Indian Government Plans to Fund 10k Patents from Educational Institutes Every Year

Indian Government Plans to Fund 10k Patents from Educational Institutes Every Year

According to a top official’s recent statement, the Indian Government shall soon come up with a scheme to fund 10k Patent Applications from educational institutes every year. This move’s ultimate aim is to motivate and encourage more students and faculty members to safeguard their Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) well. Furthermore, as per many officials, the scheme shall help the higher education institutions of India to improve their rankings worldwide by performing well in the domain of research and development.

The Chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC), M Jagadesh Kumar, said that the scheme in question would help the students of higher education institutions and faculty members seek funding from the Indian Government to patent their innovations and inventions. He further added that around 10k patent applications would be funded by the Commission every year.

Mr. Kumar said that as part of the scheme – the higher education regulator would invite students and faculty members from colleges and universities to submit their patent applications. He mentioned that in their university system, the major focus is on publishing papers; however, the ecosystem today has changed, due to which there is a dire need to protect Intellectual Property (IP). According to Mr. Kumar, the upcoming scheme would encourage the students and faculty members to go for patenting.

The Chairperson of IPRs at the Delhi University, AK Prasad, said in a recent statement delivered that the move to institutionalize funding for patents is now welcome, which shall help evaluate the commercial value of patents and also lead to the commercialization of more patents.

Filing patent applications can undoubtedly be a costly affair. The cost of filing a patent application lies between Rs. 10k and Rs. 15k in India; however, in countries such as the United States, the cost of safeguarding innovations in the form of patents can run into lacs.

According to Mr. Prasad, filing patents is less of a problem than the maintenance that comes into the picture after the patent grant. He said that a patent requires continuous input of money the moment it gets filed as the owner has to pay against every inquiry and revision. He further mentioned that once the patent gets published, it requires a maintenance fee for twenty years and that maintenance fee is a big issue in India’s patent system.

Let’s say you have a project and file its patent application today. Now let us assume that tomorrow the project gets over. In such a scenario, you can’t maintain the patent. Now that is where the scheme in question shall prove to be beneficial. According to Mr. Prasad, the UGC shall cover patent maintenance under the proposed scheme.

For quite a while, the education ministry has been encouraging students and faculty members in higher education institutions across the country to patent their innovations and inventions. In May 2022, the Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in the Government of India, Dharmendra Pradhan, said in a seminar organized at the Delhi University that the times are now changing, and the citizens of India aren’t being able to patent their innovations. In this matter, he suggested that Delhi University could begin a short-term diploma course on the patent grant process.

Although there has been an upward trend of patenting in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the past few years, other higher education institutions in the nation are still catching up.

According to Mr. Kumar, the upcoming amendments in the Ph.D. regulations would also recommend students and faculty members file patent applications for their innovations and inventions. He also mentioned that while the UGC is putting an end to the mandatory requirement of publishing research papers in peer-reviewed journals for submitting the thesis, they strongly recommend that students and faculty members patent their innovations. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Patent Filings for Green Hydrogen Production Technologies on the Rise

Patent Filings for Green Hydrogen Production Technologies on the Rise

On 12th May 2022, a joint study was published by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) concerning the dynamism and trends in the field of hydrogen that can be produced using renewable electricity via the process of electrolysis. According to the patent statistics, the innovation trends in electrolyzers for the production of hydrogen show a consistent pattern, which says that Patent Filings for green hydrogen production technologies have increased by 18% on average every year since 2005. IRENA has significantly been driving the agenda on hydrogen globally within the broader context of accelerating the worldwide energy transition in pursuit of the 1.5˚C climate objective.

While being the prime subject of many researchers across the globe, hydrogen has undoubtedly emerged as an exceedingly attractive green energy source not just because of its availability in abundance but also because it can be obtained through the electrolysis of water with the help of renewable electricity in the presence of electrocatalysts. Additionally, renewable-based hydrogen can efficiently be used as fuel in fuel cells where water is the only by-product and as feedstock in the chemical sector. It can also replace the fossil sources in synthetic fuels, for instance, when combined well with captured carbon.

