Patent Law

Blu-ray wins

Posted on February 19, 2008
One notices superior technology is not listed as a reason for the Blu-ray victory in the following from AP:The reasons behind Blu-ray's triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray's favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season...

Wayback machine useless?

Posted on February 18, 2008
IPBiz ran across the following:Has the Wayback machine become useless?Yesterday, the "archives" were changing faster than I could read them.Broken path, file not found, altered files, pop-up redirects, etc.Here is the Wayback archive for huntingtonbeach...

Patent Law and employee contracts

Posted on February 18, 2008
PatentHawk has a post which includes the text:patent law saves time and money by clearly delineating facts about who, what, when, where, and how inventions were developed. Patents are useful when and because they give companies the right to stop former R&D employees from taking their work to competitors...

Kendrick not traded to Yomiuri Giants

Posted on February 18, 2008
Yahoo featured a joke played on Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick about his being traded:Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick was shocked to learn that he'd been traded to the Yomiuri Giants in Japan for a player named "Kobayashi Iwamura.""I don't know what to think right now," he told reporters outside his locker shortly after getting the news from assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr...

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VC on stem cells

Posted on February 18, 2008
IPBiz got a chuckle out of a Proteus Venture Partners presentation on stem cells. There's a lot of stuff to comment on, but take a good look at "VC metrics."***Separately, as a "blast from the past," take a look at NY Times commentary from 1987 on superconductors, and contemplate what actually happened...

WARF licenses stem cell patents

Posted on February 18, 2008
The Badger Herald noted: WARF signed a nonexclusive licensing agreement with BioTime, Inc., a biotech company located in Emeryville, Calif.Also:Kelly said WARF was approached by BioTime about three months ago. BioTime?s executive director, Michael West, has had a professional relationship with Thomson since the researcher first isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998...

More on WARF going after Intel

Posted on February 18, 2008
BlackEnteprise reproduced a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article:In the lawsuit it filed this month against Intel Corp., the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is going after a familiar adversary. Its volley, alleging that Intel infringed on a patent covering a circuit developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, isn't the first the foundation has aimed at the computer chipmaker or the semiconductor industry...

On the future of biofuels [?]

Posted on February 18, 2008
The San Diego Union Tribune notes about biofuels:Also, oil can be produced by microalgae living in shallow ponds using the nutrients in municipal wastewater. With such plant and algal sources and with new industrial processes and fermentations, we could have a true greenhouse gas neutral transportation system that prevents further buildup of carbon dioxide and the two other greenhouse gases released as a result of agricultural practices ? methane and nitrous oxide ? into the atmosphere...

Yost on patent reform

Posted on February 16, 2008
Brian K. Yost includes the text:Broken Force and Dollar Force suggest patents are too easy to get and too easy to enforce. Intangible assets, including patents, now make up a majority of U.S. companies? total assets. Protecting these assets is expensive...

The accidental "discovery" of Eve of Destruction

Posted on February 16, 2008
P. F. Sloan, who wrote the lyrics for Eve of Destruction as a 19 year old, observed that on McGuire's 45 "What's Exactly The Matter With Me" was originally the A-side of the record and a midwestern DJ accidentally played "Eve of Destruction," the B-side:Somewhere in the Great Midwest of America a DJ played the wrong side by mistake! So as you can see, when people had written that this song was some calculated idea on how to capitalize on the emerging folk scene, it's simply B...

Senators Leahy, Hatch not getting the facts right on patent reform

Posted on February 15, 2008
In an editorial in the Washington Post on 15 Feb 08, Senators Leahy and Hatch state:The Patent Reform Act of 2007 (S.1145) is the product of years of deliberation and study within Congress and by many esteemed agencies and institutions, including dozens of hearings with the testimony of scores of witnesses, extensive and substantive mark-up sessions, and hundreds of meetings and discussions with countless stakeholders representing a sweeping array of interests in the patent system...

"The Naked Cowboy" trademark and lawsuit

Posted on February 15, 2008
CNN has a post The naked truth about The Naked Cowboy case which includes the text:[Robert] Burck [the Naked Cowboy] sued Mars this week for $6 million in federal court in New York. The allegations: trademark infringement under the Lanham Act and violation of his right of publicity under New York Civil Rights Law §51, arising from a video billboard for M&Ms...

Honor code at Ohio U. won't resolve plagiarism problem

Posted on February 15, 2008
An IPBiz reader noted a link which provides the information: Ohio University's engineering college will have a new honor code as of today [Feb. 15], but the three-year plagiarism scandal there is far from settled.(...)Today, Ohio University students and faculty and staff members in the engineering college will sign an honor code developed as a result of the scandal...

"Don't let your employees do what you did"

Posted on February 15, 2008
A 2001 paper by Moen begins with the quote ?Don?t let your employees do to you what you did to your former boss? which is presented as The golden rule of protecting trade secrets, as de?ned by Intel general counsel Roger Borovoy (in turn citing Jackson; Inside Intel: Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World?s Most Powerful Chip Company; 1997...

"Don't do what I did"

Posted on February 15, 2008
A 2001 paper by Moen begins with the quote ?Don?t let your employees do to you what you did to your former boss? which is presented as The golden rule of protecting trade secrets, as de?ned by Intel general counsel Roger Borovoy (in turn citing Jackson; Inside Intel: Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World?s Most Powerful Chip Company; 1997...

