Patent Law

Rule 11 sanctions from inventorship dispute; relevance to Myriad?

Posted on May 24, 2010
from the decision:Count VIII alleged a ?breach of fiduciary duty by John Doe I [patent attorney] in violation of 35 U.S.C. et seq., 37 CFR et seq., and the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP).? Supplemental App. 35 (capitalization altered)...

Equitable estoppel issues in Aspex v. Clariti

Posted on May 24, 2010
The CAFC concludes:The elements of equitable estoppel were established without material factual dispute, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in weighing the equities. We affirm the district court?s ruling that Aspex is equitably estopped from suing Clariti for infringement of the ?747 patent...

Last episode of Law & Order

Posted on May 24, 2010
Included within a discussion of the last episode of "Law & Order" [ Rubber Room on 24 May 2010 ] is the line"Law & Order" has become, to be as unromantic as possible about it, a triumph of what is now popularly called "branding" ..Law & Order had trademarks at several levels, including the signature music and the half law/half order format...

Tesla: "We look forward to learning and benefiting from Toyota's legendary engineering"

Posted on May 23, 2010
Tesla, with a $50 million investment from Toyota, will make its cars in a factory that Toyota and General Motors Co. formerly operated in Fremont, California.California has many state regulations (eg, note recent problems with CARB) and high labor costs.

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Lesley Stahl does phthalates

Posted on May 23, 2010
Lesley Stahl took on phthalates on "60 Minutes" on 23 May 2010.Lesley Stahl should not do science topics.See also "60 Minutes" on Kanzius: We don?t want to be in a position to hype this. The Bloom Box featured by Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes" on Feb. 21***Elsewhere, a story by Morley Safer on Marty Cooper and the cell phone...

"CBS Sunday Morning" does innovation

Posted on May 23, 2010
"CBS Sunday Morning" on 23 May 2010 had many scenes shot from San Simeon and many stories touching on innovation. One story was about new sport airplanes, and featured the ICON A5 Amphibious Light Sport Airplane. The 100HP Rotax rotary engine powers the pusher prop (push prop as used by the Wright Brothers) and there is a patent pending on the propellor guard...

"Substantial evidence" doesn't carry the day in IN RE RAVI VAIDYANATHAN

Posted on May 21, 2010
The CAFC did not back up the BPAI on obviousness rejections:For claims 1?9, we vacate the rejection and remand for further examination. The patent examiner has to set up the obviousness case:The patent examiner is respon- sible for marshalling the references whose teachings are most relevant to the claimed invention, and evaluating the claimed invention against these teachings, from the viewpoint of a person of ordinary skill in the field of invention...

History revisited, or history revised?

Posted on May 20, 2010
from Nanowerk post, titled: From beams to buckyballs - setting the stage for the nanotechnology revolution-->Curl said Smalley initially showed little interest in pursuing the experiment, but Curl thought Kroto's ideas had merit. "My argument was that the experiment might actually lead to a test of a proposal of the origin of the diffuse interstellar bands," he said...

USPTO fee-setting authority without ending fee diversion useless

Posted on May 20, 2010
In a post titled With Overhaul of Patent Law Stalled, House To Consider Narrower Bill, CQ Politics discusses a limited-scope patent reform bill of Congressman Conyers, the House Judiciary Chairman.The problem is that a grant of fee setting authority to the USPTO without ending fee diversion from the USPTO merely means that patent applicants will be paying more for less...

Gerald Posner snagged again?

Posted on May 19, 2010
Things are looking worse for Gerald Posner, the author of "Case Closed." After being forced out at the Daily Beast for plagiarism, there have been some more accusations of plagiarism, and of tampering with Wikipedia.In a piece titled Posner Plagiarizes Again, Miami New Times talks about work on Posner done by Greg Gelembiuk:So he ran Miami Babylon through Viper, free online software that scours the Internet to look for copied phrases...

How valuable is a Harvard administrator credential?

