Patent Law

Duffy appointments argument deemed waived in DBC case

Posted on November 04, 2008
The CAFC noted:DBC argues that regardless of the merits of the underlying rejection, the decision of the Board must be vacated because two of the administrative patent judges on the panel were appointed unconstitutionally.2 The government counters that DBC waived this issue by failing to raise it either before the Board or in its opening brief in this appeal...

Netvibes on IP blogs

Posted on November 04, 2008
NetVibes has a nice display of recent activity on various intellectual property blogs.Separately, note "popularity" rankings on blawgsearch.

We're not in Princeton anymore...

Posted on October 31, 2008
This Einstein Street isn't in Einstein Alley (Princeton), but rather in (East) Berlin:Meitner shows up:Barbara McClintock has a street:

Bilski loses

Posted on October 31, 2008
In re Bilski concludes:Because the applicable test to determine whether a claim is drawn to a patent- eligible process under § 101 is the machine-or-transformation test set forth by the Supreme Court and clarified herein, and Applicants' claim here plainly fails that test, the decision of the Board is AFFIRMED...

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Orlando's Channel 9 has tough time with Joe Biden

Posted on October 26, 2008
The Orlando Sentinel reported:Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife."This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election," wrote Laura K...

Michael Kirk on patent reform

Posted on October 25, 2008
IAM has some text from ex-AIPLA head Kirk -->Michael Kirk, who retired as the executive director of the AIPLA at the end of August, has claimed that high-tech companies have contributed to the creation of a significantly more hostile attitude to patent rights in the US...

Yamaguchi: provisional can be prior art as of its filing date

Posted on October 25, 2008
There's been some talk about Ex parte Yamaguchi (USPTO/BPAI, August 28, 2008) being in tension with the 1981 case In re Wertheim, 646 F.2d 527 (CCPA 1981).Of course, in 1981, there were no provisional applications, and no statutes describing priority issues as to provisionals...

Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd

Posted on October 24, 2008
With all the talk about Ayers (and UofC's Dohrn), Mark Rudd was sure to surface.from forward.com:Rudd took issue with that theory [that Jewish youngsters rebelled against their parents? Stalinist orthodoxy by embracing Maoism] in a talk he gave at the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society in 2005...

Plagiarism no big deal to Mark Cunningham

Posted on October 24, 2008
Mark Cunningham, expert witness on behalf of Brian Nichols, doesn't think plagiarism is a big deal. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote:Cunningham was caught by surprise when he learned from the prosecution that Nichols had plagiarized chunks of a college paper on which he had based part of his opinion...

Patents and trade secrets?

Posted on October 24, 2008
A rather bizarre post on Patently-O links trade secrets with "early" patent filing:Going unrecognized is another benefit of early filing ? the ability to keep secret later developed innovations and parameters. That secret information can then be protected and exploited as trade secret information...

Newark Star-Ledger cuts newsroom staff by 1/2

Posted on October 24, 2008
AP -- The Newark Star-Ledger will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability. Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said 24 Oct 08 that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees...

Opening the patent process to citizen review?

Posted on October 23, 2008
A comment in Investor's Daily notes of Obama and patent reform -->Obama's idea of "opening up the patent process to citizen review" would make it much tougher for businesses to challenge the government's judgment on the ownership rights of an invention, which will have a negative effect on the incentives to innovate...

Student plagiarism on the rise?

Posted on October 23, 2008
In a recent poll of 500 university staff by the Times Higher Education (Britain)-->More than three quarters of academics questioned (77%) said pressure on them to give better marks had increased. And 78% believed that student plagiarism was an increasing problem in their institution...

Wyeth v. Dudas on patent term

Posted on October 20, 2008
At issue was interpretation of 35 USC 154. As to "Chevron deference," there is a citation to Merck v. Kessler, 80 F.3d 1543, and a statement that "Chevron deference does not apply to the interpretation at issue here." However, the court separately noted that the Chevron inquiry, if applied, would end at step one (statute not ambiguous)...

Abbott prevails on patent term extension for stent

Posted on October 20, 2008
Online wsj noted:Abbott is seeking to extend the patent until May 24, 2011, to account for time it took to research and win approval for its Xience stent, a tiny mesh scaffold used to prop open clogged arteries that went on sale in July. A review by the patent office, which announced the extension in a decision published Tuesday [Oct...

Dealing with telemarketers?

Posted on October 20, 2008
The following link mentions how one person dealt with a telemarketer. One notes that impersonating a police officer probably is not a good idea.http://www.maniacworld.com/Best-Telemarketer-Prank-Ever.html

What has SNL done to Sarah Palin?

Posted on October 20, 2008
One writer to IPBiz mentioned (hypothetical) libel issues in the Sarah Palin context.IPBiz recalls the MD Tenn case Acuff-Rose v. LUTHER R. CAMPBELL a/k/a Luke Skyywalker, 754 F. Supp. 1150, which in turn mentioned "Mad Magazine," a favorite of LBE's in days long past (in a copyright context)-->Likewise, in Berlin, the Second Circuit affirmed the application of the fair use defense in a case where the defendants, publishers of "Mad Magazine," had published a volume which parodied twenty-five of the plaintiff's song lyrics in same meter...

