Patent Law

Do Patents Work?

Posted on March 23, 2008
The book by Bessen and Meurer (Do Patents Work?)had been cited in the law review literature long before its March 08 release:Lemley [105 Mich. L. Rev. 1525 ] wrote: Jim Bessen and Mike Meurer have demonstrated that the more research and development a company does, the more likely it is to get sued for patent infringement...

Relying on the words of others

Posted on March 23, 2008
Within a brief in Illinois Computer Research v. Fish & Richardson (Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer) , one has the text:This tactic of publishing defamatory material in a judicial pleading is grossly improper and is no less scandalous than if we were to file a pleading (which plaintiffs would never do) suggesting that Jenner & Block has frequently represented individuals accused of organized crime (see Michael S...

Pinocchios for intellectual property professors?

Posted on March 23, 2008
Michael Dobbs of the Washington Posthas been covering an account by Hillary Clinton of a trip to Bosnia:"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base...

More on Bessen and Meurer

Posted on March 22, 2008
Mike at TechDirt mentioned Bessen and Meurer on 20 March:As we pointed out last week, nearly all of the economic evidence shows that patents tend to do more harm than good. Researchers James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer (perfect timing again) have gone into a little more detail as to how much damage is done, but I wanted to focus on why the downsides to patents are so often worse than the upsides...

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

Court shields peer review documents from disclosure

Posted on March 21, 2008
ScienceNow reported:In a decision likely to be welcomed by editors everywhere, a federal judge in Chicago today [March 14] denied a drug company's efforts to obtain confidential peer-review documents from a major medical journal. Although journals have successfully fended off such requests before, a loss in this case would have set a troubling precedent for other cases, including a similar suit pending in Massachusetts...

The CAFC addresses the meaning of "unmistakable disavowal"

Posted on March 21, 2008
In the CAFC decision in COMPUTER DOCKING STATION CORPORATION v. DELL, GATEWAY, and TOSHIBA, the issues wereCDSC appeals the district court?s construction of the portable computer and all connections limitations, its grant of summary judgment on both limitations, and its denial of CDSC?s Rule 56(f) motion...

New Gettysburg visitor center opens 14 April 2008

Posted on March 21, 2008
A new museum and visitor center will open at Gettysburg on April 14, 2008. The cyclorama will be ready in September 2008.AP notes:The cyclorama, an 1884 oil painting designed to place viewers in the middle of the climactic battle, is still being restored...

Forbes pushing the Bessen/Meurer book

Posted on March 21, 2008
A March 10 piece in Forbes titled They Call This Intellectual Property? trots out the usual parade of horribles but neglects to mention the current status of things. Thus we have the Smuckers patent, but no mention that the patent is gone:Blame part of the pile-up on pesky filers of overly obvious patents...

Journal authors conflicted?

Posted on March 20, 2008
One has a law review article titled: The Duty to Disclose Patent Rights. One recalls "patent rights" issues in the Hwang matter (see 88 JPTOS 239).

FTCR changes its name after stem cell defeat

Posted on March 20, 2008
Fresh from three stinging defeats at the USPTO in re-exams of three WARF stem cell patents, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) has changed its name to Consumer Watchdog. One notes that the word "taxpayer" got deleted, and many folks think that FTCR's ill-planned venture with the WARF patents may have COST California taxpayers a lot...

Semantic ramblings on the meaning of "accept"

Posted on March 19, 2008
Comments to a 17 March 2008 post on californiastemcellreport included: Lawrence B. Ebert said [19 March at 10:31am]Do you consider text in a 31 Jan 08 post --Yamanaka accepted a state grant in August 2007-- accurate? California Stem Cell Report said...

The journal Nature refers to WARF win on stem cells as landmark ruling

Posted on March 19, 2008
In an article Stem-cell patents confirmed; Victory for Wisconsin foundation in landmark ruling. in the 17 March 08 issue, Nature observed:An effort to overturn two contested stem-cell patents was quashed last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office, in a move that strengthens the position of the patents? holder, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)...

On the Bessen/Meurer book

Posted on March 19, 2008
One commenter on a Bessen/Meurer post (related to their book) on Patently-O wrote:I actually worked at a large (huge multinational) corporation. One of my jobs was to evaluate technology to decide whether to buy (license) or build. Part of the analysis was do they have IP protection...

Patent reform movement by early April?

Posted on March 19, 2008
Dugie Standeford of Intellectual Property Watch: Legislation for sweeping patent reform in the United States could see Senate floor action as soon as early April.

Patent auction at Strathclyde University

Posted on March 19, 2008
The Evening Times noted: Dr Matthew Carpenter, intellectual property rights manager at Strathclyde, said: "Bringing pioneering technology out of the labs and into the marketplace is a vital part of our research strategy.(...)Auctioning the patent could prove to be a big money spinner for Strathclyde University...

Patent suit against Apple over Time Machine

Posted on March 19, 2008
InformationWeek writes:Apple last week was sued in the Eastern District of Texas for infringing on the patents of Mirror Worlds, a company that used to make desktop search and organization software.The lawsuit claims that Apple's computers, iPods, iPhones, and Mac OS X operating system infringe on Mirror Worlds' alternative to the desktop metaphor: organizing files in a time-based stack or stream...

