Patent Law

Natures Remedy case on accessibility of prior art

Posted on March 13, 2009
From the case:?Accessibility goes to the issue of whether interested members of the relevant public could obtain the information if they wanted to.? Constant v. Advanced Micro- Devices, Inc., 848 F.2d 1560, 1568 (Fed. Cir. 1988). Thus, a reference will be deemed ?publicly accessible? if it: has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it and recognize and comprehend therefrom the essentials of the claimed invention without need of further research or experimentation...

The role of John Conyers in patent reform 2009?

Posted on March 13, 2009
Text at betanews speaks to the damages apportionment issue in the "patent reform" movement:But the value of that patent in the modern market is determined by its defensibility -- literally, how much it can rake in, in infringement cases. Without that market value, much of the incentive for trying to build new technologies in the first place, may be lost...

TurnItIn pays profs (who praise) to attend conference

Posted on March 13, 2009
In an article titled False Positives on Plagiarism , InsideHigherEd presented Texas Tech results suggesting the presence of "false positives" for plagiarism from TurnItIn.However, more interesting to IPBiz was the report that TurnItIn was paying for travel expenses for some profs to give papers...

What happens to stem cell patent applications from government funding?

Posted on March 13, 2009
Not much mentioned in the March 9 hoopla over Obama and stem cells was the fact that the federal government had been funding stem cell research. Gerald Schatten, one-time collaborator with fraudster Hwang Woo Suk, was one of the biggest recipients of federal dollars...

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What Wikipedia didn't tell you about Kanzius?

Posted on March 13, 2009
Of the "burning water" discovery of John Kanzius, Wikipedia writes: The details of the process are still unreleased while Kanzius applies for a patent.In fact, Kanzius filed numerous patent applications on his rf machine and its applications. They are not doing well at the Patent Office...

Crazed inventor the villain of March 12 "Eleventh Hour"

Posted on March 12, 2009
In an episode of the CBS show "Eleventh Hour" depicting models walking down runways, the villain turned out to be a technician who was ripped off by his boss for inventive credit for a perfume that functioned as an aphrodisiac, with (of course) some unfortunate side effects...

John Conyers and the ?Fair Copyright in Research Works Act?

Posted on March 12, 2009
Controversy has arisen over HR 501, the ?Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.? Chattahbox writes: In truth the bill would eliminate public access to taxpayer funded research, and force scientists to only publish in journals. Prior to this bill, there has been a belief: if the taxpayer pays for the research, the taxpayer ought to have access to the results of the research...

Obviousness in interferences; Chapman and the 14- hydroxy problem in oxycodone

Posted on March 12, 2009
The (nonprecedential) Chapman decision by the CAFC resolves an interference between Chapman et al. and Casner et al., in favor of Casner. The subject matter pertains to the synthesis of the drug oxycodone. An interesting aspect is that the panel majority and the dissent viewthe obviousness inquiry here in entirely different ways, with only the dissent (who would findNONOBVIOUSNESS as to Chapman) citing to KSR v...

PatenHawk praises Lemley, sort of

Posted on March 11, 2009
In the post Jaw, PatentHawk (Gary Odom) wrote of Lemley's prepared testimony before the Senate on patent reform (S.515):However one may agree or disagree with Lemley, he has done his homework, and his stated positions are logical, if springing from flawed assumptions...

Interesting comment thread on Patently-O

Posted on March 11, 2009
The comment thread to "law professors on the move" has a variety of observations, most totally unrelated to the current movements of certain law professors.Of the European "problem and solution" approach to the issue of obviousness:JAOI, there is a monumental thread from about 8 months ago, in this blog, in which I "took on all comers" on EPO-PSA (TSM)...

A Google search as a background check?

Posted on March 11, 2009
In an article by David Margolick about the AutoAdmit case, one has the text:A Google search is the new universal background check and is unfettered, unfiltered, and nearly impossible to appeal. But not to manipulate. To ensure that their calumnies topped the Google cache, AutoAdmit posters filed multiple slurs about both women?a practice known as Google bombing?to crowd out or shove down anything else...

Seroquel and diabetes?

Posted on March 11, 2009
AP reported on March 10:Attorneys for drug maker AstraZeneca are challenging the findings of medical experts who claim the company's anti-psychotic drug Seroquel causes diabetes.A Delaware judge began three days of hearings today to determine whether to allow testimony from three doctors in a case brought by a Kansas woman who claims that Seroquel caused her to develop diabetes...

Taxpayers are not venture capitalists

Posted on March 11, 2009
Californiastemcellreport has text from the New York Times on California's CIRM, the state body which funds stem cell research:Pollack quoted Linda Iverson, a neuroscientist at the City of Hope, as saying at the hearing.?To use taxpayer money essentially as venture capital money is beyond the pale...

Testimony on patent reform (S.515)

Posted on March 10, 2009
from prepared remarks by Philip S. Johnson, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Johnson & Johnson (who was one of six witnesses to testify on March 10 before the Senate Judiciary Committee on S. 515) , from a press release by Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform:The primary focus of patent reform should be job growth...

Obviousness: European problem and solution approach

Posted on March 10, 2009
MaxDrei, a commenter on Patently-O, asked if there were law review articles criticizing the European "problem & solution" approach [PSA] to the obviousness inquiry. [Specifically: Can anybody point me to a scholarly (we are on law professors, after all) demolition job done on EPO-PSA?]As background, a prior post by MaxDrei on Fire of Genius:What strikes me is the copious mention in them [cases on long felt need], of problems solved by the claimed subject matter, and technical effects at last achieved...

