Patent Law

IP-Watch on Obama IP insiders

Posted on November 10, 2008
IP-Watch noted:IP and technology experts such as Duke University law professor Arti Rai, former Federal Communications Chairman Reed Hundt, and MIT computer scientist Daniel Weitzner have been part of Obama?s inner campaign circle, according to sources...

Super-competent plagiarism?

Posted on November 10, 2008
The world of games brings us the concept of "super-competent plagiarism," but what would the Harvard Business Review say?-->I agree with Cross that it seems somewhat wrong to adore "a game that?s really just super-competent plagiarism," but there's certainly plenty to celebrate about the familiar when it's done really, really well ? 'super-competent plagiarism' or no.

Holy Sikahema, Batman; Obama agenda disappears from the internet?!?

Posted on November 10, 2008
The Washington Times reports:Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www...

Tim Lee on questionable copyright statistics

Posted on November 10, 2008
In a post titled Piracy Statistics and the Importance of Journalistic Skepticism, Timothy Lee begins:If you've paid attention to copyright debates in recent years, you've probably seen advocates for more restrictive copyright laws claim that "counterfeiting and piracy" cost the US economy as much as $250 billion...

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

On Crichton

Posted on November 10, 2008
A person recently commented on an earlier IPBiz post about Crichton's op-ed in the NYT: "This Essay Breaks the Law,"March 19, 2006, that Crichton had died, and included a link.Within the link was text: In his fictional worlds, human greed, hubris and the urge to dominate were just as powerful as the most advanced computers...

Poaching Poshard, Batman; another university president accused of a plagiarized Ph.D. thesis!

Posted on November 10, 2008
Dr. Blandina Cardenas, president of a school in the University of Texas system, has been accused, anonymously, of plagiarism of portions of her Ph.D. thesis from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The thesis of Cardenas is titled "Defining Access to Equal Educational Opportunity for Mexican Americans: A Study of Three Civil Rights Actions Affecting Mexican American Students and the Development of a Conceptual Framework for Effecting Institutional Responsiveness to the Educational Needs of Mexican American Children...

Illinois Tool settles patent case with 3M

Posted on November 10, 2008
AP notes: Under the settlement, ITW acknowledges the validity and enforceability of 3M's patent and has taken a license under 3M patents. In addition, 3M will supply a portion of ITW's DeKups system in the future. The technical area is paint preparation products.

More on the coffee patent wars

Posted on November 09, 2008
In October 2007, litigation between P&G and Kraft was stayed, pending outcome of re-examination of a P&G patent on plastic coffee containers. The initial part of the re-examination concluded favorably to P&G. Curiously, in the meantime, P&G sold its coffee interests to Smucker, which once litigated the infamous "peanut butter and jelly" patent against Albie's...

On hiring employees of your competitor

Posted on November 09, 2008
from pcmagazine on the restraining order of 7 Nov 08 from the U.S. District Court for Southern New York [SDNY]:In June 2006, Mark Papermaster signed a non-compete agreement in which he agreed not to work for an IBM competitor for at least a year if he ever left IBM, according to court documents...

Federal employees as inventors

Posted on November 09, 2008
As noted on IPBiz, there seemed to be a patent angle beneath the Ivins anthrax mess. [Patent angle at bottom of anthrax scare?IPBiz separately noted the varying rules on federal employees obtaining patent rights, including thestory of the Civil War era Sibley tent...

The shame of "gold plated" patents

Posted on November 09, 2008
PatentBaristas has a post titled Will-the-us-patent-office-see-change?, which includes text about Obama's "gold plated patents":It would be a shame if the a ?gold-plated? patent scenario where to be implemented. It would seem to amount to a stamp marking all other patents as ?crap? patents...

Law students biggest cheaters at Cambridge?

Posted on November 09, 2008
cherwell.org reports: Approximately 49% of Cambridge University students confessed to cheating, in a survey published by the Varsity student newspaper. Law students were exposed as being the worst offenders, with 62% of them breaking the University's plagiarism rules...

Arthrex Inc. of Naples, FL enjoined

Posted on November 09, 2008
In June 2008 a federal court in D. Oregon determined that Arthrex willfully infringed on Smith & Nephew's patent by marketing and selling certain types of suture anchors used in various surgeries, including shoulder surgery. The jury awarded Smith & Nephew $14...

Third annual Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa (7 Nov 08)

Posted on November 08, 2008
Teri Somers wrote: Many people hoped those products would be therapies, essentially stem cells grown into replacement cells that could be transplanted to replace cells or tissue destroyed by disease.While that hope has not died, scientists are learning it remains distant...

"Thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, oh, baby!"

Posted on November 07, 2008
Birmingham [England] Mail reporter Adam Smith had taken a week's vacation to go to Miami to volunteer for the Barack Obama's campaign.The timesonline reported:"I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign," Mr Smith explained in a strong, if rather slurred, Brummie accent...

