Patentability of inventions under the Nigeria’s patents and designs act: an examination

The nature of invention, the reason(s) for protecting invention and the requirements for the patentability of invention under the Nigerian Patents and Designs Act are the main thrust of this paper. It is now trite that the global standard or criterion for granting a patent is that the invention must be patentable. The paper therefore examines the criteria for patenting inventions, that is, such invention must be novel; it must results from inventive activity and must not be obvious to a person knowledgeable in the art or field of study. In respect of plant or animal varieties, or essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals (other than microbiological processes and their products) patent is denied. The paper analyses this position and concludes that there is the need to ensure that invention and innovation is not stultified by refusing to patent an invention just because it is biological. The Nigerian Patent Registry refuses patent applications for Software or Computer-implemented inventions this paper argues that this provision of law should be changed in line with the rapid development in the field of computer technology. The paper concludes by making recommendations to improve the current legal situation in Nigeria.Keywords: Intellectual property, patent, inventions, patentabilit

Peer to peer networking in Ethernet broadband access networks

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications is growing dramatically, particularly for sharing content such as video, audio, and software. The traffic generated by these applications represents a large proportion of Internet traffic. For the broadband access network providers P2P traffic presents several problems. This thesis identifies the performance and business issues that P2P traffic has on broadband access networks employing the McCircuit separation technique. A mechanism for managing P2P within the access network is proposed. The P2P diversion algorithm aims to manage P2P traffic within the access network based on layer 2 and layer 3 information without employing intrusive layer 7 traffic detection. To solve the contention problem experienced by best effort traffic in the access network, a solution based on the diversion algorithm and on a QoS based traffic classification scheme is proposed. A business model defining the business roles and pricing schemes is presented based on the features offered by the P2P diversion algorithm introducing new opportunities for gaining revenue from P2P traffic for the network service providers and providing better services to users.Användningen av peer-to-peer (P2P) applikationer ökar dramatiskt, speciellt för spridningen av video, musik, och mjukvara. Trafiken som skapas av dessa program utgör en stor del of trafiken på Internet. För bredbandsaccess operatörer ställer P2P trafik många problem. I detta examensarbete så identifieras både de egenskaper och affärsaspekter som P2P trafiken har på ett bredbandsaccessnät som använder McCircuit som seprationsmekanism för trafiken mellan användare och en mekanism, "peer-to-peer diversion mechansim" (P2PDA), för att hantera P2P trafiken i ett McCircuit baserat accessnät beskrivs. P2PDA algoritmen hanterar P2P trafik i accessnätet baserat på lager 2 och lager 3 information utan att ta hänsyn till applikationslagret (Lager 7). För att få en bra fördelning mellan best-effort trafik och prioriterad trafik så föreslås en lösning baserad på kombinationen av P2PDA och QoS baserad trafik klassificering. Slutligen så defineras en affärsmodell där affärsroller och olika varianter på prissättning för P2P diskuteras baserad på de egenskaper som den förslagna algoritmen medför och den ekonomiska vinst som denna lösning medger