Patent Law

Last Hurrah

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

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. With lack of spec support for his claims in his '82 brew, and new matter pulling his effective filing date to 1994, Reiffin lost first in court, leaving but a reexam for residue. Still, he doggedly and shamelessly pursued it. Today the last dog died, as his CAFC appeal over reexam flew south, leaving only droppings behind. A disgraceful man got his due.

In Re Reiffin Family Trust (CAFC 2008-1544) non-precedential

Patent Hawk worked this case for Microsoft during litigation, searching prior art and providing technical analyses.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on July 28, 2009 (boomark / email).