Patent Law

In Patents We Trust

Posted on June 29, 2008
The Allied Security Trust is an alliance of computer-based technology companies, aimed at buying patents to avoid having them asserted against them. The entrance fee is $250,000, plus about $5 million in escrow. Verizon, Google, Cisco, HP are reputed founding members...

Supplied

Posted on June 27, 2008
i2 Technologies wrestled $83.3 million in a settlement from SAP for supply-chain software patents. The case was in forced mediation in the Eastern District of Texas. In the late 1990s, i2 had been a successful pioneer in the area as a software vendor, but had its lunch eaten by larger enterprise resource-planning and workflow software companies like SAP after the dot...

Incensed

Posted on June 27, 2008
Fargo Electronics sued IRIS for infringing 5,755,519 and 6,152,625, which claim a ribbon type sensor for a printer. IRIS sells replacement ribbons compatible with Fargo printers. A couple of claims fell on the reasonable repair doctrine. Incompetent prosecution, resulting in indefinite claims, killed the rest of the assertion...

Bottled

Posted on June 25, 2008
Industrial Dynamics (IDC) was found infringing 6,155,408 and 6,298,974, owned by Heuft Systemtechnik. The patents claim bottle handling and inspection for bottling plants. On appeal, IDC successfully challenged the claim construction....

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In A Huff

Posted on June 24, 2008
Southern California Judge Marilyn L. Huff, upholding a jury finding, ruled that Microsoft must pay Alcatel-Lucent $357.7 million for infringing 4,763,356, claiming a user interface for choosing a calendar date from a menu, used in Microsoft programs Outlook, Money, and Windows Mobile...

Smoke Signal

Posted on June 24, 2008
Law professors John Duffy, Dennis Crouch, Mark Lemley, and others, filed an amici brief for certiorari before the Supreme Court, to toss the CAFC mistake In re Nuijten, which ruled that transient signals were not patentable subject matter under 35 U.S...

Tele-Cost

Posted on June 24, 2008
In their June newsletter/sobfest, POPA reiterates concerns over proposed changes to the PTO telework program. The proposed changes would eliminate the one-hour-per-week in office requirement for examiners, but would require examiners to cover all costs when traveling to the PTO headquarters on an "as needed" basis...

Carded

Posted on June 23, 2008
Realsource asserted 5,732,136, claiming a debit card transaction method, against several retailing chains, including Best Buy, Starbucks, Costco, Lowe's and others. Realsource might have had a real invention, but like so many, the prosecutor was sloppy with language, and did not bother disclosing possible alternate embodiments...

Sauce For The Goose

Posted on June 21, 2008
Damien Geradin, Anne Layne-Farrar, and A. Jorge Padilla, in "Elves or Trolls? The Role of Non-Practicing Patent Owners in the Innovation Economy": Clearly, patents in the hands of non-practicing entities can increase competition, lower downstream prices, and enhance consumer choice...

Spread Spectrum

Posted on June 21, 2008
Ottawa-based Wi-LAN, holding spread spectrum patents 5,282,222 and RE37,802, thinks it has a lock on wireless standards 802.11 and CDMA2000. Wi-LAN has over 25 companies under the gun, including Apple, Sony, HP, and Intel. Earlier this week Wi-LAN stuck it to a fellow Canadian company, everybody's favorite wireless patent piñata, Research in Motion (RIM), as well as Motorola and UTStarcom...

Examine This

Posted on June 20, 2008
While Jon Dudas, head of the USPTO, blames idiot inventors with their bad ideas and pathetic prosecutors pushing punk paper as the cause of the pendency problem, head of the European Patent Office Alison Brimelow blames the European Patent Office. How refreshing...

Balled Out

Posted on June 20, 2008
Wily guys Mork & Beaty of Scanner Technologies got semiconductor packaging inspection patents. I thought it was Mork and Mindy, but I was wrong again. In the patenting process, they got hot under the collar about a competitor's product, hastening prosecution with a "make special" petition...

Afloat

Posted on June 19, 2008
A further bit of evidence that Wall Street floats on an ocean of dumb money flowed in earlier this week. Tessera has an enforcement campaign for semiconductor packaging patent 6,433,419. The patent, currently under reexamination, is invalid. Patent Hawk provided the ammunition...

Fully Blown

Posted on June 18, 2008
Ole Nilssen, patent goofball extraordinaire, in rather massive assertion against Osram Sylvania, was found to have committed inequitable conduct in multiple ways, a ruling affirmed on appeal. In awarding attorney fees in this exceptional case, Nilssen's conduct went beyond inequitable conduct, to litigation misconduct, the trial court judge ruled...

