge that can only be provided through corporate training programs. The real gap, therefore, is not that students are not taught tools and processes actually in use by the industry - because the tools and processes in industry simply change too quickly for an under-funded educational regime. The real gap unfortunately is at the instructor-level (and at the training and placement offices) at the universities. If you look at the faculty in our engineering institutes, you’d be hard pressed to find any industry veteran among the faculty. Virtually everyone who teaches in our institutes has been an instructor for all their lives - and thus for the most part keep teaching what they learnt as students. Working in the industry isn’t just about knowledge, of course. Simple things like responding or acting upon an email (tasks that happen at the speed of need in technology companies) are an after-thought in academia (and more painfully in training and placement offices). Professionalism has a much more relaxed (time-wise) definition in academia - and while most instructors genuinely want their students to succeed, the good intentions are bogged down by bureaucracy, laziness and incompetence of others. So instead of focusing the “bridging the gap” solutions (and backlash) on students, perhaps the real outreach must focus on the academic staff and the hiring practices at the universities? The opinions expressed in this article are personal views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Copperpod IP, Carthaginian Ventures or any other related entity. #education #opinions

The Copperpod IP team wishes you and your loved ones a happy and prosperous Diwali - a celebration of victory of not just good over evil but also of light over darkness and human ingenuity over ignorance.

We are proud to announce that Copperpod IP is a silver sponsor at the World Intellectual Property Forum (WIPF) 2017. WIPF 2017 is being held on April 26-28, 2017 in Bangalore, India and is one of the leading IP conferences in Asia. This year the theme for the conference is 'Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property'. The three-day event will focus on recent developments in Intellectual Property and its syncing with business objectives across the world. Copperpod IP's sponsorship builds upon the team's ongoing commitment to furthering the discourse and development of strong intellectual property regimes in emerging markets, including India. Copperpod IP team has great respect for the international IP community and we look forward to seeing all the esteemed speakers and delegates - and contributing to the collective thought leadership generated at the conference. To learn more, please visit: http://www.worldipforum.com/ and to get in touch with delegates from Copperpod IP, please email us at purva@copperpodip.com.

The most important asset most tech companies possess and hold dear to their heart is their source code. Whether its artificial intelligence, automated cars, Internet of Things or enterprise security, our business and personal lives are driven by software. Thus naturally when a company acquires another, the source code behind the acquired products represents a major contributor to the value of that acquisition. The way source code is conceptualized, structured, written and managed in companies has dramatically changed in the last 15 years. Until the late 1990s when open source and cloud computing concepts were not as prevalent, most source code was developed in silos where a comparatively unchanging developer team would write and maintain an organizational monolith of code. It made it easier to store and access and understand - but such development also made it much harder to train new developers on and limited the speed at which increasingly complex software products could be written. Fortunately however, as we continued to demand more and more tasks to be automated and simplified using software, two major developments came along that changed how the technology industry developed software regardless of the language, platform or market segment. VERSIONING AND SOURCE CONTROL SYSTEMS filled an important need for code to be archived, tracked and versioned as developer teams grew in size as well as geographic displacement. Such versioning systems automatically store each changed version of the code, easing maintenance and enabling larger teams of developers but at the cost of burgeoning amounts of code storage. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE democratized development of complex software in a way that not only increased collaboration and sharing of skills but also shortened development lifecycles and reduced costs. With open source software, developer teams were no longer limited by the skills of just their team members - which accelerated software technology albeit with increased compliance requirements and diluting proprietorship. Both developments also mushroomed important concerns for companies when they acquire other software companies or products. For example, as teams have grown in size and products have grown in complexity, it can become a challenge for the buyer company to scale a product (and get a good return on investment) if the source code has not been maintained, documented and versioned appropriately. Google’s source code spans over 2 billion lines of code while Microsoft Windows 10 has over 50 million lines of code (source). Even a modest iPhone app can contain upwards of 250,000 lines of code per version. Multiply that with all the different versions of the code during development and maintenance – and you can imagine how difficult it can get for companies to store and maintain the entire codebase. Companies that do audit and enforce good development processes use a variety of metrics to assess if their developers are following guidelines: Code coverage Cohesion Comment density Connascent software components Coupling Cyclomatic complexity DSQI Function Points Halstead Complexity Instruction path length Maintainability index Number of classes and interfaces Number of lines of code Weighted Micro Function Points CISQ The problem however is that most companies – especially medium sized businesses and organizations with up to a few hundred developers – do not start monitoring code quality from the start, and by the time of an acquisition are far too along in the process to go back and calculate or improve their metrics. This “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach saves cost and effort only until the technology gets acquired and needs to be scaled up by anyone who didn’t originally write the code – at which point the acquiring company wastes time and money in fixing it. Further, when software products grow to span dozens of modules, thousands of files and millions of code lines – it is very probably that sizable portions come from open source software repositories. In one 2015 survey, 78 percent of C-level executives said their companies run part or all of its operations on OSS and 66 percent said their company creates software for customers built on open source. 60-70 percent of the companies contributed to open-source projects. Those are big numbers showing how pervasive open source software has become. On the other hand, the survey also revealed some alarming numbers: More than 55 percent of the companies have no formal policy around open-source use – leaving it open to developer teams to choose and decide whether to use open source software. Moreover, only 27 percent have a formal policy for employee contributions to open source projects. Only 42 percent maintain an inventory of open source components. To make things worse, most developers ignore, or are ignorant of the fact just because a source code repository is marked open source and freely accessible on the Internet, it does not necessarily mean that code can be used freely and without restrictions. Open-source software usually comes with detailed licenses that may for example restrict use of the code in commercial products or require that the source code for the end product be made available for free as well. In a competitive market, these restrictions can make or break the total market value of the acquired products. It is thus important for an investor to know which code modules are covered under license regimes like GPL, AGPL, LGPL, Apache, etc. – each version of which comes with its own set of liabilities. Investing in a strategic code audit as part of your larger M&A due diligence effort can help raise such red flags and prepare for what comes after the investment. An ideal code audit should provide at least the following 10 key insights: What portion of the code is proprietary to the company and what portion is from third parties? What are the various processes and systems used by developers to write code – and are there any security or functionality gaps in those systems? Is the code structured such that it is easy to add new functionalities or deploy in new environments? Is the code appropriately versioned with dates, authors and version numbers? Is the code appropriately documented and commented such that it is easy to train new developers on? Does the code adequately mark trade secrets and copyrights? What portion of the software constitutes open source software and what open source licenses apply to particular code modules? Does the product/company comply with each governing open source license and what actions are needed to circumvent or comply with the license? Are there security gaps in the code that can facilitate theft of trade secrets and customer data? Is there patentable subject matter within the proprietary portions of source code? At just 0.3% - 0.5% of the total cost of an investment, a well-structured code audit provides confidence to the investor, alerting important red flags that can present legal and security challenges to the product that can otherwise go unnoticed during routine M&A due diligence efforts and at the same time help management implement industry best practices for sustainable product development. #duediligence #sourcecode #codereview #software

