The World's Most Innovative Universities 2015-Reuters

Since World War II, universities around the world have been relied on to convert public funding into knowledge and products that help drive the global economy. So how can potential partners, investors, faculty and students know if an institution is really transforming science and technology and impacting the global economy? To answer that question, Reuters set out to find and rank the world's top 100 innovative universities empirically, building a methodology that employs 10 different metrics. The criteria focused on academic papers, which indicate basic research performed at a university, and patent filings, which point to an institution's interest in protecting and commercializing its discoveries.

Methodology:

The process began by identifying the 500 academic and government organizations that published the greatest number of articles in scholarly journals from 2008 to 2013, as indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. The list was cross referenced against the number of patents filed by each organization during the same time period in the Derwent World Patents Index and the Derwent Innovations Index. Patent equivalents, citing patents and citing articles were included up to July 2015. 

Criteria: Patent Volume, Patent Success, Global Patents, Patent Citations, Patent Citation Impact, Percent of Patents Cited, Patent to Article Citation Impact,Industry Article Citation Impact, Percent of Industry Collaborative Articles and Total Web of Science Papers.

Stanford tops the list and list also includes universities from S.Korea and China.

TePP supported Indian startup Nualgi wins 2015 Climate CoLab awards

In March 2015, the Climate CoLab opened 15 contests on key challenges the world is facing as we confront climate change.Nearly 400 proposals were submitted and evaluated by the Judges, who then selected 109 Semi-Finalists. The authors had a chance to revise their proposals with the Judges' feedback before entering a second round of evaluation, where 58 proposals were selected as Finalists and opened for public voting.  Over August and September, the Climate CoLab community grew to over 45,000 members and cast over 11,000 votes to select the contests' Popular Choice winners.

Nualgi invented by Sampathkumar of Bangalore and supported by DSIR under TePP was selected as winner under Energy-Water Nexus and also under Waste Management.

Indian Patent Office Rejects Pfizer’s Patent for Tofacitinib

Pfizer Products, Inc. (Pfizer) filed Indian patent application 991/MUMNP/2003 (‘991 application) entitled “Chiral Salt Resolution” in the Indian Patent Office (IPO) on October 27, 2003. The ‘991 application is a national phase application of WO 02/096909 (PCT/IB02/01905) filed on May 29, 2002. WO 02/096909 claims priority to U.S. application no. 60/294,775 filed on May 31, 2001 and U.S. application no. 60/341,048 filed on December 6, 2001.The closest prior art, WO 01/42246 (D1), also owned by Pfizer, was filed on November 23, 2000 and published on June 14, 2001. D1 claims priority to U.S. application no. 60/170,179 filed on December 10, 1999.

September 3, 2015 Decision by the Assistant Controller of Patents and Designs (Assistant Controller)

Regarding the novelty rejection, the Assistant Controller rejected Pfizer’s argument that D1 was not prior art. Specifically, the Assistant Controller referred to Section 13(1)(b) which refers to “anticipation by prior claiming” and states that “the invention is claimed in any claim of any other complete specification published on or after the date of filing of the applicant’s complete specification, being a specification filed in pursuance of an application for a patent made in India and date before or claiming the priority date earlier than that date”. The Assistant Controller noted that for the purpose of determining novelty, an application for a patent filed in the Indian Patent Office before the filing date of a complete specification of a later filed application but published later, is prior art for the purposes of “prior claiming”.