Made in the 1950's but only recognized in 2008

Posted on October 19, 2008
Wired has a post Forgotten Experiment May Explain Origins of Life which concerns work by Stanley Miller in 1953 in which samples created by Miller in the 1950's were re-analyzed with the much more sensitive equipment of the 21st century. This work isn't about patents, but contemplate the prior art issues this presents...

Pozen shares sink on news of Hatch-Waxman challenge

Posted on October 18, 2008
In the Hatch-Waxman area, Pozen, Inc. announced Par Pharmaceutical Inc. has filed an application with the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] to make a generic version of Treximet, a migraine treatment Pozen developed with GlaxoSmithKline PLC, and shares of Pozen shed nearly 28 percent of their value on 17 Oct...

No one really cares about Joe Biden's plagiarism

Posted on October 17, 2008
To mebden, who left a comment on the IPBiz post The significance of Joe Biden's plagiarism? , the answers to your questions are already on IPBiz, and elsewhere. Biden's father was some kind of used-car salesman, and was not a coal miner at any time in his life...

To live and be fingerprinted in LA?

Posted on October 17, 2008
YahooNews on 17 Oct. 2008-->Police have arrested innocent people due to faulty fingerprint analysis but have not determined how many cases were affected by such errors, police officials said.A confidential police report details two cases in which charges were dropped after problems with the fingerprint analysis were discovered, the Los Angeles Times reported late Thursday...

Old science fraud uncovered

Posted on October 16, 2008
The Scotsman -- >Now comes news that John Heslop-Harrison, one of Britain's most eminent botanists when he died in 1967, deliberately planted rare specimens on Rum 60 years ago in order to "prove" that the Hebrides had escaped the last ice age.

Gold-plated debate?

Posted on October 16, 2008
The words "invention" and "gold-plated" both arose in the third presidential debate on 16 Oct. 08, but not in the context of patent law. [For anyone interested, the Joe the Plumber video can be found here]One commenter on Patent Docs (on a discussion of the Obama/McCain patent law debate by surrogates) had this to say:As an Obama supporter, I am disappointed to see that he is consulting with Professors Rai and Lemley, because I strongly disagree with previous statements they have made about the patent system and the PTO...

CIPRO at the CAFC

Posted on October 16, 2008
This case under the Hatch-Waxman Act presents the issue of whether a settlement agreement between a patent holder and a generic manufacturer violates the antitrust laws. The punchline-->For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the grant of summary judgment by the District Court for the Eastern District of New York that the Agreements were not in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act because any anti-competitive effects caused by the Agreements were within the exclusionary zone of the patent...

"Patents: a recipe for problems?"

Posted on October 16, 2008
On page 38 of the 3 Oct. 2008 issue of the journal Science, one finds an article titled "Patents: a recipe for problems?". concerning the patented product Plumpy'Nut. [322 Science 38]Plumpy'nut is what is called a "ready-to-use-food" [RUTF] and Nutriset, along with the French government, own patents to Plumpy'nut, in countries in Europe, North America, and 30 African countries, which will last till 2018...

Prominent academics?

Posted on October 16, 2008
An article titled Don't mess with American ingenuity begins:What if I told you that labor unions, small-business associations, drug companies, physicians? groups, prominent academics and the Bush administration were all lined up against a major piece of federal legislation currently winding its way through congress? Would the convergence of these normally disparate interests make you suspicious of the legislation, sight unseen?It should...

Jeffery Fromm, patent attorney, died on Oct. 9

Posted on October 15, 2008
Jeffery Fromm, who had been a patent attorney at Hewlett-Packard and at Drinker Biddle, died on October 9m 2008. One may share memories in a guest book.Note Fromm's article Patent Misuse and Copyright Misuse; Two Sides of the Same Coin.

BubbleFusion heating up in October 2008?

Posted on October 15, 2008
New Energy Times reproduced an AP story which began --> A Purdue University scientist [Taleyarkhan] who was reprimanded for research misconduct over claims he produced nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments is suing two other faculty members for alleged defamation...

Tafas briefs, and confusion among the law professor set, again

Posted on October 15, 2008
IPBiz could not but chuckle at the listing of Tafas briefs at Patently-O -->In support of Tafas:AIPLA File Attachment: aipla.PDF (1020 KB) BIO File Attachment: bio.pdf (240 KB) Cantor Fitzgerald File Attachment: cantorfitz.pdf (376 KB) (rules improperly shift burden of proof) ELAN File Attachment: elan...

A variant on plagiarism?

Posted on October 15, 2008
The BLT blog wrote:Arnold & Porter partner David Eggert, representing Philip Morris on appeal in a complex civil RICO case that is set for oral argument today, raised this point in a brief: the federal district judge who sided with the government in 2006 in bringing sanctions against Big Tobacco copied government language?right down to typographical errors...

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