Blogs
Google's Optical Character Recognition Software Now Works with All South Asian Languages
- September 26, 2015
The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software by Google now works for more than 248 world languages, including all the major South Asian languages, and it's easy to use and works with over 90 percent accuracy for most languages.
Read more →As Odia Wikipedia turns 13, what happens next?
- September 26, 2015
Odia Wikipedia, one of several Indian-language Wikipedia projects, celebrated thirteen years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.
Read more →CIS brings Nadustunna Charithra magazine under by CC BY SA licence
- September 26, 2015
As a part of its content donation initiative, the Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) has brought all issues of Nadustunna Charithra magazine under Creative Common Licence.
Read more →Software Freedom Pledge
- September 25, 2015
On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.
Read more →FAQ: CIS' Proposal for Compulsory Licensing of Critical Mobile Technologies
- September 25, 2015
Earlier this year, the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) had proposed that the Government of India (GoI) initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and mandate a five percent compulsory license. The proposal was made in light of ongoing litigation in India over standard essential patents pertaining to mobile technology, and the government's own “Make in India” and “Digital India” programmes.
Read more →Open Letter to PM Modi on Intellectual Property Rights issues on His Visit to the United States of America in September, 2015
- September 23, 2015
This is an open letter by CIS to the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi in light of his impending visit to the USA. This letter asks the Prime Minister to urge the USA to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty; and asks that India not be a party to TPP negotiations, in light of recent reports on a study encouraging India to join the TPP.
Read more →Comments on the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs)
- September 21, 2015
Recently, the Indian Patents Office released the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (“2015 Guidelines/ Guidelines”) in an attempt to clarify examination of software related patents in India. This post is a pure analysis of the 2015 Guidelines. The new Guidelines, essentially, narrow the exclusions of secttion 3(k), thereby enlarging the scope of software related applications eligible for a patent grant. More alarmingly, there is low emphasis on the application of the subject matter test, increased ambiguity on the nature of subject matter and an exclusionary list of examples appended to the document. In the following post, CIS highlights these concerns and presents solutions, and also proposes a definition of "computer programme per se". Read on to understand how the new guidelines will potentially lead to an increase in software patenting activity by expanding the scope of patentable subject matter – in negation of the legislative intent of section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970.
Read more →CCI Participation at the Upcoming 3rd International Conference on IPR and Competition
- September 13, 2015
The Centre for Internet & Society wrote to the Competition Commission of India Chairman on August 5, 2015 about participation at a conference organised by Ericsson and concerns regarding conflict of interest. We also had several other NGOs sign on to the letter.
Read more →'We Need to Proactively Ensure that People Can't File Patents Representative of the Creativity of a FOSS Community'
- September 07, 2015
Rohini Lakshané attended “Open Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Our Digital Culture” in Bangalore on August 13, 2015. Major takeaways from the event are documented in this post.
Read more →Pervasive Technologies: Working Document Series - Research Questions and a Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory
- September 05, 2015
This document is divided into two parts - the first part lays out a series of research questions, potentially seeking to apply actor-network theory as a research methodology. The second part seeks to map literature around the Actor-Network Theory ("ANT") as a research methodology.
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