Source: bricwallblog

Private University Bill of A.P- draft placed on web for comments

AP State govt placed on web Private University Bill draft and invited comments/ discussion on the same before 30th Sept 2015. Salient futures of the bill:

• The University shall be a Green Field one and unitary in nature and shall not have power or provision to affiliate and recognize any college or institution to it.
• A Regulatory Authority shall be established by the Government for the purpose of providing a regulatory mechanism at the state level for working as an interface between the Government and the Regulatory Bodies for the purpose of ensuring appropriate standards of teaching, examination, research, extension programmes and protection of interests of the students.
• The University shall obtain accreditation from the National of Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) within five years of its establishment. 
•  The Sponsoring body shall establish an Endowment Fund for the University with an amount specified in the Letter of Intent.The University if required may utilize 75% of the income from Endowment Fund for the development of infrastructure of the University and not to meet the recurring expenditure of the University.
• Every University shall establish a fund, which shall be called the General Fund to which fees, sponsored projects, consultancy etc shall be credited, These funds to be utilised for payment of salaries, loan interest, maintenance etc
• The Sponsoring body shall establish an Endowment Fund with a minimum amount of Rs.5.00 crore. The Sponsoring body shall procure a minimum of 30 acres of land within municipal limits and 40 acres in other areas, if not already available.The Sponsoring body shall construct buildings such as Administrative, Academic and other buildings such as student activity center, auditorium etc. with a minimum plinth area of 10,000 sqm. The sponsoring body should invest minimum of Rs 30 lakhs on library books ,Rs 200 lakhs on lab equipment and Rs 100 lakhs on IT infrastructure.
• The Sponsoring body shall start at least five post graduate academic departments.
• within five years  to provide on campus residential accommodation to at least 25% of students and 20% of faculty.

Integrated scheme for Risk Guarantee support to public private partnerships in creating world-class Technology Business Incubators (TBIs)

AP government invited proposals from TBIs under their new scheme "Integrated scheme for Risk Guarantee support to public private partnerships in creating world-class Technology Business Incubators (TBIs)".

• land or built up area min 100,000 sq.ft will be made available to TBIs for 90years lease for live-play-work.
• 85% of project cost with a cap of Rs 150 crores will be provided as soft loan at 6% simple interest payable after project period of 15 years.
• eligibility- incubator should have incubated a minimum of 100 startups and managed atleast 25,000 sqft of incubator infrastructure.

This is invitation for empanelment and supersedes earlier scheme of providing support at Rs12,500/-per incubatee per month. 

Science & Technology in India- achievements & highlights

D KV Swaminathan, an engineer, scientist & technocrat is a specialist in design of Arc Dams, technology transfer and intellectual property. He held many positions like Controller General of Patents, Designs & trademarks, Professor at IISc, Director of APCTT, a former Adviser in DSIR. Now he is Chairman, Waterfalls Institute of Technology Transfer and Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute. 
He brought out this compilation of about 80 significant achievements in S&T in the second edition. First edition was released in 2010. Each one of them are remarkable milestones on the map to build strong knowledge based Indian economy.

Contact:
Waterfalls Institute of Technology Transfer
J-29, South extension-1
New Delhi -110049
Ph: 24642269
mail: wittchennai@gmail.com

New guidelines for the examination of computer related inventions (CRIs) by the Indian Patent office (IPO)