As our surrounding environment is showing some signs of grave problems arising in the future, the ultimate demand for cleaner energy has never been greater. Irrespective of the steep increase in the number of Patent Applications filed, the joint study published mentions that significant innovations in electrolyzer technology are still required to reduce the costs further and make it market-ready at industrial levels. Along with various charts and commentary, the joint study shall strike a chord with the investors, companies, and technologists looking forward to understanding these rapidly expanding technology domains in a better way.

The new joint study tracks the patent filings’ evolution over the past 15 years and sheds light on various trends, including:

  • In 2016, the number of patent families concerning water electrolysis technologies excelled the number of patent filings related to producing hydrogen from fossil sources, for instance, liquid or solid coal and oil-based hydrogen sources. Two years later, in 2018, inventions for electrocatalysts based on cheaper minerals exceeded the number of inventions based on way more traditional but expensive electrocatalysts, i.e., the ones using platinum, silver, gold, or other noble metals, thereby confirming the drive for cheaper alternatives.

The previously mentioned trend is demonstrated and pronounced by an increase in the national patent filings of China. Photo electrolysis is a robust, newly emerging technology capable of integrating hydrogen and electricity production in one step, consequently lowering the production costs. The joint study reports an above-average number of international patent families in this field – 50% of those are filed by universities. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Intellectual Property Filings Improve Globally Despite Covid-19 Pandemic

Intellectual Property Filings Improve Globally Despite Covid-19 Pandemic

At the global level, Intellectual Property (IP) filings, including trademarks, patents, and industrial designs, rebounded last year (as per the latest data presented by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), thereby indicating the resilience of human innovation and creation despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the contrary, the filing activity of both patent and Trademark Applications during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 (the Great Recession) had contracted sharply.

As per the World Intellectual Property Indicators report (compiling new data from 150 national and regional authorities), the trademark filing activity rose by 13.7% globally, patents by 1.6%, and industrial designs by 2%.

India has shown a pretty decent improvement in filings related to IP, with higher applications in trademarks (over 15%) and patents (10%), specifically driven by the ones filed in the pharmaceutical sector in 2020.

In 2020, the IP Office in China recorded the highest number of trademark applications. Also, India left behind Japan to secure the 5th position in terms of trademark filing activity.

The ultimate factor influencing such strong growth in the global trademark filing activity is the robust growth in products and services related to pharmaceuticals, surgical, dental, and medical goods, and advertising and business management.

Concerning pharmaceuticals, the number of filings increased from 4.1% in 2019 to 4.6% in 2020, while those of surgical, medical, and dental goods increased from 1.5% to 2.3%. Such trends were mirrored by some nations that saw significant increases in their respective trademark filing activities. For instance, India’s near about 15.4% growth in its trademark filing activity was driven majorly by the applications filed in the pharmaceutical sXctor.

Furthermore, global patent filing activity returned to growth last year after experiencing the first dip in a decade in 2019 due to a decline in China. In 2020, the IP office in China reported 1.5 million Patent Applications, followed by the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the European Patent Office (EPO). These five offices, together, accounted for 85.1% of the patent applications filed throughout the world.

Among the top ten IP offices, only three nations, including the Republic of Korea (3.6%), India (5.9%), and China (6.9%), recorded growth in the applications filed in 2020.

The Director-General at WIPO, Daren Tang, expressed his views on the strong growth in trademark filings (in particular) in 2020. He said that the double-digit growth in the trademark filing activity shows how enterprises worldwide have brought new products and services to the market despite the massive economic shook.

It is interesting to note that IP’s center of gravity has now shifted to Asia, considering the number of applications filed from the region as per the latest data recorded by WIPO. A decade ago, half of the overall ten IP-related applications were filed in Asia, and, in 2020, this number went close to seven. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Square Inc. Joins Cross-Licensing Platform to Reduce Patent Suits

Square Inc. Joins Cross-Licensing Platform to Reduce Patent Suits

Square Inc., an American company specializing in providing financial services and facilitating digital payments, has recently joined a cross-licensing platform with other technology companies to lessen Patent Lawsuits over cryptocurrency and encourage the growth of digital currencies. According to the company, it is becoming a part of the Open Innovation Network, wherein all the members agree for royalty-free access to patents for open source technology.