The biggest IP story this week was the December 6 Supreme Court decision in Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple, a long fought battle over Samsung's infringement on three utility patents and three design patents owned by Apple. In its first design patent case of this nature in 120 years, Supreme Court's decision not only vacated the lower court's $399 million dollar damages verdict for Apple, asking the parties to go back to the drawing board for a better damages model, but also set a far reaching precedent for design patents in general. Samsung and Apple first went to war in April 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, when Apple accused Samsung of infringing three of its utility patents covering various features introduced in its iPhone and four design patents. In a stunning verdict following less than three days of deliberation, the jury at the time awarded $1.05 billion in damages to Apple - though the figure was subsequently cut down to $639 million and a retrial was ordered for the remaining number. The judge noted, correctly, that the jury had erred in its calculation of damages - as the $1.05 billion figure included a period of time where Samsung lacked notice of at least some of the asserted patents. Later in March 2014, the jury in the retrial for the remaining $410 million in damages awarded Apple a lesser verdict - $290 million, which with the addition of interest, climbed up to $399 million. Samsung appealed the retrial verdict, of course - but to no avail. The Federal Circuit upheld the verdict in May 2015, finding that the Samsung's infringing phones in totality were articles of manufacture - as consumers indeed can purchase the phones in totality. Hence, as per the 35 U.S. Code § 289 statute, Apple was entitled to the whole of profits earned by Samsung by virtue of the infringing devices. Samsung, with its never say die attitude, finally took the fight to the Supreme Court, arguing that the damages attributable from infringing a design patent can not and should not be derived from the entire profits from the products - especially when the design patents covered only certain aspects of the product's ornamental and aesthetic features. Which brings us finally to Tuesday, December 6, 2016. In all its wisdom, the Supreme Court found that since the design patents covered "an article of manufacture", it first needed to determine what an article of manufacture really means. The traditional wisdom held the article of manufacture to mean the final product that is sold or purchased by consumers. The Court on the other hand determined that an article of manufacture should be defined strictly as per the dictionary (in this case the American Heritage Dictionary), i.e. "simply a thing made by hand or machine". In other words, there is no reason to believe that a single component in an otherwise larger product cannot be an article of manufacture - as each single component is indeed a thing made by hand or machine. Now, (in a characteristic move) whether the articles of manufacture claimed in Apple's design patents covered the entirety of Samsung's phones or just some components thereof - was a question the Supreme Court thought best not to answer and instead leaving it to the Federal Circuit to come up with an acceptable test with the understanding that an article of manufacture does not have to necessarily be the complete final product sold. Design patents are arguably the Ugly Betty of IP development. Companies often ignore design patents altogether in their IP strategy – even though they carry 40-50% lower cost of preparation, filing and issuance. Add to that, until now, design infringement earned damages much larger in proportion to the lost profits from the invention as compared to utility patents. However, in narrowing down the definition and scope of what an article of manufacture meant for design patents, the Supreme Court has effectively further disincentivized design patents. The ripples do not end at design patents alone, of course. Utility patents very frequently contain article of manufacture claims as well. Since the Supreme Court chose to define “article of manufacture” rather than deciding apportionment of damages to designs – the scope of article of manufacture claims in utility patents is also called in question. Hopefully the lower courts will shed more light on what the test should be for deciding the exact scope of “article of manufacture” for both design patents and for utility patents in the months to come. For now, however, Samsung can draw a deep breath and enjoy the victory in this latest battle. #patents #electronics #codereview #security #software #licensing