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“Uruburguer”, a sandwich delivery store in honor of Flamengo, received a warning letter from the club on November 8th. The team claims to be harmed by the use of names like Flamengo, Mengão, and Urubu without proper authorization.

According to journalist Mauro Cezar, the club demands compensation from a couple of fans who created the hamburger shop. Uruburger went viral on social media in recent months by the creative names of the snacks, all referring to the team.

“Our store was closed and we still have to pay compensation. How? If we’re not even able to work?”, the owner, Allex Martins, wrote on social networks.

“In the same way, in addition to using these brands, the company has been adopting a strategy of showing advertisements allusive to the Club, images of its athletes and official games, excerpts from hymns and fans’ chants, references to the years of the conquest of titles and historical events, news related to the Club, and other elements, all in an unauthorized manner, and with the clear intention of taking advantage of the enormous fame of the Notifier, aiming at attracting customers and consumers to its commercial enterprise”, says an excerpt of the notification.

According to ESPN, the store was baned from the main delivery app about a week ago, and the couple lost their source of livelihood. Allex and Roberta decided to open the hamburger in the face of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

“The dream turned into a nightmare,” said Allex on Instagram.

The store received around 70 weekly orders, and the numbers doubled on Flamengo match days.

Source: Extra

The president of BPTO, Cláudio Furtado, and the president of the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), Mori Kiyoshi, signed on November 9, the Memorandum of Cooperation for the renewal of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) between Brazil and Japan. Through the PPH, Brazilians can use the result of the examination of the patent application at the BPTO to speed up the analysis in Japan and vice versa.

The new PPH will start on December 1, 2021, and last for five years. According to the PPH requirements, which are unified for all countries with that the BPTO has such agreements, up to 600 applications per year can be accepted, in any technical field. In the PPH with Japan (until 07/11/21), 309 requests were made, and 236 had a technical decision. The average time between application and decision was 316 days.

Source: BPTO News

Researchers at the UFBA (Federal University of Bahia) discovered in the wild passion fruit leaf – Passiflora cincinnata, a common plant species in the semiarid region of Bahia – powerful protection properties against the action of the sun’s rays. From the plant, they developed a sunscreen, obtaining another patent for the invention – the tenth – for the University, granted by the Brazilian Patent Office (BPTO).

The creation of the product began with the master’s thesis by Danilo Menezes Oliveira, carried out at the Graduate Program in Biosciences at UFBA.

In studies carried out at the IMS Laboratory of Pharmacotechnics and Cosmetic Technology, the potential of the extract of wild passion fruit leaf for protection against ultraviolet A and B radiation was verified. This protection is important to avoid the harmful effects of skin exposure to the sun, such as premature aging and the risks of skin cancer.

He explains that, in addition to the plant extract, a series of other substances such as moisturizers and antioxidants can be added to the final version of the sunscreen through nanotechnology, which allows the manipulation of matter on a nanometric scale (on the order of a billionth of a meter) and favors the targeted delivery of substances that perform specific functions. Likewise, different sunscreens can be added to the formula to determine the protection factor offered in the final product.

Source: Agencia Sertão

On November 1st, Apple was forced to pay 12 million yuan (US$1.9 million) to Chinese distributor COL Digital Publishing, which supplies reading products through diversified channels, including works literature, comic books, and editorial products on paper.

The Chinese company has had several legal battles against Apple since 2012 over copyright issues, totaling four lawsuits against the iPhone’s owner. One of them took place in April this year when Apple had to pay a fine of 368,000 yuan.

This time, the decision made by the People’s Court of Tianjin Binhai (responsible for the case located in the north of mainland China) to punish Apple came after COL Digital found that third-party applications in the App Store, belonging to the US company in mainland China, were publishing unlicensed content, including novels popular in the country, which could only be distributed by the publisher online.

According to the Chinese distributor, the illegal availability of their works in third-party applications caused a loss of more than 70 million yuan for the company, in addition, there are still 83 cases open regarding infringement of rights copyrights in the App Store, including at least 460 titles owned by the Asian company. Thus, there is still the possibility of further lawsuits by the publisher against the iPhone manufacturer in the future.

The South China Morning Post reported that Apple declined to comment on the matter, while a lawyer for COL Digital upheld the Tianjin court’s decision but chose not to provide further details as the case is still ongoing.

In October of this year, Apple had already lost a lawsuit brought by Huawei regarding the use of the “Huawei MatePod” trademark registered by the Chinese manufacturer for its series of headphones. The American giant unsuccessfully tried to block the use of the nomenclature due to supposed similarity to the names given to its category of registered headphones such as “Pod”, “iPod”, “AirPods” and “EarPod”.

Source: Canaltech

A Brazilian who has been fighting for years to be recognized as the inventor of the barrier spray won a victory over FIFA. In April of this year, the Superior Court of Justice slammed the hammer on the jurisdiction of the Brazilian justice in the case and determined that FIFA would have to answer for any violations that occurred only in Brazil.

The decision of the judges on Wednesday followed this orientation. That’s why, in practice, the Brazilian’s request was partially granted – the lawyers were asking for compensation for the use of the spray around the world. However, the defense of Heine recognizes the result as a great victory while studying to file suits in other countries.

