Patent Law

Patented Treatment

Posted on September 18, 2009
Prometheus Labs got patents (6,355,623; 6,680,302) on "methods for calibrating the proper dosage of thiopurine drugs, which are used for treating... autoimmune diseases." "[N]on-responsiveness and drug toxicity may complicate treatment in some patients...

No Padding

Posted on September 14, 2009
Lydall sued Federal Mogul for infringing RE39,260. "The '260 patent is directed to flexible insulating shields that can be used for thermal and acoustic insulation." It came as no consolation that there was no insulation from a claim construction that rendered the assertion a dereliction...

Form Fitting

Posted on September 11, 2009
In the salad days of personal computing, Ben Day came up with a "touch screen form entry system" while working at AT&T. 4,763,356 resulted. Current owner Lucent disingenuously sued Dell and Gateway over it, while Microsoft software was the real culprit...

Petrified Wood

Posted on September 09, 2009
Carpenter Ron Nystrom has been trying to beam Trex and others with 5,474,831, claiming a wood flooring. In his first suit against Trex, he lost on claim construction, appealed, got a remand, but had waived equivalents, and so the case fell to the floor...

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

Healthy Assertion

Posted on September 04, 2009
Martek and Lonza vend a health supplement made "by extracting lipids from fermented microorganisms - specifically certain microalgae." Martek owns patents it asserted against Lonza: 5,340,594; 5,698,244; 6,410,281; and 6,451,567. Some claims were found infringed in district court, and thereupon the inevitable appeal...

Junk Examination

Posted on September 04, 2009
To characterize USPTO examination quality over the past 20 years as uneven would be a complimentary understatement. 'Good enough for government work' would be more like it, with 'shoddy' pithily on-point. In the 1990s the PTO granted reams of junk patents, creating a political firestorm as the junk hit the litigation fan...

Compound

Posted on August 26, 2009
Ortho-McNeil sued Teva over RE39,221, claiming a combination of acetaminophen and tramadol, branded as Tylenol®. The district court granted summary judgment of obviousness to all asserted claims, as well as finding one claim, 6, anticipated. Ortho-McNeil appealed...

Standing

Posted on August 22, 2009
Sky Technologies sued SAP over an e-trade patent portfolio it had acquired through a foreclosure and associated contractual conniptions. Because litigation lawyers argue almost anything regardless of merit, SAP pitched lack of standing and lost, so it appealed, desperately trying to break the chain of title...

Ticker

Posted on August 22, 2009
Cardiac Pacemakers sued St. Jude Medical for infringing 4,407,288, claiming an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD). On second appeal, while multiple issues get the ticker running quicker, what really pumps is excluding method claims from Section 271(f)...

Disclaimed

Posted on August 19, 2009
RFID Tracker sued Wal-Mart and others for infringing 6,967,563, claiming an RFID reader. The district court judge construed the claim to exclude the RFID reader from also being a transmitter, owing to prosecution disclaimer. Hence, the defendants could not be tagged for infringement, because their reader included a transmitter...

In the Weeds

Posted on August 15, 2009
Callaway Golf sued Acushnet over four golf ball patents. Acushnet teed itself up with an admission of infringement, but tried to whack the asserted claims into the sand trap of prior art invalidity. The district court judge granted summary judgment of no anticipation...

No Bites

Posted on August 13, 2009
Wedgetail sued Huddleston for infringing its fishing lure patent 6,857,220 B2 ('B2' being USPTO technical designation for "bait too"). After claim construction, Wedgetail concluded snagging Huddleston for infringement could be fishy. "Wedgetail thus filed a motion to dismiss all claims with prejudice, in which it granted Huddleston a covenant not to sue...

Flat Tire

Posted on August 11, 2009
Douglas J. Shoner had a pneumatic tire design rejected by the PTO over obviousness. Shoner appealed to the CAFC, which affirmed. Shoner's plea (hardly an argument) relied upon reading an unstated limitation into his claim from the spec. "The PTO is required to give claim terms their "broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification," and there is nothing in the specification that would explicitly limit the air chamber to a particular structure...

Patent Contraceptive

Posted on August 07, 2009
The danger lurking in obviousness is hindsight reasoning. A breakthrough becomes predictable. In hindsight, you/they/whoever should have seen it coming. Bayer's oral contraceptive, Yasmin®, had unexpected performance. The active ingredient, drospirenone, readily degraded in an acidic environment like the stomach...

Particular Inequitable Conduct

Posted on August 06, 2009
Exergen stuck SAAT and others for infringing 5,012,813; 6,047,205 and 6,292,685, claiming infrared thermometers taking skin readings. A jury awarded over $2.5 million in lost profits. SAAT appealed, getting '205 claims invalidated on anticipation, and skirting infringement on '813 and '685, thus winning overall...