NJ AG Anne Milgram goes after JuicyCampus

Posted on March 19, 2008
AP reported: JuicyCampus may be violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act by suggesting that it doesn't allow offensive material but providing no enforcement of that rule ? and no way for users to report or dispute the material, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said Tuesday...

PatentHawk flames Crouch over patent litigation analysis

Posted on March 18, 2008
Continuing an earlier theme, PatentHawk has once again flamed Patently-O: Professor Dennis Crouch: "Over the past two decades, the number of patents being litigated has risen dramatically." Crouch then shows a graph that's clear as mud: one axis labeled "Patent Count;" the other "Year Complaint Was Filed...

Projecting costs in the Coskata process for making ethanol

Posted on March 16, 2008
A commenter on greentechmedia writing about the Coskata process:Capital cost for the Coskata operation will be approximately $.60/gallon. Putting aside the obvious complexity of MSW as a feedstock (including that it must be dry and separated from metals and such to be efficiently put through a gasifier) and other so-called 'waste' and 'negative-cost' feedstock, American farmers will charge at least $40-60/ton of dry biomass, if not more when considering storage and transportation issues...

On Microsoft criticizing Google over IP

Posted on March 16, 2008
NakedCapitalism has a post titled: Microsoft Vs. Google Spat on Copyright which includes the text: Microsoft on Tuesday [6 March 08] launches a fierce attack on Google over its ?cavalier? approach to copyright, accusing the internet company of exploiting books, music, films and television programmes without permission.

Harry&David sue IBM over WebSphere and Net Commerce software

Posted on March 16, 2008
Looks like IBM's schizophrenia over patents extends to selling patent lawsuits to its customers. NetworkWorld noted: IBM is facing a $6 million patent-related lawsuit from Harry&David, an Internet retailer that was sued because it used an IBM e-commerce system that allegedly contained technology patented by two other companies...

More administrator plagiarism in the schools

Posted on March 16, 2008
In a case evoking the Deutsch matter in Phillipsburg, NJ, North Stonington, CT schools Superintendent Natalie Pukas distributed a five-page document entitled ?Research Based Model Leadership Team? which sadly had been copied from "The Four-Quadrant Leadership Team: The authors' homegrown model for what it takes to develop high performers in a school system's administrative posts," which ran in the March 2007 issue of The School Administrator...

Ben Stein is wrong about the Eliot Spitzer saga

Posted on March 16, 2008
Ben Stein delivered a short opinion piece on Eliot Spitzer on ABC's This Week with George on 16 March 08 (apparently a copy of one on CBS) which included the text:It is deeply scary to me that a few employees of the federal executive branch can start a train rolling that has such immense effects on the electoral process...

Overpaid taco lawyers?

Posted on March 16, 2008
Taquitos.net had noted of the Taco Bell taco giveaway during the 2007 World Series:And the contest rules are appallingly restrictive and just idiotic, complete with bad grammar and typos (nice job, highly paid taco lawyers). I particularly laughed at the "How to Obtain a Free Taco" section.

Hypocrisy at FTCR?

Posted on March 14, 2008
Although LBE posted a signed comment on californiastemcellreport about the demise of the last two re-exam challenges by PubPat and FTCR to the WARF patents, attention has focused on two "anonymous" comments. For example, within the californiastemcellreport post titled WARF Scores in Patent Struggle, the body of the post has John Simpson of FTCR writingAnonymous is wrong...

Compromise on patent reform bill, or mere delusion?

Posted on March 14, 2008
The Washington Post, in suggesting that a compromise on the patent reform bill was near, somehow managed not to mention pharma or academe among those who criticized the bill.The article did emphasize statements from the "Coalition for Patent Fairness":Late Wednesday [12 March 08], groups negotiating changes to thePatent Reform Actagreed on amendments that "constitute 90 percent of the bill's language," said Dan Sweet, a spokesman for the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group representing several large tech vendors including Cisco Systems, Adobe Systems, Apple and Amazon...

ScienceToday on WARF victories over PubPat, FTCR

Posted on March 13, 2008
Constance Holden of ScienceToday reported of the recent WARF victories over FTCR and PubPat in the re-examination of stem cell patents:Opponents are looking to the next fight. Stem cell researcher Jeanne Loring of Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, who believes WARF patents are unjustified and obstruct research, says she is "surprised" at the PTO ruling...

Carbon nanotubes and stem cells: happy together?

Posted on March 13, 2008
David Cyranoski & Monya Baker report in the 7 March 08 issue of the journal Nature:A Californian biotech company claims that it has used carbon nanotubes to ?reprogramme? adult human cells to an embryonic-like state a breakthrough that removes the elevated risk of cancer that blights other techniques...

IP: Imaginary Property?

Posted on March 12, 2008
Mike Masnick at Techdirt has another fulmination: If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual, Nor Property, What Is It? and concludes:but we should be careful to not use it in a way that reinforces the concept that it's property just like other kinds of property...

WARF smokes PubPat, FTCR in last two re-exams of stem cell patents

Posted on March 11, 2008
On 28 February 2008, IPBiz noted the factual and legal positions taken by the USPTO as to the '913 patent STRONGLY SUGGEST the challenges to the '780 and '806 patents will fail. On 11 March 2008, various groups announced the victory of WARF in the re-exams of the '780 and '806 patents...

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