Patent Law

Should Obama, McCain debate patent reform?

Posted on June 23, 2008
Chris O'Brien in the San Jose Mercury News suggests a debate, in Silicon Valley, between the presidential candidates on issues including:lifelong worker training, e-waste and patent reformThe text also notes:Stanford University's Lawrence Lessig is a tech adviser for Democratic Sen...

How do patent lawyers do in a recession?

Posted on June 23, 2008
BlackEnterprise has text including a quote by Mark Kesslen:"In a good economy people build portfolios and protect their innovations. In a recession, they look for ways to generate royalty revenues or litigate to protect their patents. They also look to make sure their licensing agreements are being enforced properly," Kesslen says...

Cognex aggressive with VCode on defamation matter

Posted on June 23, 2008
Of the Cognex v. VCode [Acacia] case, the 271 blog noted:While the district court dismissed the deceptive trade practices claim, the court denied Acacia's motion for summary judgment on the issue of defamation.

Does the Supreme Court still matter?

Posted on June 22, 2008
When Tim Lee took on the Federal Circuit in a recent post on TechDirt, it was apparent he had not read Judge Plager's piece in 101 Nw. U.L. Rev. 1735 (2007) titled RETHINKING PATENT LAW'S UNIFORMITY PRINCIPLE: A RESPONSE TO NARD AND DUFFY.Another judge-written article of interest is Judge Dyk's article A REVIEW OF RECENT DECISIONS OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT: FOREWORD: DOES THE SUPREME COURT STILL MATTER?which includes the text:Unlike the situation with many federal administrative agencies, the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO") has no substantive rulemaking authority, at least under our decisions, and accordingly we have afforded no Chevron deference to its interpretation of the substantive provisions of the patent statute...

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Can Kanzius cure cancer?

Posted on June 22, 2008
MATT CLARK at Naples [FL] News asks about John Kanzius: Can this man cure cancer?Within the article are several interesting statements, including:At 22, Kanzius worked at RCA as a technical assistant. He remembers the time when the company couldn?t solve a problem with its color television transmitters, which had put RCA at odds with Federal Communications Commission specifications and some of its customers...

On generating a privacy summary: 20080046976

Posted on June 22, 2008
The first claim of published US application 20080046976:A method for dynamically generating a privacy summary comprising:generating a profile for a user;receiving one or more privacy setting selections from the user associated with the profile;updating the profile associated with the user to incorporate the one or more privacy setting selections; andgenerating a privacy summary for the profile based on the one or more privacy setting selections...

e^(ip) blog: exalted head of the unseen

Posted on June 22, 2008
IPBiz noticed the e^(ip) blog of E.M. Gill, advertising Weekly IP insights, typically with wit and brevity which included text:So while the title Chief Intellectual Property Officer (or something similar: IP Managing Director, VP of Intangibles, Exalted Head of the Unseen) is important to differentiate IP from other functions, it is absolutely critical that we do not unintentionally disassociate our function with the core business...

Brian Williams "sits in" for Russert on June 22

Posted on June 22, 2008
"Meet the Press" on 22 June 08 opened with a logo "Meet the Press with Tim Russert" and an announcement "sitting in for Tim Russert" is Brian Williams. An inadvertent tribute to Russert was the manifest incompetence of Brian Williams in handling the show...

Educational hobos?

Posted on June 22, 2008
CBS Sunday Morning on 22 June 08, noting the 64th anniversary of the GI Bill, referenced a quote of University of Chicago's Robert Maynard Hutchins:"Colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles, and veterans....

Ranbaxy to settle with Takeda over Actos (pioglitazone)?

Posted on June 22, 2008
The Business-Standard reports: The Indian drug major [Ranbaxy] , which last week announced a high-profile patent settlement deal with Pfizer on Lipitor, the world's largest selling drug, may now review its litigation with Japan's Takeda on Actos (pioglitazone)...