Shortchanged

Posted on August 05, 2009
Jorge Tayler was mistakenly $10 short on his patent maintenance fee payment. The USPTO later declared his patent dead because of it, in violation of its own rulebook, the MPEP. "The PTO was arbitrary and capricious in its failure to notify Mr. Taylor of the minor insufficiencies in his attempted payment of a patent maintenance fee," so ruled the CAFC (2009-1133)...

Sop

Posted on August 02, 2009
6,310,269 claims a tampon with a solid fiber core denser than radially projecting ribs, the ribs being narrower at their base at the core than at their distal ends. McNeil, the patent holder, requested reexamination based upon an uncited Japanese patent application...

Claimless

Posted on July 31, 2009
Wavetronix sued EIS for infringing its traffic monitoring patent: 6,556,916. On summary judgment, '916 was found not infringed. Wavetronix appealed, begging the court to construe a crucial term that was never construed in the first place, as the Utah district court never entered a claim construction order...

Last Hurrah

Posted on July 28, 2009
Martin Reiffin was a former patent attorney at IBM, who pulled a patented claim to multithreading out of the PTO 15 years after his original application filing date of 1982. A seriously vile junk patent. He then sued Microsoft over Word's spelling checker...

Erased

Posted on July 27, 2009
Was it excrescent examination, or just deviously scrappy litigation? Blackboard's 6,988,138, claiming an Internet education system, got erased by Desire2Learn on appeal. Indefiniteness for lacking a backing structure for a means-plus-function limitation, and a devious claim construction gone awry, left Blackboard with a failed assertion...

Lever

Posted on July 27, 2009
Bernard Bilski and his buddy got a nebulous notion about risk management. So they hired a run-of-the-mill prosecutor to scratch a sketchy spec and draft some bodaciously crappy claims. The PTO pitched the poop. But then the CAFC fouled the plumbing with precarious precedent, so the Bilski bauble floated to the top, where the Supreme Court has the final flush, but the only needed motion is reiteration...

Off the Shelf

Posted on July 21, 2009
Saint-Gobain sought declaratory judgment of noninfringement and invalidity over refrigerator shelf patents owned by competitor Gemtron. Gemtron counterclaimed and ended up as plaintiff. The dispute came down to a single limitation in a single claim, over when the claimed invention had the glass panel shelf bottom snap into the frame...

Peers on Hiatus

Posted on July 11, 2009
The Peer-to-Patent pilot project is now closed. From the Peer-to-Patent website: The USPTO has closed the Peer-to-Patent pilot and is no longer accepting new applications. Applications already in the system will continue to be processed. More than 70 applications still await review, and it is rumored that the program is only temporarily closed - until a full evaluation of the impact of the project can be performed...

Examiner Responsibility

Posted on July 11, 2009
USPTO examiners are the butt of many a joke on this blog, and often for good reason, receiving the respect they deserve. But, many examiners fulfill an essential need. They act as underappreciated civil servants that help promote the progress of this country, in a job that is tedious, monotonous, and often unfulfilling...

Almost Enough

Posted on July 11, 2009
This weblog started to promote my patent services practice. Anyone who has read my blogging for any period knows that many of my entries are hell and gone from that. The left turn was conscious and, given my character, inevitable. Digging into the patent scene was no different than my reaction to the practices of people exercising presumed power in any form, given the endless capacity for exploitation and rationalization of it...

Beaned

Posted on July 10, 2009
In permissible hindsight, the PTO during the Clinton administration was so lenient in doling out patents that Obzilla (aka KSR) became a necessity to expeditiously clean up the mess. Case in point: letting Larry Proctor patent a transplanted yellow Mexican bean after growing it for a few seasons...

Bailout

Posted on July 09, 2009
Mismanagement at the USPTO gets a thumbs up from Congress. The House went along with the Senate in passing a bill Tuesday that would let the PTO rob its trademark kitty to tide over its dwindling patent piggy bank. In a politically inspired balk (from mega-computer/software companies whining about being incessantly hammered for infringement), the patent office has been rejecting patent applications with religious fervor in recent years, grievously wounding the goose formerly known for laying golden eggs...

Uppity

Posted on July 09, 2009
Capitalism is premised upon exploitation. Without that, no profit, and shareholders would be shit holders. In that spirit, slavery has been the law of the land for centuries. Not to mention the tax code. Even today, thanks to a little coercion called an employment contract, the inventions of workers belong to their paymasters...

Cool It

Posted on July 09, 2009
In an echo of denouncing "irrational exuberance," the organization best known for harboring practicing pederasts has denounced vigorous patent protection. The dope with the hanging rope is none other than the Pope, who put out the hard word...

Unappealing

Posted on July 08, 2009
The USPTO is doing its bit to boost patent prosecutor income while dashing applicant hopes. Thanks to unprecedented rejection rates, appeal filings have spiked 70% this year: 10,870 appeals this fiscal year to 6,385 last year. The PTO cites "controlling case law" as the reason...

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