Heine Allemagne is now awaiting a million-dollar indemnity. Judge-Rapporteur Francisco de Assis Pessanha Filho decided, and was followed by his peers, that the Brazilian must be repaired for all damages that have occurred since 2012 – the amount will still be calculated in an eventual settlement of the sentence. In the initial part of the lawsuit filed in 2017, the inventor asked for U$ 40 million dollars.

In addition, it was decided that FIFA will have to pay R$ 50 thousand for having used the spray in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, with the Spuni brand covered.

Source: GE

A special program of the BPTO can speed up the decision-making process for granting patents for projects that support a sustainable economy. Green Patents speeds up the process for projects aimed at technologies that promote a lower environmental impact.

Between January 2020 and March 2021 there were 118 applications for priority exam based on the program. Of these, 32 requests have already been decided, with a 65% concession and an average time between the request for an accelerated examination and the end of the process of just eight months.

“In order to be eligible for the accelerated procedure, the patent application must include inventions related to technologies for alternative energy generation, biofuels; for transportation, such as hybrid or electric vehicles; for energy conservation; and for waste management or sustainable agriculture, such as fertilizers, irrigation techniques, among others”, says Ana Cristina Müller, an expert on the subject.

In addition to the “Green Patents”, the specialist says that there are other ways to speed up the exam. An example are cases of infringement of the object of a patent application, that is, when there is a third-party product or process on the market that is reproducing, without authorization from the applicant, an invention that already has a patent application in progress.

“For these, the applicant can request the expediting of the examination, simply sending an extrajudicial notification to the potential offender as evidence that the offense is taking place.”

Source: Exame

A record published by the US Patent and Trademark Office recently called attention even though it did not reveal equipment or technology. It is a new trajectory for the Moon, developed by NASA engineers. The unprecedented route for travel to the natural satellite saves money, time and fuel, as well as providing unprecedented discoveries about the Universe for the first mission to explore it.

Through this technique, smaller spacecraft can hitch a ride on missions launched to Geosynchronous Earth Orbit, a region that is the destination of many satellites. There, they would be able to perform a series of maneuvers at any time of the year and without restrictions on time and inclination to enter lunar orbit, making a faster trip and with little or no fuel.

Due to its characteristics, it is aimed at spaceships of reduced size and low budget, so larger missions, with spacecraft carrying astronauts and rovers, cannot benefit from this route.

Source: Tecmundo

After receiving patent approval for a vaccine against the enteropathogenic Escherichia coli bacteria, the Butantan Institute is working on the development of an immunizing agent against the disease, capable of causing diarrhea that leads to death. Also known by the acronym EPEC, an enteropathogenic Escherichia coli is one of the six pathogenic categories of E. coli that cause intestinal disease. Transmitted via the fecal-oral route, that is, through the ingestion of contaminated water or food, it is common in developing countries due to the lack of basic sanitation, and annually kills up to 2 million children worldwide from diarrhea.

The issue sensitized Wilmar Dias da Silva’s professor and researcher at Butantan in 2005, during the Thematic Cooperation Program in the Matter of Science and Technology (Proáfrica), a technology transfer project for the creation of a serpentarium in Mozambique. Back in Brazil, he devised a recombinant vaccine to fight the disease. In this type of immunizing agent, which is obtained through genetic engineering, there is a combination of DNA or RNA from different organisms, the result of which is inserted into a vector – in this case, the chosen one was the BCG bacterium, which is widely used in research for its safety and immunogenic properties.

Who accepted the challenge of taking the project forward, under the supervision of Wilmar and researcher Roxane Piazza, from the Bacteriology Laboratory, among other scientists from the Butantan, was the then master’s student at the University of São Paulo (USP) Halyka Vasconcellos. “We inserted the genes of two proteins, BFPA, and intimin, which are responsible for the adhesion of EPEC in the intestine, inside the BCG. We then applied this modified BCG in mice, generating a positive immune response”, summarizes the researcher. The work was published in the renowned journal Vaccine, in 2012, but continued to be improved by Halyka throughout her doctorate and postdoctoral studies, until the patent registration was submitted and approved, in May this year, by the Brazilian Patent Office (BPTO).

“It was the realization of a dream, which I would not have realized without the contribution of numerous researchers from Butantan who helped me along this path”, says Halyka, who is now a university professor and directs two laboratories in Nova Friburgo (RJ). Besides her, Wilmar and Roxane, scientists Karina Scaramuzzi, Ivan Pereira Nascimento, Jorge da Costa Ferreira Junior, Cecilia Abe, and Andre Kipnis are also listed as inventors of the patent, due to their technical contribution. “We do not work interested in personal profit, but in the good that a vaccine will bring to society”, emphasizes Professor Wilmar.

The next stage of the research will be the realization of pre-clinical and clinical trials (phases 1, 2, and 3). “We still have a long way to go, but the approval of the patent will certainly facilitate the negotiation of this new technology”, celebrates the innovation manager at Butantan, Cristiano Gonçalves Pereira.

Source: Pfarma