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Thursday, January 25, 2007

Patent battle: Small Indian Inventor takes on GM

Engineer –Innovator S.GOPALAKRISHNAN bagged the Far Eastern Economic Review Asian Innovation Award gold in 2001 for inventing Electronic catalytic converter. He received patent for " PROCESS AND SYNTHESIZER FOR MOLECULAR ENGINEERING OF MATERIALS" in U.K (Patent No.GB2397782) with 13.03.2002 as date of priority against his PCT application PCT/IN2002/000165/En07.08.2002. The National Phase of U.S Application No. is 10/494453 of PCT/IN02/00165 was filed on 04/30/2004. The inventor is aggrieved that ignoring his date of priority, USPTO granted patent to General Motors (US PATENT NO.7093429 dated August 22,2006) for " REFORMING DIESEL FUEL FOR NOx REDUCTION" .

Observers feel the question is not whether Gopalakrishnan will succeed in invalidating claims of GM as prior art but whether a small innovator like him can afford to fight the legal battle in USA.

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