Native American Nation Shielded From Patent Infringement Claims
from the opportunity? dept
Joe Mullin points us to the news of how the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma succeeded in having a patent infringement case against the tribe dismissed, due to the sovereign immunity of the Native American nation. The ruling (embedded below) is pretty straightforward. Basically, it notes that sovereign immunity is well established for Native American nations and that there's nothing that appears to remove that immunity in this case. Of course, this leads to a variety of questions about whether or not the various tribal nations might sense an opportunity (as many did with casinos) to create "patent autonomous zones" directly within the borders of the United States. That might make for an interesting scenario...
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Filed Under: patents, quapaw, sovereign immunity
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Drugs
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Re: Drugs
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Patents, Heck Copyrights as well
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Not that useful
There are still opportunities to take advantage of such patent free zones, and I'm surprised more businesses don't take advantage, but they aren't the panacea you might think.
Also, I wonder about the international and trade-related aspects of this decision. Sounds like it probably violates TRIPS and/or the Paris Convention. Not that the U.S. is exactly known for holding up its end of treaties. (Yes, I'm a bitter Canadian.)
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* That that you didn't see just now was the my Chickasaw+Choctaw ass giving the finger to everyone who kneejerked a correction to Native American. It's a completely retarded phrase since everyone born here is a native American and it's insulting that people think we're whiny-asses who want a PC name.
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For whom? The Indians would make out like gangbusters despite said enforcement. They deserve every penny.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 2nd, 2011 @ 6:40am
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I've asked the question as to why tribes don't use there sovereign immunity and the general response is 1: it costs to much, 2: there are many treaty's that prevent this, 3: Stuff like this happened many many years ago and the US government basically surrounded them cutting off access.
This is to say it cant be done, but to do it would require some major balls and some investors.
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Re: Native American Data Centres
Look up Continent8.
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Great place to start a university
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Re: Great place to start a university
I was thinking this same thing. Patent Free Research Zones.
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That way no business or persons outside the Native American Nation can use this loop hole with out first paying me a fee.
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It has already happened.
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Not to overstate the results
If for no other reason that the sale, import or use of the drug may also be an infringement. In other words, great the tribe could avoid infringement of the "making" but would be hit downstream.
Other downstream players could also face patent infringement making such an "exploit" impossible.
Situations that it could benefit are those in which the tribe itself did part of a patented process -- sort of a S.I version of the RIM strategy of moving parts of the infringement outside the US. But that's not much of an exploit either since you can already arrange the relationship so as to avoid a unitary infringer (also necessary for patent infringement).
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Native Americans and patents
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And I don't like being called "Indian" it's demeaning - the use is equivalent to the term Oriental is to Asians.
Native Americans not only applies to the Indigenous tribes of North America but to tribal nations in South America as well. The term Native Americans does mean born in North America...and if "we" are past those terms why do we still use the term African-American or Asian-American for those people who's ancestry tries them to those countries but have had generations born in the United States?
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