Patent Law

Plagiarism at the New York Times

Posted on March 11, 2008
Related to the Spitzer mess, the New York Times plagiarized from Manhattan Media.Spitzer attended Princeton University for his undergraduate studies and Harvard University for law school. Spitzer was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. [Wikipedia]

CIRM advocating "compensation for eggs"?

Posted on March 11, 2008
Biopolitical Times reports on a 28 Feb 08 meeting of the "Standards Working Group" [the SWG] of California's CIRM:Alan Trounson stepped up to the podium, and certainly surprised nearly everyone in the room with a proposal that the SWG support paying women for their eggs by offering them compensation in the way of discounts on their fertility treatments - "egg-sharing" - if they agree to give up some of their eggs before they have achieved their own reproductive success...

(Cord blood) stem cell infusion saves 2-year-old

Posted on March 11, 2008
NBC Nightly News on 11 March 2008 is presenting a story on stem cells from cord blood. The treatment of Dallas Hextell, diagnosed with cerebral palsy, with stem cells from his own cord blood:The 2-year-old son of the Sacramento, Calif., couple was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but is now showing fewer signs of the disorder and marked improvement after an infusion of his own stem cells ? made possible by the preservation of his own cord blood shortly before birth...

Journal Science to take action on Kim Tae-Kook fraud?

Posted on March 11, 2008
ScienceNOW Daily News reported: The investigation [of Tae Kook Kim] is not yet complete, but Lee Gyun Min, chair of KAIST's Department of Biological Sciences and head of the internal investigation committee, sent correspondence to Science stating that "our initial investigative results are strong enough to convince us that the two papers do not contain any scientific truth...

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George Armstrong Custer, again

Posted on March 10, 2008
The cover of the Feb. 2008 issue of American History blares "George Custer: Hero or Villain?" but the interior story is titled "Custer the Truth behind the Silver Screen Myth" and deals mostly with the movie "They died with their boots on." The last paragraph:Whoever plays Custer on film in the future will be working the very long shadow cast by Errol Flynn...

Baseball and patent reform?

Posted on March 10, 2008
In Baseball, Steroids, and Patent Reform, one has the line:While others at the water cooler expressed disbelief that our elected officials called Roger Clemens to testify, I cheered. I?m thrilled Congress is dealing with this issue. Do I really care about juiced-up pitchers? No, not really...

Do lawyers "say anything"?

Posted on March 10, 2008
On March 8, Law & Order re-broadcast "Quit Claim," originally aired on Feb. 6, which had some many themes and twists that it almost became a Mad Magazine parody of Law & Order. One had an overall theme involving problems with subprime mortgages, and the scamming of unfortunate homeowners by people obtaining quitclaim deeds from said owners (and then re-selling the houses)...

Was Steve McQueen a patent troll?

Posted on March 10, 2008
The final clue on Jeopardy on 10 March 08 was a 60's movie actor who got a patent on low slung bucket seats for race cars. The eventual Jeopardy winner identified Steve McQueen. The two others picked James Dean, who died in 1955.[The patent was apparently a design patent...

The decline of ethics in the legal profession?

Posted on March 09, 2008
from WOLTERS KLUWER FINANCIAL SERVICES v. SCIVANTAGE :Thus, a dismaying erosion of civility in practice has often accompanied the expansion of our legal profession. Such incivility ?commonly manifests itself as rudeness, refusal to accommodate a colleague?s schedule, judge baiting, or harassment during depositions?...

Too good to be true, but not "too true" to be in Science?

Posted on March 09, 2008
Of the Kim Tae-Kook fraud, one commenter at The Scientist wrote:I listened to his talk at a conference. That was about 2 years ago in Hawaii, a good place, he was one of the invited speaker. He was talking about his Magic beads, they are antibody conjugated magnetic beads to pull down signaling molecules so that they are on one plane and then he can do confocal to figure out the signaling pathways...

Patent reformers: lemmings or lemming-hoaxers?

Posted on March 08, 2008
As the gears in the patent reform debate shift to a "too low" rate of 44% from a "too high" rate of 97%, one thinks back to the 1958 Disney documentary White Wildnerness which tricked a whole generation of children into thinking lemmings would commit mass suicide...

Plagiarism: intent in the eye of the beholder?

Posted on March 07, 2008
Glenn Poshard of SIU is lucky he didn't do his thesis at the Mississippi University for Women (MUW) which notes:For flagrant acts of plagiarism where the intent to plagiarize is clear, such as turning in another student's work as one's own or copying significant portions of published material without documenting sources, the faculty member may assign a grade of "0" on the work and request that the case proceed immediately to the Academic Standards Board for disciplinary action...

Do BPAI affirmance numbers give an accurate picture of "quality"?

Posted on March 07, 2008
In a post --Appeallusion--, Patenthawk starts with data on BPAI decisions that appeared on Patently-O, but quickly gets intothe underlying gamesmanship of "counts" in examination practice at the USPTO. Contrary to a widely-circulated urban legend from the patent reform folks [that examiners get more points for mindless allowance], the system gives an incentive for brief final rejections...

More on the 44% patent grant rate

Posted on March 07, 2008
Further to the matter of the 44% patent grant rate, the 271blog quoted USPTO Director Dudas:Our allowance rate has dropped from 72 percent in 2000, to 44 percent in the first quarter this year. This is due partly to our quality initiatives, but much is due to the lack of quality in many applications we receive...

