Patent Law

Exhuming Examination

Posted on January 31, 2009
Whatever the USPTO proposes for deferred examination (DE), and it surely will, the likely outcomes won't amount to a hill of beans. As a salve to pendency, DE as a dud is an easy bet....

Contained

Posted on January 30, 2009
5,743,942, owned by Süd-Chemie, claims a desiccant container. "Desiccant containers are frequently used to maintain a dry environment for products during storage or shipping." Süd-Chemie sued Multisorb for infringement. In summary judgment, the district court Obzillaed the patent in light of 4,487,791 (Komatsu)...

Engineered

Posted on January 29, 2009
IEEE has issued its 2009 patent reform recommendations. First off, a better USPTO, but not expanding their rule-making authority. Clarify software as patentable. And then they get woolly. "Consider alternatives to patent protection." Where they lament patent pendency...

Unreal Estate

Posted on January 29, 2009
Bilski, as intended, is eradicating business method patents. In Fort Properties v. Master Lease, Central District of California Judge Andrew Guilford granted summary judgment of §101 invalidity for 6,292,788, which claimed creating a real estate investment...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Procrastination

Posted on January 29, 2009
John Doll isn't treading water as interim PTO honcho. He's busting a move to not bust a move examining patents. On a web page titled "Closing of the United States Patent and Trademark Office," the USPTO announced a "public roundtable discussion" February 12, about adopting a procedure for deferred examination, "in response to suggestions from stakeholders in the intellectual property (IP) community" who want to tread water...

Abolition

Posted on January 28, 2009
The membership of the House and Senate Judiciary committees for the 111th Congress has been decided. What has also been decided is abolition of intellectual property subcommittees in both houses. That puts any patent reform agenda, and all its attendant issues, squarely before the full committee in each body...

Cream of the Crop

Posted on January 27, 2009
For the third time, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) has reintroduced legislation for a pilot program to help educate district court judges about patent cases. Never mind that attorneys on both sides of a litigation are supposed to do that. The more experienced judges are well known...

Non-Copyists

Posted on January 27, 2009
One could argue that everything needed would eventually be invented. No need for patent protection in a society content with its technology. Patents accelerate invention, by having an incentive to invent: an exclusivity grant. So whether an infringer copied a patent, or independently developed the technology, is moot...

Article Two

Posted on January 26, 2009
Following in the soiled footsteps of Article One Partners, patent maimer by bounty hunting, Peer To Patent has added a branch organization, Post-Issue Peer To Patent, seeking to "improve the quality of patents by providing a framework for ferreting out weak, non-meritorious patent claims in patents that have issued...

Searching

Posted on January 26, 2009
In the teeth of recession, how can patent law firms sharpen their competitive edges? According to Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com, interpreting facts as a matter of law does the trick. "The first Eureka moment will come when attorneys realize that the new family of IP software tools does NOT require patent search expertise as much as it requires legal interpretation to convert patent data to high value business information...

Rogue

Posted on January 26, 2009
Hal Wegner: In a procedurally bold opinion in In re Comiskey, __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. 2009)(Dyk, J.), a panel has repudiated controlling precedent of the court and indeed 180 years of practice since the Patent Act of 1839 that had established a strict proscription against a judicial reviewing body of Patent Office decisions playing de novo "examiner"...

Intellectually Amish

Posted on January 25, 2009
Patent examiners are embracing §101 rejection for process claims, reinvigorated by Bilski. Oddly, the rejections often skirt citing Bilski directly, instead relying upon earlier precedent, such as Benson. The Bilski ruling favorably cited 1982 Abele for discrimination between overreaching claims and more "narrowly-claimed process patent-eligible...

The Front Burner

Posted on January 24, 2009
Hal Wegner has expressed "reason for optimism that patents will not be put on a back burner by the new President." Reason for optimism would be just the opposite: that things would simmer down, on the back burner....

Fuddy Daddy

Posted on January 24, 2009
Advanced Micro Devices, playing David to Intel's Goliath, is struggling to stay afloat. AMD is preparing to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, tentatively called the Foundry Company. AMD will then focus purely on designing processor chips...

Non-Obvious Claiming; Obvious?

Posted on January 23, 2009
Arguably the best-known bit of patent law: "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title...