Tip Off

Posted on June 18, 2008
TIP Systems got 6,009,169 and 6,512,828 for a cordless prison telephone. TIP sued Phillips & Brooks and others for infringement, losing on claim construction, and subsequently infringement, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents. Affirmed on appeal...

Thrashed

Posted on June 17, 2008
Innovation Technologies sued Splash! Medical Devices for infringing 5,830,197, which claims a method for irrigating wounds. Innovation got cold feet and backed out, giving Splash a pass. Splash moved for attorneys fees and expenses, a $144,350 tab. Granted...

Oops

Posted on June 17, 2008
Allied Signal, owner of 6,287,955, failed to pay its maintenance fee, abandoning the patent. Changing its mind after the fact, the lament was that the lapse was unintentional. In short, when this patent was not deemed to be profitable, a plurality of employees of the Assignee determined that this patent should be allowed to expire, and an intentional decision was made that the maintenance fee should not be submitted to the Office...

Fact & Fiction

Posted on June 17, 2008
Democratic nominee for President Barack Obama: I'm going to make... judgments not based on some fierce ideological pre-disposition, but based on what makes sense. I'm a big believer in evidence. I'm a big believer in fact... We've got offices like the patent office that are outdated to take advantage of new discoveries here in the United States...

Answers, Of A Sort

Posted on June 16, 2008
House Judiciary Subcommittee Chair Rep. Berman posed questions to the Jon Dudas patent cabal last month. Dudas dutifully replied....

One Forward, Two Back

Posted on June 16, 2008
The US patent system is unraveling as the USPTO desperately clings to the telework thread as a last hope for reducing pendency. POPA reports that "management has proposed legislation which would allow the agency to permit employees to telework from anywhere in the United States"...

Bilskiwhacked?

Posted on June 16, 2008
The USPTO has chimed in on the Bilski case on its internal website. The USPTO has done its best to follow the guidance in State Street and AT&T, which some believe state that any useful series of steps is patent-eligible. However, the USPTO does not believe that such a broad reading of those rulings is consistent with the Supreme Court's views on the eligibility of "process" patents, as set forth in Diamond v...

Impropriety

Posted on June 16, 2008
Praise be to Kevin E. Noonan at Patent Docs for follow-through on the low-down of the apparent improprieties by the dastardly Dudas and the USPTO in the NTP v. RIM litigation and reexamination....

Investing in IP

Posted on June 16, 2008
David S. Ruder, author of Strategies for Investing in Intellectual Property, with deep IP investment experience, ought to know his stuff. But he has written a peculiar book. His case-based approach is familiar to MBA wanna-be's, and often enjoyable, but it obscures some big points in the details...

The Snake

Posted on June 15, 2008
Criticism of the USPTO has reached comical proportions, and the joke is on us: inventors and prosecutors. When there is a universal howl from the U.S. patent bar about the agency, while the PTO itself crows about a lurch down in allowance rate, and a federal court rules that the PTO acted illegally, you may think something afoot...

Obzilla Revisited

Posted on June 14, 2008
The Patent Prospector plastered the Supreme Court for its inept KSR ruling regarding obviousness. For those wishing to visit old stomping grounds, Lewis & Clark Law School held an Obzillafest last October, though they were too stiff to call it that...

Nunchucked

Posted on June 14, 2008
Traditional nunchucks, a martial arts weapon, are two sticks connected by a short chain or rope. Modern-day nunchucks act as videogame controls. LA-based Nyko makes a wireless nunchuck, and won an award for it at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Viva Las Vegas...

Display Package

Posted on June 13, 2008
Design patents seem like a little brother to utility patents, all form and no substance. But aesthetics spin money. Even the presentation of a product can help it jump off the shelf and make the cash register ring. So Monster Cable, which packs its cables into a tidy product display, understandably complained that Timex has copied its display package to retail kids' watches...

Through Its Hat

Posted on June 12, 2008
Linux purveyor Red Hat found its open source a bit too loose, so it settled two patent infringement suits with DataTern. One of the suits was brought by FireStar, which later assigned 6,101,502 to DataTern. DataTern steered '502 and 5,937,402 into the black from Red Hat...

Wireless Pool

Posted on June 11, 2008
Intel, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Sprint Nextel, Samsung, and Clearwire are forming a patent pool to collectively license WiMAX wireless technology patents. The alliance plans to collect patents essential to WiMAX and license the pool to consumer electronics manufacturers...

Numptys

Posted on June 10, 2008
Hal Wegner: Broadside criticism of individual examiners doing their daily tasks should be out of bound (sic) and, a fortiori, spineless, anonymous criticism of individual examiners by a practitioner either crosses an ethical or disciplinary line - or such a line should be sharply drawn to deal with such reprehensible conduct...

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