Section 3(K) of India’s Patents Act proscribes the patenting of “a mathematical or business method or a computer program per se or algorithms”. Until last week, the most recent guidance on that question was a set of guidelines for examination of CRIs released in 2013. These, many contend  “seem to encourage novelty in hardware to overcome rejections”. The guidelines now contain illustrative examples of claims that are patentable.
The following are examples (illustrative but not exhaustive) of some of the granted claims by Indian Patent Office: 
Example 8.1: An apparatus (610, 650) for eigenvalue decomposition and singular value decomposition of matrices in wireless communications comprising: plurality of transmitters ( 622a; 622ap ); plurality of receivers ( 622a; 622ap ); a controller (630) configured to receive traffic data and generating data symbols; a transmit (TX) data processor (614) coupled to said controller (630); a receive (RX) data processor (642) coupled to said controller (630); a channel processor (628) coupled to said controller (630); wherein said channel processor (628) and said controller (630) performs a plurality of iterations of Jacobi rotation on a first matrix of complex values with a plurality of Jacobi rotation matrices of complex values, wherein, for each of the plurality of  iterations, said channel processor (628) and said controller (630) is configured to form a submatrix based on the first matrix, to decompose the submatrix to obtain eigenvectors for the submatrix, to form a Jacobi rotation matrix with the eigenvectors, and to update the first matrix with the Jacobi rotation matrix, and to derive a second matrix of complex values based on the plurality of Jacobi rotation matrices, the second matrix comprising orthogonal vectors; and a memory (632) coupled to the said channel processor (628, 630) and said controller (678, 680). 
Example 8.2: A method for granting an access to a computer-based object, wherein - a memory card having a program code processor is provided, with at least one public and one private key assigned to the memory card being stored thereon, - an item of license information which comprises at least one license code encrypted by means of the public key assigned to the memory card is provided at a computing device controlling the access to the computer-based object, - a symmetric key which is made available to the memory card and the computing device is generated from a first random number generated by the memory card and from a second random number provided by the computing device, - the encrypted license code and a specification, provided with a hash value encrypted using the symmetric key, of a function that is to be executed by the memory card for decrypting the license code are transmitted to the memory card, - the encrypted hash value is decrypted by the memory card and checked for agreement with a hash value computed for the specification of the function to be executed by the memory card, - if the result of the check is positive, the function for decrypting the license code is executed by the memory card and a decrypted license code is transmitted to the computing device, - the decrypted license code is provided at least temporarily for accessing the computer-based object. 
Example 8.3: A method of controlling an electronic device (1) comprising a touch sensitive display (11) the method comprising: displaying a plurality of graphical items (43) on the touch sensitive display (11) where each graphical item (43) has an identity (44); detecting a coupling, formed by a user, of at least two graphical items (43), the coupling comprising, a trace on the touch sensitive display (11) between the at least two graphical items (43); and, performing an action dependent upon the identity (44) of the coupled graphical items (43), Page 16 of 21 characterized in that when characterized in that when the user begins to make the trace, an indication is displayed to indicate the item ( 43) on which the trace began. 
Example 8.4: A computer-implemented method comprising: identifying one or more person names in a set of one or more documents, with each identified person name more likely to refer to a single person in a profession than other person names in the document: identifying descriptive language from one or more documents, based on the identified names; and identifying within one or more documents other person names that refer to persons in the profession, based on one or more portions of the identified descriptive language.
Example 8.5: A method for providing a network bridge in UDP multicast traffic, the method being executed by a multicast repeater (108a; 708a) on a host computer system (104a, 704a) on a network 102a; 702a), the method comprising the steps of: holding information about one or more other multicast repeaters ( 108a; 708a) which have been discovered, each multicast repeater (108a; 708a) being arranged on a separate network (102b; 702b) that is separated from the network (102a; 702a) including a host by at least one network device that is not configured to route UDP multicast addressing; and at each time when a UDP multicast request packet (320; 720) is received via multicast, extracting a globally unique packet ID from the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720); determining whether or not the multicast repeater (108a; 708a) has previously forwarded the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720) by searching an ID cache for the packet ID; ignoring the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720) in a case where the multicast repeater (1 08a; 708a) has previously forwarded the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720); and in a case where the multicast repeater (108a; 708a) has not previously forwarded the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720), transmitting the UDP multicast request packet (320; 720) to the one or more other multicast repeaters (108a; 708a) which have been discovered, and recording the packet ID in the ID cache, wherein the method comprises determining whether or not a UDP multicast request packet corresponding to a UDP multicast response packet (320; 720) has originated in the network (102a;702a) whenever the UDP multicast response packet is received. 
Example 8.6: A method for estimating a length of time required to download one or more application programs on a wireless device over wireless network, said method comprising operations of: the wireless device exchanging one or more data files with server, said data files including at least information representing a size of the one or more application programs available for downloading onto the wireless device; during the exchanging, at least one of the server and wireless device measuring one or more data transfer rates for the exchanging operation; receiving user input of one or more application programs to download; at least one of the server and wireless device: utilizing the one or more measured data transfer rates and the size of the selected one or more application programs to estimate a length of time required to download the one or more application programs onto the wireless device and the wireless device providing an output of the estimated time. Example 8.7: A method for tracking a mobile electronic device using instant messaging (IM), the method comprising the steps of: determining whether a currently inserted subscriber identity module (SIM) card is different from the SIM card stored in a memory of a mobile electronic device; stealthily initiating a live voice call over an instant messaging (IM) message to a predefined IM identity of a user; and automatically sending IM message along with the live voice call, location and IMSI number of the currently inserted SIM card to the predefined IM identity of the user via an IM server if the currently inserted SIM card is different from the SIM card stored in the memory of the mobile electronic device. 
Example 8.8: A method of creating Tunnel End Points for a IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel using simple network management protocol (SNMP) in a system having Dual-Stack Border Router as v4/v6 nodes, the method comprising steps of: selecting at least one v4/v6 node as SNMP manager and the rest as SNMP agent configuring the tunnel configuration pertaining to the new node (cloud) at the SNMP manager whenever a new v4/v6 node is added to the v4 network;  sending an SNMP SET request to the new v4/v6 node with the tunnel configuration information of all the nodes by the SNMP manager; processing the SNMP SET request by the said new v4/v6 node and configuring the tunnel configuration information of all the nodes if the attempt succeeds; sending a response to the SNMP manager indicating success or failure of the configuration; configuring existing SNMP agents and the new node in order to effect incorporation of tunnel configuration information of new v4/v6 node. Example 8.9: IPAB Decision relating to CRI While dealing with a patent application having title “Method for controlling a wind turbine and a wind turbine”,