In 2020, Square established the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance, in which all the members are required to agree towards not suing each other over patents. It also provides a shared patent library for access to the underlying technologies.

Max Sills, the Counsel at Square and the General Manager of the Cryptocurrency Alliance, said in a recent statement delivered that the company is looking forward to avoiding long-drawn-out legal battles in the present rapid time of growth. He also stated that the ultimate goal of joining the Open Source Network is to have a non-aggression pact in place that underpins the new digital currencies and tools without which one can’t do business in the market.

The Network includes technologies like Hadoop and Linux kernel that are widely used to store and process large datasets.

Keith Bergelt, the Chief Executive of the Open Innovation Network, said that when it comes to dealing with core functionality, companies or individuals should not sue one another. According to him, the idea should always be to build one’s differentiation around the core, which won’t impair anyone from establishing a business and only safeguard them from being sued on what is fundamentally open.

The Open Innovation Network was created to safeguard the Linux operating system from patent litigation lawsuits. It even has more than 1,000 patents at present of its own that all the members get royalty-free. It was founded in 2005 by companies including Sony Corp., Red Hat Inc., and International Business Machines Corp., and currently, it has more than 3,500 members across the globe, such as Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. In the past decade, the Network has grown significantly to include energy, automotive, and medical device fields.

Square isn’t the only company trying to reduce patent suits that have bedeviled other industries, specifically in the field of technology. Litigation disputes over patents, like the ones involving medical devices and smartphones, among other industries, can cost an enormous amount of money in legal fees.

Many other groups have also been set up to address such challenges; however, each of them focuses on a separate issue concerning patent disputes. For instance, the Open Crypto Alliance was formed to identify Patent Applications to challenge or oppose, such as by providing appropriate information to the patent examiners to use as a legal basis for rejecting the applications. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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South Africa Grants World’s First-Ever Patent with AI as Inventor

South Africa Grants World’s First-Ever Patent with AI as Inventor

Inventions created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the next big thing in the field of innovation. The question, “To whom can a patent be granted for AI inventions?” has been a part of many debates for a pretty long period now. Surprisingly and interestingly, South Africa has recently become the world’s first-ever nation to grant a patent that names AI as its inventor. It has also named the AI’s owner as the owner of the patent invention.

The patent has been secured by the University of Surrey’s professor, Ryan Abbott, and his team. They faced several issues with the Patent Offices across the globe over the dire need to recognize AI as the inventor of patented inventions for many years.

All this while, Abbott was representing Dr. Stephen Thaler, who is the creator of an artificial neural system known as ‘Dabus.’ According to Thaler, Dabus is the sole inventor of a food container capable of improving heat transfer and grip.

Since 2018, Abbott, along with his team, has filed Patent Applications listing Dabus as the inventor in more than ten jurisdictions worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Last year, the High Court in Wales and England supported the decision of the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) by rejecting the patent application. In its final ruling, the Court stated that although Dabus created the inventions, it couldn’t be granted a patent as it wasn’t a natural person. Even the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected the application on the same grounds.

In a recent statement delivered, the Director of the Institute for People-Centred AI at the University of Surrey, Professor Adrian Hilton, said the world is “moving from an age in which invention was the preserve of people to an era where machines are capable of realizing the inventive step.”

Abbott strongly believes that the current situation in law is no longer fit for purpose and could easily put the investment in AI at huge risk. He also pointed towards the increasing use of AI in research and development (R&D) to come up with new drug compounds and support drug repurposing. In such scenarios, he stated that there could be an invention eligible for securing Patent Protection but not an individual eligible to be an inventor. According to Abbott, if what is written in the previous line means that a patent won’t be granted, then companies like Novartis, Siemens, or DeepMind, all of which are investing in AI, won’t be able to use AI in their respective areas.