Sanofi wins over Apotex in PLAVIX battle in Canada

Posted on November 07, 2008
In a 7-0 judgment on 6 Nov 08, the Canadien Supreme Court rejected a request from Apotex Inc. to invalidate Sanofi's patent for an anti-coagulant drug (Plavix) used to combat cardiovascular degeneration.Coverage by Kirk Makin in the Globe and Mail did NOT get to the heart of this court battle involving patenting of racemates vs...

Invention and innovation are not the same thing

Posted on November 07, 2008
Part of the confusion in patent reform is caused by the failure of certain legal academics to treat "innovation" and "invention" as synonyms. In December 2006, in an article titled ON PATENT QUALITY AND PATENT REFORM [88 JPTOS 1068 ], LBE notedTo intellectual property attorneys, the world of patents is about the disclosure of inventions...

In re Alonso: one species fails to support a genus claim

Posted on November 06, 2008
In In re Kenneth Alonso, patent applicant Alonso, represented by the law firm of Finnegan, Henderson, lost an appeal from the BPAI for failing to meet the written description requirement of 35 USC 112. The claim at stake was number 92, directed to: [a] method of treating neurofibrosarcoma in a human by administering an effective amount of a monoclonal antibody idiotypic to the neurofibrosarcoma of said human, wherein said monoclonal antibody is secreted from a human-human hybridoma derived from the neurofibrosarcoma cells...

Hardball's Matthews' job on behalf of Obama

Posted on November 06, 2008
Breitbart has an interesting videoclip on Hardball's Matthews view of his job scope.

Kicking the proposed rules on continuations while they are down

Posted on November 06, 2008
In Now You See Them, Now You Don't: The PTO's Rules on Claims and Continuations, Matt Browning concludes:the Final Rules, if implemented, would almost certainly negatively affect patent prosecution practice and would ultimately reduce incentives to innovate, particularly in biotechnological and pharmaceutical fields...

Copyright and conflicts of interest

Posted on November 05, 2008
The journal Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) retracted an article titled "Cancer Mortality in a Chinese Population Exposed to Hexavalent Chromium in Water" in 2006 based on alleged violations of JOEM editorial policy for failing to include a footnote acknowledging research support of American scientific consultants...

On a myth in IP valuation

Posted on November 05, 2008
See Pat Sullivan on Busting an Intellectual Capital Myth.Next, maybe busting the myth of Bessen and Meurer?

"Patent lawyers may cringe"

Posted on November 05, 2008
In a post titled What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor, TechDirt has the text:The Poor Man's Steadycam, for example, is available to purchase, and Lee has made a quarter of a million dollars from it -- even though he provides full instructions for anyone who wants to build their own...

It's about disclosure, stupid

Posted on November 05, 2008
Unlike certain mindless intellectual property professors, patentfools at least understood that disclosure is part of the patent system, in writing:The Patent system has 2 reasons to exist: incentive to disclose inventions; and, dissemination of those ideas...

More lithium battery patent stuff

Posted on November 05, 2008
AP reported:Energizer Holdings Inc., which makes batteries, razors and personal care products, said Friday it was granted a preliminary injunction in a patent infringement case against Spectrum Brands Inc. that will keep some of its competitor's batteries off store shelves...

More on Albritton suit on Cisco, patent troll tracker

Posted on November 05, 2008
MarketWatch reports:Cisco has reacted forcefully to Albritton's suit, in which he claims that former company attorney Richard Frenkel questioned his ethics in a blog post. Albritton claims that post caused him to suffer from "embarrassment, humiliation, mental pain and anguish...

Winning in Florida

Posted on November 05, 2008
Joseph Stiglitz, who won the 2001 Nobel prize for economics and who advised President Clinton, correctly predicted on September 30 that Democrat Barack Obama would win November's presidential election.Some discussion of Obama's winning effort in Florida from boston...

Flashback on peer review

Posted on November 04, 2008
In 1999, Richard Smith of BMJ wrote an article Opening up BMJ peer review which discussed some of the defects of anonymous peer review.Although written BEFORE the frauds of Jan-Hendrik Schon and Hwang Woo Suk in the journal Science, Smith observed:Peer review is at the heart of the scientific process yet was until recently largely unexamined...

The "four C's" of lawyer/client interaction

Posted on November 04, 2008
In reviewing a book "How to deal with your lawyer," Patent Baristas noted:the 4 C?s of a lawyer?s fiduciary duty (Communication, Competence, Confidentiality, and Conflicts of Interest).Of the last, a lawyer should not take representation of one client which conflicts with a lawyer's representation of another client...

On Intellectual Ventures

Posted on November 04, 2008
One finds a very negative take on Intellectual Ventures at PatentFools, includingJust like in the story-line of Independence Day, where the alien death ships slowly but surely positioned themselves over each major city, with the eventual outcome well understood, so too is Intellectual Ventures (I...

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