 IPAB observed: “This is normally a computer operated or computer controlled technical instrumentation processing of the utilities to achieve the target in an automatic fashion and this technical process control associated with or directed to a computer set up to operate in accordance with a specified program (whether by means of hardware or software) for controlling or carrying out a technical process control such as the above, cannot be regarded as relating to a computer program per se or a set of rules of procedure like algorithms and thus are not objectionable from the point of view of patentability, more so when the claims do not claim, or contain any algorithm or its set of rules as such, but only comprise of some process steps to carry out a technical process or achieve a technical effect finally the maximum power output by controlling the wind turbine. Hence the objection that invention is not patentable under section 3(k) fails or not valid.”

skyTran and story of inventor Doug Malewicki

skyTran is in news with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt investing with his venture fund Innovation Endeavors.

History of skyTran: In 1991, Doug Malewicki, a California Aerospace Engineer, conceived of SkyTran, a personal rapid transit, magnetic levitation system that would address increasing congestion, pollution, and energy security challenges. A decade latter, a meeting was held in 2002, hosted by John Kroft, PE, a Seattle engineer, that included John Cole, PE, Doug Malewicki, PE, J. Lee Wamble, PE and Dr. R. Paul Williamson. Following this meeting, the oversight company, Unimodal, was formed and incorporated in Montana to develop SkyTran. With the leadership of Sen. Max Baucus, a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Research Innovation & Technology Administration, was secured by the University of Montana. This funding supported the further development of SkyTran as a hydrogen-powered, magnetic levitation personal rapid transit system. Research and partnership collaborations with Unimodal were established in strategic locations including Los Angeles, NASA Ames in Mountain View, CA, and Seattle, WA, with central component assembly laboratory located in Missoula, MT.

More fascinating is story of prolific inventor Doug Malewicki : He is an engineer with BS in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering, from University of Illinois,  MS Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from Stanford University.  Mr. Malewicki is also a skilled craftsman who understands machining, welding, advanced composites manufacturing, plastic injection molding, etc. He understands what can and can't be built and the economics involved in applying these technologies.Malewicki gained a lot of insight into assembly line production and the cost benefits of automation while working as Manager of Advanced R&D at L. M. Cox Manufacturing (1970-1975), as Chief Designer at Chad Industries (1978 -1979), as VP of Engineering at Industrial Support Solutions (1993-1995).

His patent: Passenger transportation system for self-guided vehicles