Welcoming the decision of South Africa, Abbott said that this outcome indeed showcases an understanding of the utmost importance that lies in motivating people to make, develop, and use AI for generating socially valuable innovations. He further added that this decision would serve as a big example to the rest of the world concerning the use of AI in generating human benefits. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Understanding the Growing Role of Artificial Intelligence on Patents

Understanding the Growing Role of Artificial Intelligence on Patents

Without any second thoughts, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the latest buzzword across the globe. While it is not a recent phenomenon, it has indeed entered our lives in the past few years more than ever before. Be it Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Google Assistant – all of them are powered by a backend AI engine, which is ever constantly changing and expanding

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the earliest adopters of the technology that utilized the AI engines in drug discovery and diagnosis of diseases. Furthermore, AI has been proven efficient, like human dermatologists, in identifying all the skin-related diseases. When we talk about patents and AI, there are multiple issues, which we shall be discussing now.

Patentability of AI-Based Inventions

With a complex and continuously evolving nature – AI is a software, and software patentability has been disapproved by several laws in different countries worldwide. Under Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act, the computer programs are not patentable. While the law seems to be united against patenting the AI-based inventions; however, there have been workarounds for patenting the software – for instance, in India, the software patents are allowed in the scenario where they are tied up with hardware.

The Prime Issue – AI as an Inventor

The most crucial issue in the patenting industry corresponds to AI being referred to as the inventor of the algorithms it designs or develops. DABUS – Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience – is an AI-based system developed by Dr. Stephen Thaler. He filed the Patent Applications for the same, with DABUS as the inventor, in the UK, US, and European Patent Office (EPO).

All three patent applications with DABUS as the inventor were rejected. The grounds for rejecting the same were that the laws, in the three nations, consider a natural person to be an inventor and not AI.

Without any doubt, there a major gap in the current laws, rules, and regulations, which the lawmakers around the world need to reconsider and address, specifically, in the case of AI-based inventions.

AI has affected many industries, and patents are no different in this scenario. The ultimate benefit of AI is that it shall make the entire process way faster and efficient at different levels, including Patent Search, Patent Examination, Patent Grant, and even Patent Licensing. The AI-based systems can help significantly in consuming the unstructured data and observing critical trends in the same. Additionally, an AI engine can absorb different patent data and identify the patterns in them. At present, AI has already been integrated into many patent search tools, which have made the searching process faster and convenient.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to patents, AI is still very much at the growing stage, and we all are yet to explore all the potential benefits that it can offer. It is a matter of fact that yes – the AI-based systems shall prove to be exceedingly beneficial for one and all by making the patent process way more efficient and faster. The only concern is that patent laws worldwide seem to be lagging in this scenario, as most of them were framed when AI was an imaginative concept. Now, in the present digital era, there is a need to update the laws, so that they match well with AI. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Arcadia Wins Foundational Australian Patent for Herbicide Tolerance in Wheat

Arcadia Wins Foundational Australian Patent for Herbicide Tolerance in Wheat

The Australian Patent Office has quite recently granted a foundational patent covering herbicide tolerance in wheat to Arcadia Biosciences Inc., a consumer-driven agricultural technology company, headquartered in Davis, California. The company focuses on the development of traits for enhancing the nutritional value and quality of crops and food ingredients.

In a recent statement delivered, the company has mentioned that the newly granted patent provides Intellectual Property (IP) protection for mutations to the wheat genome that make it herbicide-tolerant. Furthermore, Arcadia has stated that it has also received a US Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the same technology.

All these announcements make both the United States and Australia the first major wheat-producing countries across the globe to approve the patents. According to Arcadia, additional Patent Applications are at present pending in several other prime markets worldwide.

The Chief Technology Officer at Arcadia Biosciences, Randy Shultz, has said that this patented technology shall serve as the foundation for innovations and inventions in herbicide tolerance in wheat in the coming future. He has further mentioned that with the help of additional research, this patented technology can even develop an exceedingly efficient hybrid wheat production system, which shall transform the entire wheat industry.

Currently, Arcadia is seeking potential licensing partners for its herbicide-tolerant wheat technology.

The Chief Commercial Officer at Arcadia, Sarah Reiter, has stated that this patented technology can indeed prove to an essential tool in the hybrid breeding toolkit for the right wheat innovators and inventors out there.

