Patent Law

Chipper

Posted on May 22, 2009
Overturning an administrative law judge's mistake, the ITC found Tessera patents infringed by six rivals: ATI Technologies, Freescale Semiconductor, Motorola, Qualcomm and Spansion (STMicroelectronics NV). Tessera prompted the action in 2007. The ITC issued a limited exclusion order, prohibiting the importation of semiconductor chips that infringe several Tessera patents, and further issued cease-and-desist orders to Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale and Spansion...

Overreaching Thoughtlessness

Posted on May 22, 2009
Philips Lumileds went after Epistar at the ITC over 5,008,718 and succeeded. Because the ITC didn't even let Epistar argue prior art invalidity. And the ITC went so far as to block importation of "products by entities not named as respondents before the ITC...

Linear

Posted on May 21, 2009
Linear Technology "filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission ("the Commission") under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1)(B), alleging that Advanced Analogic Technologies, Inc. ("AATI") imported and/or sold for importation certain electronic voltage regulators that infringe U...

Product by Process

Posted on May 20, 2009
Abbott Labs got into two patent spats with generic drug makers, in different districts, over 4,935,507, which claims a chemical composition by process, the result being an antibacterial drug. In one, where Abbott sued, Abbott lost on noninfringement in summary judgment...

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

Wow Bow

Posted on May 20, 2009
Leon Russell once wrote: "Stray dogs that live on the highway walk on three legs. They learn too slow to get the message." Today, a jury awarded Toronto-based i4i $200 million for Microsoft's infringing 5,787,449. Last month, Singapore-based Uniloc scored a $388 million verdict from Microsoft infringing 5,490,216...

Rumble Strip

Posted on May 20, 2009
4,701,069 claims a road shoulder rumble strip, to alert errant drivers. Dickson Industries filed a declaratory judgment action against '069's owner, the Patent Enforcement Team (PET), after PET approached one of Dickson's customers, Midstate Traffic Controls, for a license...

Projecting Junk

Posted on May 19, 2009
The lament by so-called patent reformers is that pissant patent holders assert junk patents. Well, so do supposedly respectable companies. Seiko Epson sued Coretronic for patents related to display projectors for DVD players and computers. Coretronic counter-claimed with its own patents...

AE = Accelerated Excuses

Posted on May 19, 2009
Start with a well-designed, seemingly effective program; add bureaucratic tanglese; top it off with the ubiquitous "we are always right, as we are the government" mentality, and, what do you get? The USPTO Accelerated Examination (AE) program in actuality...

Lacking

Posted on May 18, 2009
Young CAFC Judge Moore sadly suffered a strange lack of rationality by affirming Central California's dismissal of a DJ action brought by Autogenomics against Oxford Gene. As Judge Newman, the CAFC's font of wisdom, put it: "The Federal Circuit again restricts United States parties from access to our courts when a United States patent is owned by a foreign entity...

Tune Hunter

Posted on May 18, 2009
Tune Hunter has set its sights on Shazam for infringing 6,941,275. Shazam, for many portable devices such as the iPhone, lets a user record a short snippet of a song, identifies the song by comparing the snippet with a database, and gives song information, including title, artist, and album...

Method High

Posted on May 18, 2009
In re Bilski, the bad brew for method claims, is scheduled to be discussed by the Supreme Court May 28th. A decision to grant or deny certiorari could be included in the Court's Orders List as early as June 1st....

First to Flunk

Posted on May 18, 2009
A first-to-file patent priority regime is rationally done using absolute novelty, that is, no grace period. That is not what Sen. Leahy has for Senate Bill 515, the currently proposed abomination posing as patent reform. Hal Wegner reports on the convolutions involved in Leahy's fantasy version of first-to-file...

Outlier

Posted on May 17, 2009
The cabal misnamed as the Coalition for Patent Fairness advocates making patent enforcement more tortuous and expensive than it already is, as well as circumscribing patent holders' basic rights, such as transfer of ownership. IT shakers Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Micron and Cisco belong, and all share the distinction of being top ten patent gatherers in 2008...

View from the Bench

Posted on May 16, 2009
CAFC Chief Judge Michel spoke at an FTC venue last December, pouring cold water on those hot and heavy for patent "reform." Junk patents are nothing more than a gnat in the ointment. There is no litigation explosion. Hope for improvement from further post-grant review process is fantasy given turnover at the PTO...

Dubious

Posted on May 15, 2009
Altana Pharma sued competitor Teva over 4,758,579, going to an antiulcer drug. Altana asked for a preliminary injunction. Teva shot back with a decent obviousness argument, so the judge denied the motion, because it was dubious that the patent would withstand the enforcement attempt given the "substantial question" of validity raised...