Posted on May 19, 2010
In an editorial Asleep in Admissions?, the Boston Globe states Admission officials at Harvard have a lot to explain to legitimate applicants. and ends Are the phones ? and the admission office ? in decent working order at Harvard?As a general proposition, one might ask, is the credential of "administrator" at Harvard, something that is a plus, or, in view of the Wheeler affair, a minus? How about an administrator who has few publications? Perhaps the Senate will let us know...

"How does it feel to be in the murder business, Miss Hart?"

Posted on May 18, 2010
For the first time in her lifetime on NCIS, M. Allison Hart (played by Rena Sofer), patent lawyer, and generally controlling lawyer, is placed in a rather defensive position in the episode "Patriot Down."In the subtheme of the 20 year old murder in Mexico, Abby tells Gibbs: No one needs to know the truth in the Hernandez investigation, but Gibbs gives no request to obscure the truth...

Adam Wheeler dupes Harvard

Posted on May 18, 2010
from AP, via Detroit Free Press:Massachusetts prosecutors say 23-year-old Adam Wheeler claimed he had earned a perfect academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover and at MIT before enrolling at Harvard, when in reality he had never attended either school...

"The Five Law Professors" and Tivo v. EchoStar

Posted on May 17, 2010
On 14 May 2010, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [CAFC] issued an order in Tivo v. Echostar, of whichBusinessWeek noted:?Many investors had been hoping for a resolution to this case that has been going on for many years now,? said Mark Harding an analyst with New York-based Maxim Group, who rates TiVo a ?buy? and doesn't own shares...

Ben Stein's wrong on "not getting into college of your choice"

Posted on May 16, 2010
On 16 May 2010, Ben Stein presented a commentary on "CBS Sunday Morning" about how not getting into the college of one's choice won't really affect your later life. Ben Stein is a great commentator, but he's wrong on this one. His examples were Richard Nixon, Norman Lear, Jimmy Kimmel, and Bill Safire, all of whom did not go to an Ivy League school, but succeeded in life...

Ironic turn in Gerald Posner plagiarism manner

Posted on May 16, 2010
As IPBiz has previously noted, advertising for Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed" on the Kennedy assassination produced various Lanham Act cases for false advertising.[e.g., IPBiz post, "Guilty of misleading the American public"? ]Now, in 2010, Posner has hired Mark Lane to help him with the more recent plagiarism accusations!!!!! The Miami News reported:"Although I'm convinced Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, I've always believed that had Mark Lane represented Oswald, he would have won an acquittal," Posner says in a press release...

Law & Order: tort fable?

Posted on May 15, 2010
An article Why We'll Miss 'Law & Order' includes text:But the true secret of the show's appeal is that it's not a crime show at all. It's a fable about the field called tort law?the branch of civil justice in which people hurt by others' sloppy or vicious conduct can wring some measure of payback from those who hurt them...

Gina Kolata: past and present

Posted on May 15, 2010
In his 14 May 2010 post on WN, Bob Park writes of NYT person Gina Kolata: On Tuesday in the New York Times Gina Kolata, who is a good writer (...)In the year 2007, author David Kaye, in MINN.J.L.SCI.&TECH.2007;8(2):409-427 wrote:A 1992 report of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as a compromise, proposed a more ?conservative? computational method, dubbed ?the ceiling principle? by its inventor and National Research Council committee member, Eric Lander...

CAFC Mann case interprets "exclusive licensee with all substantial rights"

Posted on May 15, 2010
In Mann v. Cochlear, the CAFC addressed the issue of whether a licensor retained enough rights under an exclusive license agreement to have standing to sue an infringer. The CAFC found the licensor (AMF) did have standing:As discussed above, the district court should have held that, although the agreement between AMF and AB was an exclusive license agreement, it was not a virtual assignment of the patents-in-suit...

Cronkite, Muskie, and Rollins College in 1969

Posted on May 15, 2010
YahooNews obtained, through FOIA, some redacted FBI documents relating to Walter Cronkite, and the anti-war movement in 1969:[Redacted] told group he had been to CBS Channel Six in Orlando prior to meeting to speak to newsmen about Vietnam moratorium activities...