The USPTO has granted four patents to Arcadia earlier this year. Two of those patents correspond to extending the shelf life of whole wheat by reducing the oxidative and hydrolytic rancidity. Besides, the company has also received notices of allowance for two other patents that extend the earlier mentioned claims corresponding to the extended shelf life of wheat and reduced gluten grains. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Coronavirus Outbreak – How the Tech Giants are Easing Patents for a Greater Cause

Coronavirus Outbreak – How the Tech Giants are Easing Patents for a Greater Cause

The tech giants, most of the time, do every possible thing they can to keep their fundamental and crucial innovations under their purview. The most obvious way for them to do the same is via filing Patent Applications. Many of the widely-known tech companies out there file for thousands of patents every year. For instance, in 2019, IBM received a total of 9,262 patents and topped the business technology companies’ list of the most frequent patent recipients for the 27th year in a row. Moreover, companies, including Microsoft and Intel, are never far behind in this scenario as well.

IBM’s chief patent counsel, Manny Schecter, said in an article in 2018 that patents and the corresponding inventions are sometimes used as a currency for innovation. While keeping all such aspects in mind, something far away from the norms has to happen for the patent status quo to be disrupted, which, at present, is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Open COVID Pledge

At the beginning of this month, all the tech giants mentioned above, along with HP Enterprise, Amazon, Facebook, and many others, joined a new initiative known as the Open COVID Pledge. To the specific, the tech companies are proactively setting aside the digital norms for allowing other companies out there to use their Intellectual Property (IP) temporarily and free of charge in efforts to combat the novel Coronavirus. In particular, the Open COVID Pledge is indeed like a superset of open-source licensing and Creative Commons for undoubtedly a difficult situation.

The best thing about this pledge is that all these tech companies, along with a couple of patent holders and laboratories, love their patents, and yet, they are willing to see the utmost importance of the better cause. The Chief IP Counsel at HP Enterprise, Brett Alten, wrote last week in a blog post that patents provide a competitive edge by granting the respective owners the exclusive right to prevent others from exploiting their unique innovations and inventions; however, in tough situations like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cooperation holds more importance than the competition in all aspects.

The most engaging part is that the initiative or pledge came to life as a consequence of several academic and legal experts realizing a need, steering it, and then building something exceedingly robust for the tech giants to reply upon conveniently. As a part of the steering community, the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Creative Commons, Diane Peters, wrote in the blog post last week that the initiative came together very quickly due to the exigent circumstances. She further noted that Creative Commons is now looking forward to working efficiently with various policy experts and talented international legal professionals on the subsequent steps to make the Open COVID Pledge an impactful and fruitful reality.

According to some experts, there are a few complicating factors involved as well to make the pledge work since it deals with patents. The most critical aspect lies in the fact that some of the tech companies taking part in the initiative are not using the license created for the pledge specifically, and instead, using a separate license in the spirit of the Open COVID Pledge, which includes companies like Intel and IBM.

Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly incredible to come up with such an accomplishment in a short span. At the moment where so much is in the air, and a lot of technological innovation is the need of the hour, the Open COVID Pledge can provide ways to determine effective treatments and cures for the deadly Coronavirus. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Unfolding the Hand-in-Hand Relationship between Blockchain and IP

Unfolding the Hand-in-Hand Relationship between Blockchain and IP

The to-the-point definition of the term blockchain defines it as an anonymous online ledger that efficiently keeps a growing list of records, known as blocks, which are, in turn, linked using cryptography, where every single block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, transaction data, and a timestamp. As a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, blockchain was invented by an inventor with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2008. The blockchain technology is a concept that is too simple on the one hand and much complex on the other. It is exceedingly diverse in all of its uses. Many experts across the globe believe that the blockchain phenomenon is quite similar to the revolution brought by the Internet and the online world. When it comes to the industrial application of blockchain technology – Finance is undoubtedly one of the leading areas where it is traversing its roots.

The early birds that filed a patent on the blockchain include some of the widely known financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Mastercard International, and Bank of America. In India as well, people have filed a few Patent Applications on the blockchain technology. Other than blockchain, shared economy, smart contracts, file storage, governance, identity management, Internet of Things (IoT), stock trading, data management, e-commerce, healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, luxury and consumer goods, and automotive, are some of the fields in which technology is gaining immense pace and momentum.