Strong Showing

Posted on January 21, 2009
Friskit sued Real Networks for infringing patents for multimedia file playback over the Internet. Prior to KSR, the district court denied Real on obviousness. Post-KSR, in a renewed motion, Obzilla danced a terminal playback, killing them all. Friskit appealed, arguing three unanticipated limitations, along with "secondary considerations indicative of nonobviousness...

Up and Coming

Posted on January 21, 2009
There is a continuing shift in U.S. patent grants towards Asian companies. While IBM stayed on top in 2008, at 4186 grants, #2 was Samsung (Korea, 3515), and #3 Canon (Japan, 2114). Of the top twenty patentees in 2008, 13 were foreign-based companies, all but one Asian...

The Bible

Posted on January 20, 2009
Every once in a blue moon something incredibly good happens. No, this is not in reference to Jon "Evil Elvis" Dudas having just left the building. Now on tap, in draft, not quite bottled, is the "Patent Case Management Judicial Guide," a rather incredible compendium covering all aspects of patent litigation, not just judicial case management...

Nosedive

Posted on January 20, 2009
2008 will be remembered as the crashdown year in the 2nd Great Depression. The old saw is that patent lawsuits are immune from recession, but the 2008 numbers tell a different story. 2,605 patent suits were filed in 2008, down 8% from 2007. 2008 through July saw a 2% rise...

Perspectives

Posted on January 19, 2009
Ivory-tower academic Doug Lichtman interviewed CAFC Chief Judge Michel. Michel displayed an impressive grasp of important facts and statistics, and a seasoned sense of reality, with interesting, albeit sometimes odd, views....

Patent Strategies

Posted on January 18, 2009
Year after year, IBM plows ahead filing, and getting, more U.S. patents than anyone: 4,186 gotten last year, the 16th consecutive year leading the patent pack. Samsung came up to number two in 2008, with 3,515. HP has taken a different tack the last few years, and fallen behind in the numbers...

Compact Prosecution

Posted on January 17, 2009
On the seventh office action of a competitive pricing patent application, yet another non-final, a new  rejection appears, besides the continual findings of prior art pieces that never survive reply, owing to their inadequacy in rendering the claims anticipated or obvious...

Tiny

Posted on January 16, 2009
Bilski has bilked Intel. The PTO patent appeals board rejected Intel's claimed alternately calculating using software or processor hardware depending upon whether the result was "tiny." Such calculation was found not to be "a practical application of the mathematical algorithm because the result d, a number, is not a tangible result because it is not a real-world result...

Stented

Posted on January 15, 2009
Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson have a long-running battle of heart stent patents. Both have had victories in their war, which started in 1997. Today the victory was J&J's, overturning a unfavorable jury verdict, as Obzilla, the patent grim reaper, takes another victim on appeal...

Bled

Posted on January 15, 2009
Canadian Nortel Networks, bled dry by bad management, has thrown in the towel. One analyst characterized Nortel as having the trifecta for becoming corporate toast:  "lack of innovation, a lack of understanding their customers and a lack of marketing...

Damaging Apportionment

Posted on January 15, 2009
Scott Shane has thrown another log in the fire roasting the idea of apportionment as a means for figuring patent damages. Apportionment was found to be bad news for patent value, naturally, but also R&D, company valuation, and jobs. The harm would purportedly be unevenly spread, affecting more industries reliant upon innovation...

Mental Method

Posted on January 14, 2009
Stephen Comiskey filed a business method patent application, which he pursued to the CAFC, which ruled his idea an unpatentable "mental process." Petition for en banc rehearing met with cacophony: limited to authorizing the panel to revise its earlier flub, to a chorus of dissent...

Sucker

Posted on January 12, 2009
National Products (NPI) started an enforcement campaign with 6,666,420, filing "at least six separate lawsuits against various entities." '420 claims suction cup mouting for portable equipment. Panavise, a competitor, got spooked, so it filed a declaratory judgment motion, practically admitting infringement, but of course seeking a ruling that it did not, as well as '420 being invalid and unenforceable and everything vile...

Bad Coordinates

Posted on January 11, 2009
Vehicle IP sued General Motors and others over 6,535,743, claiming "a system for providing directions." The defendants evaded infringement in summary judgment over construction of the term "coordinate." The district court construed a coordinate as multiple numbers...

Oprah

Posted on January 09, 2009
Scott C. Harris was reputedly booted by Fish & Richardson for asserting his patent, 7,111,252, against Google. Now Oprah's Harpo Productions is being sued. The patent claims partial book review over the Internet. Oprah's Book Club web site offers book previews...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.