More on plagiarizing Pittsburgh school superintendent

Posted on May 13, 2010
An article posted on pittsburghlive begins:Suspended West Jefferson Hills School Superintendent Terry Kinavey testified Wednesday that she had permission to use welcome letters and a brochure she has been accused of plagiarizing."Permission" is a defense to a legal charge of copyright infringement but it is NOT a defense to a charge of plagiarism [copying without attribution...

Apple's mandamus action fails to effect escape from ED Texas

Posted on May 13, 2010
In a nonprecedential order in In re Apple (an attempt to go from ED Tex to D Mass), the CAFC wrote:To be sure, the status of Personal Audio, LLC, as a Texas corporation is not entitled to significant weight, inasmuch as the company?s presence in Texas appears to be both recent and ephemeral?its office is apparently the office of its Texas litigation counsel, and it appears not to have any employees in Texas...

A leftwinger on Kagan/Tribe matter

Posted on May 12, 2010
A previous IPBiz post discussed an article Right-wingers falsely accuse Kagan of covering up plagiarism at Harvard . Here's text about what (liberal) Dean Velvel has to say:Velvel discussed Kagan?s nomination as a guest on ?The Tom and Todd Show? on WRKO-AM Radio in Boston on Tuesday morning...

Attorney fees in Taltech v. Esquel

Posted on May 12, 2010
A finding of inequitable conduct leads to attorney fees:Following a bench trial, the district court concluded that Taltech inventor John Wong engaged in inequitable conduct during prosecution of the ?779 patent before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (?PTO?) when he did not disclose a raincoat seam that included heat-fusible adhesive tape (undisclosed raincoat seam, ?URS?), and when he misrepresented a raincoat seam previously made and sold by TAL (?double top-stitch seam?)...

Concerning a shoulder-mounted harness for holding a percussion instrument

Posted on May 11, 2010
In Randall May, a change in claim construction changes the outcome.The words "common sense" appear:However, in reviewing a district court's claim construction, this court takes into account the views of the trial judge. Nazomi, 403 F.3d at 1371. Though we review those views and the record de novo, ?common sense dictates that the trial judge's view will carry weight...

Federal appellate courts: ?a system of arranged marriage with no divorce?

Posted on May 03, 2010
The UChicago Law School has a post titled New York Times Profiles Judge Wood, which sets up the link to the NYT.Within the setup: The appeals bench, Judge Posner warned, was like ?a system of arranged marriage with no divorce.? His message to his junior colleague was clear: Pick your battles carefully...

Where's Nutter?

Posted on May 03, 2010
KYW3 has a story which includes text:Lt. Frank Vanore of the Philadelphia Police tells Eyewitness News that the gunfire was the result of an argument between officers and three individuals on the 1800 block of Hoffman Street at about 6:30 p.m.A 20-year-old male was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he was later pronounced dead...

Noonan on Wegner on "Besson"

Posted on May 02, 2010
In a comment on 29 April 2010 to his post USPTO Administrator Arti Rai Responds to Patent Docs Post on PTO White Paper, Kevin Noonan writes:Hal Wegner earlier today cited Besson & Meurer's "evidence" that most innovation is done by big companies; since he cites their paper "supporting" this assertion, it is possible to review it and its conclusions that fly in the face of most patent practitioners' experiences...

When a "first rater" copies a "second rater"

Posted on May 02, 2010
Writing about the "is Bob Dylan a plagiarist?" discussion, Sean Wilentz of the Daily Beast (once home to plagiarist Gerald Posner) referred to Henry Timrod in the following way:Three years later, when Dylan released Modern Times, listeners trawled for arcane references on the new album, and find them they did, including poetic fragments from Ovid and Henry Timrod, the second-rate pro-Confederate Southern poet...

CBS still recycling

Posted on May 02, 2010
CBS Sunday Morning on 2 May 2010 recycled not one but two stories from the CBS Nightly News on 1 May 2010, one on the Louisiana oil spill and one on the Arizona immigration law. The two stories on May 2 were copies. Ironically, in a letters piece on Sunday, responding to a criticism that CBS Sunday Morning does not post all its stories on its website, Osgood cited copyright concerns...

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