It is a matter of fact that yes – Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and the blockchain technology go hand-in-hand. On one side, IPRs protect blockchain, and blockchain, on the other side, can efficiently serve to strengthen the already existing Intellectual Property (IP) regime. Without any doubt, the world, at present, is realizing the enormous potential that blockchain holds, and IPRs are indeed going to play an integral role in coming up with a protected environment for the development of the technology. While taking into account the other side’s aspect, we can observe that the security and reliability offered by blockchain can very well strengthen every phase of the lifecycle of the IPRs including creating licensing agreements, resolving disputes over ownership, identifying counterfeit products, or creating an IP register to keep a record for all forms of IPRs.

Initiatives Taken by the Indian Patent Office

Many nations across the globe have started realizing the true potential of blockchain technology, and India is no exception in this case. The Indian Patent Office (IPO) is doing its best to stay at par with the technological advancements. It expects to be able to predict the timelines for users corresponding to the different actions to be taken by the office.  A scientifically-handled workload-based allocation of patent applications to the examiners shall result in making optimal use of human resources available.  Automated checking against all the formal requirements, including attachments, application formats, amongst many others, can speed up the entire process by reducing the manual intervention required.  With reduced manual intervention, there shall also be an impact on the accountability and transparency procedures in an optimistic way. For achieving all the above measures, the IPO is efficiently establishing a legal framework for a blockchain-based IP registry to commercialize ideas and further protect them.

Final Thoughts

The use of blockchain technology for the benefit of the IP industry is indeed significant. However, like other emerging technologies, blockchain technology has a few setbacks as well. At present, such setbacks include the need for massive processing power and restrictions on the number of transactions per hour. The reality is far away from simple when it comes to the ultimate notion of a method for connecting the IP registries around the world via a single distributed ledger. Remember, successful and proactive management of IPRs using blockchain requires having a standardized platform that is adopted internationally. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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PayRange Sues KioSoft Alleging Patent Infringement

PayRange Sues KioSoft Alleging Patent Infringement

PayRange Inc., which is a network for day-to-day purchases, has quite recently filed a lawsuit against KioSoft Technologies LLC, a technology leader in the payments industry since 2002, alleging Patent Infringement. Consequently, PayRange is now looking forward to seeking damages estimated to be over $50 million, along with a permanent injunction barring further infringing sales.

Established and founded in 2013, PayRange proactively developed the original mobile payment system for use in non-networked unattended retail machines, including amusement, laundry, and vending. The company efficiently protects its innovative technology, creative works, and Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio with 18 patents and even more than 35 pending Patent Applications.

At present, PayRange is the market share leader having millions of users and hundreds of thousands of deployed machines. On the other hand, KioSoft Technologies sells mobile payment solutions unlawfully by infringing upon PayRange’s patented technology. PayRange’s patents cover a wide variety of innovations, including the foundational approach of authorizing payment to unconnected machines leveraging the user’s smartphone, firmware updating of offline machines, viewing machine status on smartphones, and retrofitting existing machines along with payment acceptance devices.

Paresh Patel – the founder and CEO of PayRange, has stated in the lawsuit that his company has invested tens of millions of dollars in both research and development for bringing to market the solutions that have revolutionized the industry. He further said that his company shall always vigorously protect its investment to prevent the competitors from selling infringing products.

PayRange’s counsel on this matter, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, filed the Patent Infringement Lawsuit against KioSoft by stating that the company disregarded PayRange’s Patent Rights blatantly by attempting to encroach upon PayRange’s customers with a solicit new business and copycat product. Now, PayRange is looking forward to seeking recovery of damages, which may even exceed $50 million as per the lost profits, royalties, or price erosion, along with a permanent injunction for preventing KioSoft from continuing future infringement by selling, maintaining, and supporting copycat products, for instance, mobile apps.

Founded by Paresh Patel, a veteran of the automated retail industry, PayRange provides operators and customers with convenient and secure mobile payment and loyalty solutions for amusement, laundry, and vending. With even more than 3 million users and a network of machines throughout 350 cities and towns in the US and Canada, PayRange is currently the North American leader in mobile payments for unattended retail. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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