Plagiarized Proteomics Paper Pulled

Posted on February 15, 2008
Further to an earlier post on IPBiz, the journal Proteomics retracted a plagiarized paper.There was little explanation for how this paper passed through peer review.The Chronicle of Higher Education noted:In the news announcement, Mr. Dunn said: ?Clearly human error has caused a misstep in the normally rigorous peer review that is standard practice for Proteomics and should prevent such issues arising...

To Arnold: we are not jealous; CIRM is all yours!

Posted on February 13, 2008
Californiastemcellreport, in a post titled California Governor Says Invitrogen and Biotech Leading The Way , has a quote attributed to California's governor Schwarzenegger about the view of others toward California's Proposition 71 / CIRM:The governor cited the $3 billion stem cell agency and its three-year-old grant program, the largest research effort for human embryonic stem cell research in the world...

Commercial cuer on NBC Nightly News breaks on 13 Feb 08

Posted on February 13, 2008
Viewers of NBC Nightly News on Feburary 13, 2008 were treated to an odd array of visuals prior to the last news piece (about Uno the Beagle at Westminster winning "best in show"). Finally, Brian Williams appeared, telling us we would be treated to seeing a bit more of him because the machine that cued commercials had broken down...

Forgetting the patent grant rate debate?

Posted on February 12, 2008
In passing, note the following article, which criticizes the approach of Quillen and Webster to patent grant rate without actually mentioning Quillen or Webster.Patents, Nanotechnology and the US Patent OfficeSee also Statistical Musings which managed to ignore all past discussion of the patent grant rate debate...

Further comments on Feb. 8 arguments in Tafas v. Dudas

Posted on February 12, 2008
Patent Docs has some further comments from John White on the 8 Feb 08 hearing in Tafas v. Dudas concerning the injunction on implementation of the proposed rules on continuing applications. The last paragraph on patent docs included the text:Although the Office?s ?our way or the highway? attitude and demonization of both its ?customers? and patent counsel is in keeping with at least the rhetoric coming from the current administration in other areas, the political appointees -- Jon Dudas, paradoxically -- are much less invested in having these rules, and their brethren the IDS and alternative claim language rules, put into practice...

Stem Cell Patents

Posted on February 12, 2008
Note the presence of a web site on stem cell patents.IPBiz has been covering stem cell patents for some time.For example, Non-final rejection of Schatten's patent application on stem cells

Plagiarism in the journal Proteomics

Posted on February 12, 2008
The Korea Times reported:John H. McDonald, biological sciences professor at University of Delaware in the U.S., is claiming via his blog that Han Jin, medical professor of Inje University has "stolen" some paragraphs from at least six recent biology papers...

WARF goes after Intel, but not after CIRM

Posted on February 12, 2008
A post on patenthawk on Feb. 8 began: WARF, the Klingon who once served on the Starship Enterprise, has resurfaced on earth as a patent troll, albeit oversized, as patent trolls are normally dwarfish. and engendered a comment: As a long time "Trekkie" I've got to agree, this posting is a real hoot!IPBiz notes that, after someone referred to the initial StarTrek as a "western set in space," IPBiz could never look at StarTrek in the same light...

Who are the embryonic [stem cell] cheerleaders?

Posted on February 12, 2008
In a post titled Margolis: Beware the Embryonic Cheerleaders, californiastemcellreport refers to a blog by Chris Scott, who in turn refers to George Margolis:Margolis also hails the "refreshing" honesty of such folks as Jamie Thomson, George Daley, Doug Melton and Shinya Yamanaka...

Co-inventor: yes or no?

Posted on February 12, 2008
Identifying co-inventors on a patent application can be tricky. Within the linked text, one finds the following test:?If this idea had not been contributed, would the claimed invention exist??IPBiz is not sure that this is a good test for co-inventorship.

How far out is therapy based on embryonic stem cells?

Posted on February 11, 2008
IPBiz has frequently commented that royalties from patents based on embryonic stem cell therapy are not likely within the ten year (first) lifetime of California's CIRM.An IPBiz reader presents some further thoughts on the issues -->One of the other problems per public funding of stemcell research: When public money goes to public agencies (think Rutgers), the work at the university usually becomes "public"...

Plagiarize con Orgullo

Posted on February 11, 2008
A SouthernIllinoisan reader commented on the Poshard matter:Is Glenn Poshard a plagiarist? It is my opinion, Poshard took other people's ideas, said they were his own and never gave credit to those sources. This is plagiarism, just as any dictionary defines the term...

CIRM getting truthful in its old age?

Posted on February 11, 2008
In a post titled Bean Town Perspective: California Still Waiting for Stem Cell Results , californiastemcellreport finally includes a quote showing what we knew all along--no realistic chance of therapies in ten (10) years:"'It's too early,' said Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency charged with administering the stem cell funds...

Reporting on CIRM as fantasyland?

Posted on February 10, 2008
Further to the discussion of some reporting about Proposition 71 stem cell work being in fantasyland, one notes text in a commentary by Trounson and Murphy titled CIRM's stance after pluripotencyAs a result of Proposition 71, some of the best stem cell scientists (including James Thomson, Shinya Yamanaka and Martin Pera) have been drawn either part time or permanently to leading research institutions in California...

USPTO management and workers AGREE: S.1145 on patent reform is flawed

Posted on February 10, 2008
Senators should note that both the USPTO administration AND the USPTO examiners' union [POPA] are opposing the current patent reform bill and thus senators should figure out that something is still wrong with the bill.Of the union, ag-ip noted on 10 Feb:The Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) has joined several other major labor unions in opposition to the Patent Reform Act of 2007, S...

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