The Problem

Posted on May 15, 2009
The backlog in the USPTO is one enormous statement of managerial incompetence. Nothing more. Singularly, what the Office has sorely lacked, and still lacks, is competent leadership. Jon Dudas was the Dubya of patents. For both, this nation is paying an incredible price, and will for years to come...

Spinach

Posted on May 15, 2009
It was getting downright creepy. Claim construction in the can: simple, straightforward, invincible. After exhaustive search and defendant's invalidity contentions, no prior art worth spitting on. In the sun on 101. Still, the chill. It was too easy. Today, thank goodness, divine intervention...

Unexpected

Posted on May 14, 2009
Procter & Gamble sued Teva for infringing 5,583,122 after Teva let P&G know it was planning on marketing a generic version of P&G's osteoporosis drug Actonel®. Teva had honed its bone of contention that '122 "was invalid as obvious in light of P&G's expired U...

Witless Fitness

Posted on May 13, 2009
Jonathan Monti co-invented exercise equipment which he pumped up to 6,932,749 and other patents. Suffering hasty-inventor syndrome, he tried to interest Fitness Quest (FQ) in his equipment before getting his patent. After getting the patent, he induced FQ into a declaratory judgment motion with an accusing letter...

Entitled?

Posted on May 13, 2009
Genetic manipulation is an expensive research endeavor because it is fraught with unpredictability. That makes it patentable. One ultimate goal of genetic research is treating diseases. Especially when an invention offers the prospect of a cure, the affected diseased, most desirous of the fruits, want the benefits without paying for the toils of the innovation behind it...

Quality

Posted on May 12, 2009
IBM's David Kappos, touted as a possible USPTO Director, testified in March before the Senate Judiciary Committee: "We believe the quality of patents issued in the U.S. has diminished, and that the substantial improvements needed to address this quality crisis are not possible without Congressional action...

Back into the Pool

Posted on May 12, 2009
Sofpool sued Intex Recreation over two above-ground swimming pool design patents (D408,546; D480,817). The jury found them noninfringed. The serpentine Egyptian Goddess CAFC ruling, a temporal reel in viewing design patents, intervened between trial and appeal...

Bully

Posted on May 11, 2009
The rabid FTC aside and amok, the U.S. Justice Department has had little stomach to enforce antitrust violations. The Americans let Microsoft off the antitrust hook with a smirk, while the Europeans fined them $1.16 billion. Now Intel, its corporate culture an apparent breeding ground for bully bullshitters, as evidenced by recent top brass opinions regarding "patent fairness," face their own European antitrust swat...

Stayed

Posted on May 10, 2009
SP Technologies started an enforcement campaign for 6,784,873, claiming a graphical touch screen keyboard that automatically disappears "after the desired input is received." SP sued Samsung and HTC. Samsung settled. HTC got up on its hind legs, filed an inter partes reexamination, and motioned to stay litigation, which East Illinois district court Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan granted...

Confined

Posted on May 10, 2009
Ron Wilson at EDN, with no patents to his name, has what he terms "a modest proposal": "prohibit assignment, sale, or any other transfer of patent ownership," except inheritance....

Gumped

Posted on May 09, 2009
Louis Stumberg and James Fulton invented a safety device for firefighters: automatically sounding an alarm if a firefighter didn't move for some time (presumably incapacitated). In 1989, the inventors hired Akin Gump to file a series of patents. Upon later enforcing the patents, they wound up getting settlements totaling $9 million...

Monster

Posted on May 08, 2009
In a debate on patent reform at the Commonwealth Club of California yesterday, Intel's Chief Patent Counsel David Simon told the audience that jury verdicts can't be overturned unless the decision was "monstrous." It takes one to know one.....

Kindled

Posted on May 08, 2009
Amazon's new Kindle DX, with bigger screen, comes patented: D591,741. With exceptions, design patents for electronic devices are relatively weak tea compared to the utility variety, and the Kindle is notably stodgy, so it's mostly a vanity patent. Amazon appears not to have any ebook utility patents...

Doubled Over

Posted on May 07, 2009
Dr. Frits Jacobus Fallaux got stubborn and stayed that way. The fifth in a family series ran into a double patenting rejection. The examiner applied the normal one-way test for obviousness-type, i.e., non-statutory double patenting on some claims. Rather than file a terminal disclaimer to overcome, which would have limited patent term, Fallaux countered that the more rarely applied two-way test was appropriate...

This Round

Posted on May 06, 2009
Rivals Monsanto and DuPont have battled over patents through the years. In the late 1990s, Monsanto went after DuPont for breaching a licensing agreement on pest-resistant corn, resulting in a revised licensing agreement. In 2002, DuPont licensed Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed technology, which allows crops to be sprayed with herbicide Roundup and survive...

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