The Poling case: the scientific significance of what happens in court

Posted on March 07, 2008
The national networks on March 6 covered the case of Hannah Poling, presenting the possibility of an autism/vaccine link, and wherein government health officials conceded that the vaccines exacerbated an underlying condition in Hannah and that she should be paid from the federal vaccine-injury fund...

The "future of computing" at IBM: trivial or schizophrenic?

Posted on March 07, 2008
One IPBiz reader at an IBM outpost in Asia (IBM Singapore Pte Ltd, linked through Colombo, Sri Lanka (Ceylon)) was studying the works of Laura Wynter, co-inventor of Method and structure for automated crediting to customers for waiting to IBM (published application 20080046385, application 11/492043), discussed on IPBiz...

Nature comments on WARF win over PubPat, FTCR on stem cell patent

Posted on March 06, 2008
In its 5 March 2008 issue, the journal Nature commented on the USPTO action on the re-examined WARF stem cell patent, US 7,029,913:In 2006, after critics challenged the patents on the basis that they were too broad and hindered the field of embryonic stem-cell research, the patent office said it would re-examine the three...

Biometric patent to be auctioned by Ocean Tomo

Posted on March 05, 2008
FaceBase, Inc. President John Payne said that U.S. Patent No. 6,072,894 titled ?Biometric Face Recognition for Applicant Screening?, will be offered at the Ocean Tomo Spring 2008 Live IP Auction on April 2, 2008 at The Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.See also IPBiz post: FaceKey goes into biometric vending machine market

Another lithium ion battery patent

Posted on March 05, 2008
Bizjournals notes that A123Systems Inc. received US 7,338,734. A123Systems has raised $148 million in funding to date. The company, founded in 2001, was spun out of MIT and has grown to more than 850 employees worldwide, with facilities in Michigan, Canada, China and Korea.

Joshua Krumholz interviewed on patent reform, janitor's room

Posted on March 05, 2008
On patent reform, Krumholz noted:The proposal raises serious procedural questions that threaten to further burden already overburdened courts. If the proposal requires judges to act as additional gatekeepers, requiring them to make threshold determinations of appropriate methodology, it is not at all clear that the courts can handle this additional burden...

Judging the novelty of historical perspectives

Posted on March 05, 2008
On March 4, 2008, IPBiz received a comment to an earlier post What Gettysburg teaches us about KSR v. Teleflex. The issue raised by the commenter is not unrelated to the use, by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, of plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin to discuss plagiarism...

Hosteny's "The Cowardice of Anonymous Bloggers"

Posted on March 05, 2008
The March 2008 issue of Intellectual Property Today has an article by Joseph Hosteny entitled "The Cowardice of Anonymous Bloggers", which touches on (no surprise) the patent troll tracker blog. [See IPBiz post: Patent Troll Tracker is Cisco's Rick Frenkel]The Hosteny article was apparently submitted before the Troll Tracker was unmasked as Cisco's Director of Intellectual Property...

Patent reform: it's about the money, stupid

Posted on March 05, 2008
An important issue in patent reform is that of damages. Eagle Forum wrote:This Patent Act would make it cheaper for infringers to steal patented inventions by limiting damages to the patent's "specific contribution over the prior art" ? an unworkable test that would result in artificially low damages awards and increased litigation costs...

Universities: key opponent to S.1145

Posted on March 05, 2008
PatentHawk quotes a source:One interesting aspect is the significant role that the universities have played because of their tech-transfer offices. The tech transfer guy at University of Nevada-Reno has had Reid staffers visit his office three times to see if they can't satisfy him...

Plagiarism-phobia impedes quality work?

Posted on March 05, 2008
See Plagiarism Phobias Hinder Quality Work

"She's an academic. She studies studies."

Posted on March 05, 2008
Academics were not displayed favorably in the new episode of Law & Order on March 5, 2008. Another line: "Stick to your law books. On the page the law is a much purer thing."One might have thought Law & Order was talking about some of the silliness of intellectual property academics on patent reform.

Law & Order on the Civil War

Posted on March 05, 2008
Law & Order: Criminal Intent on March 5 was a re-broadcast of an episode on 1 Nov 07 which involved a Civil War sub-theme.Of the Civil War, one Josiah Roundtree, Quaker, was sending money to the South in the form of 1861 double eagles ($20 gold coins)...

Science takes note of Chiranjeevi science fraud

Posted on March 04, 2008
In an article in Science [319 Science 1170] titled "Chemist Found Responsible for Ethical Breaches", Robert F. Service begins This time it's chemistry's turn and then proceeds to discuss the case of Pattium Chiranjeevi. The journal apparently interviewed Chiranjeevi: In an interview with Science, Chiranjeevi said that the charges against him are "baseless and not correct...

Tessera stock tumbles on adverse re-exam result

Posted on March 04, 2008
Thomson Financial noted that shares of Tessera Technologies Inc. fell on 4 March after the U.S. Patent Office rejected (on 29 Feb.) Tessera's claims of a patent in reexamination case brought by Siliconware. A press release noted: On February 29, 2008, the Patent Office issued an Official Action rejecting Tessera?s 6,133,627 patent in ex parte reexamination...

Is it all right for consumers to free-ride on IP creators?

Posted on March 04, 2008
Note a comment on Lemley's Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding.

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