Photo of Lincoln in front of the White House?

Posted on March 10, 2009
AP reports: A collector believes a photograph from a private album of Civil War Gen. Ulysses S. Grant shows President Abraham Lincoln in front of the White House and could be the last image taken of him before he was assassinated in 1865.If it is indeed Lincoln, it would be the only known photo of the 16th president in front of the executive mansion and a rare find, as only about 130 photos of him are known to exist...

Merck to buy Schering-Plough!

Posted on March 09, 2009
MarketWatch reports: Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc on March 9 said it will buy rival Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion in cash and shares to expand its presence in emerging markets and bolster its pipeline of potential new medicines.The two companies, which announced significant job cuts last fall, already are partners on the cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin...

Followup on Garner and scientific plagiarism; resume inflation

Posted on March 09, 2009
Relevant to the recent IPBiz post titled Scientific plagiarism on work by Harold Garner on plagiarism in science articles, one IPBiz reader raised a different issue, more about Garner himself.As background on this, recall that, although IPBiz takes a strong stance against plagiarism (repeatedly ridiculing the Harvard Business Review [HBR] text "plagiarize with pride"), IPBiz has always said that publishing false things does more damage to society than publishing true things, without giving credit to the original author...

Patently-O post "professors on the move" Sikahema'd?

Posted on March 09, 2009
In the post Patent law academics make troll studies a growth industry, IPBiz linked to a March 9 post on Patently-O www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/03/patent-law-professors-on-the-move.htmlIt might appear that the Patently-O post is gone. [UPDATE: the post seems to be back...

Patent law academics make troll studies a growth industry

Posted on March 09, 2009
On February 1, 2009, Gwendolyn G. Ball and Jay P. Kesan wrote a paper posted on SSRN titled Transaction Costs and Trolls: Strategic Behavior by Individual Inventors, Small Firms and Entrepreneurs in Patent Litigation. The abstract noted:Using original court documents to accurately identify the parties, outcomes and disputed patents in cases filed in 2000 and 2002, we explore how the resolution of patent cases relates to the nature of the parties...

Scientific plagiarism

Posted on March 08, 2009
Chronicle noted of a report by Harold Garner discussed in Science: The survey published in Science, while anonymous, prompted 83 internal investigations at scientific journals, which in turn led to 43 cases in which an article was retracted.ScienceNews discussed the article in Science on plagiarism:Suppose author #1 reported that in a few experimental trials, drug therapy worked as well as surgery...

Barclays predicts Merck beats Teva on Singulair.

Posted on March 08, 2009
Globes said that Barclays Capital noted, "Based on testimony offered and the tone of the proceedings, in our view the most likely outcome is that Merck's patent no. 5,565,473 will be upheld should there be no out-of-court settlement (which remains a possibility)...

Scott Harris smoked. Also, State Street alive, sort of.

Posted on March 08, 2009
The beginning of the CAFC decision states:Lewis Ferguson, Darryl Costin and Scott C. Harris (collectively, ?Applicants?) appeal from the final decision of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (?Board?) sustaining the rejection of all sixty-eight claims of their U...

Calgon loses in CAFC appeal of re-exams

Posted on March 08, 2009
The CAFC, in a decision with Judge Posner was sitting by designation, affirmed the BPAI and Calgon lost.90/006,411 and 90/006,881

Invalid to one, invalid to all. Collateral estoppel in patent cases.

Posted on March 08, 2009
The decision in O2Micro v. Taiwan Sumida is short, and rather basic. The punchline is:This court held in Mendenhall v. Barber-Greene Co., 26 F.3d 1573, 1577 (Fed. Cir. 1994) that ?once the claims of a patent are held invalid in a suit involving one alleged infringer, an unrelated party who is sued for infringement of those claims may reap the benefit of the invalidity decision under principles of collateral estoppel...

Kanzius IP concerns patent applications, not issued patents

Posted on March 08, 2009
An editorial in the News-Press on March 7, 2009 writes of the Kanzius patent applications as if they were issued patents:Kanzius? widow, Marianne, the new owner of the patents protecting the treatment, has expressed interest in continuing conversations with Lee Memorial Health System CEO Jim Nathan about the invention...

2009 law review article on patent damages

Posted on March 07, 2009
David W. Opderbeck writes on patent law damages in the article PATENT DAMAGES REFORM AND THE SHAPE OF PATENT LAW, 89 B.U.L. Rev. 127 (2009), the same review that brought us the horror of "Ending Abuse...".The conclusion states:The debate over patent damages reform is in reality a fight over the fundamental nature of the patent grant...

Merges/Kuhn not on same page with Bessen/Meurer

Posted on March 07, 2009
Robert P. Merges and Jeffrey M. Kuhn expound on the imprecision of patent claims in 97 Calif. L. Rev. 1 (2009). Footnote 8 states:See generally ADAM B. JAFFE & JOSH LERNER, INNOVATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS: How OUR BROKEN PATENT SYSTEM IS ENDANGERING INNOVATION AND PROGRESS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (Princeton Univ...

Golf ball patent wars continue

Posted on March 05, 2009

Plagiarism at UMichigan

Posted on March 05, 2009

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