Teachers remembered from Stanford

Posted on June 22, 2008
In 2003, the Stanford Magazine started a feature: Teachers we remember (and why).There was much feedback from students. For example: Burnham Carter Jr., PhD ?55, wrote that the late, great poetry scholar Yvor Winters left him discouraged and deflated when he responded to Carter?s first paper with one word??nonsense??and a D...

Paul H. Jensen citing Quillen/Webster in 2008

Posted on June 21, 2008
Query: how many criticisms of the Quillen/Webster methodology must be published before Paul H. Jensen wakes up and takes notice?This bias is however probably small since the proportion of all original patent applications granted by the USPTO is as high as 80-90 per cent (Quillen and Webster 2006)...

Brits' handling of Persaud case shows what SIU should have done with Poshard

Posted on June 21, 2008
Both Raj Persaud and Glenn Poshard copied from the published works of others and passed it off as their own. Southern Illinois University in Carbondale created a pass for Poshard by invoking the concept of "inadvertent plagiarism," a construct that doesn't pass the straight-face test...

Patent devaluation at BIO in San Diego?

Posted on June 21, 2008
Of BIO, RedOrbit discussed the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune, which declared in a Page 1 story earlier this week that ethanol from corn was "yesterday's news."A second generation of biofuels created from the likes of switchgrass is emerging as a key ethanol source for the future, the newspaper said...

Copyright on state statutes

Posted on June 21, 2008
James Grimmelmann has a discussion over the recent fracas created by the state of Oregon's claim to copyright in its statutes, Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer.In passing, I recently learned that the copy of the ordinances of the Township of Bridgewater (New Jersey) available in the library are NOT the same as the copy available over the internet...

InformationWeek blog: clueless on Red Hat?

Posted on June 19, 2008
Note the following text about the patent system:Worse, most of the people caught in its gears aren't deliberate offenders -- they're companies that don't do patent investigations because of the cost, time, and effort involved. (And even if their detective work turns up anything, it often isn't of much use...

Pfizer, Ranbaxy settle Lipitor matter

Posted on June 18, 2008
AP reports: Pfizer Inc. and India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. said June 18 they have settled their patent dispute over the blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor, delaying the release of generic versions in the U.S. until Nov. 30, 2011.

The "Indian Option" for Outsourcing IP Work

Posted on June 17, 2008
The InventBlog on 12 June noted:Perhaps that is what I didn?t get about ?outsourcing.? It isn?t about the price (which in this case was competitive with what I was paying in the US). It isn?t about quality (the quality I can get from US searchers is fine)...

Barack Obama, patents, and Flint, Michigan

Posted on June 17, 2008
The WSJ has excerpts from an interview with Barack Obama on a campaign bus in Flint, Michigan (remember Roger and Me?)The 271 blog noted a discussion of patent reform:We've got offices like the patent office that are outdated to take advantage of new discoveries here in the United States...

Tessera shares up on re-exam action

Posted on June 17, 2008
Thomson Financial reported:Shares of Tessera Technologies Inc. rallied Monday after the San Jose, Calif.-based company said the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (PTO) extended the reexamination of the company's patent related to semiconductor packaging technologies used in the wireless industry...

Another inadvertent plagiarism case

Posted on June 16, 2008
The Independent reported:Raj Persaud, 45, consultant psychiatrist, broadcaster and prolific author, told a misconduct hearing of the GMC in Manchester yesterday that he had passed off other researchers' work as his own in books and articles. He admitted his actions were "inappropriate" and "misleading"...

Apple settles with Klausner over iPhone

Posted on June 16, 2008
Reuters: Klausner Technology Inc said on June 16 that Apple Inc, eBay Inc and AT&T Inc have agreed to license its "visual voicemail" technology and settled a lawsuit against them.Klausner had sued Apple in ED Texas.http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/12/klausner-goes-after-iphone-in-ed-texas...

Slashdot chomps Jeff Bezos

Posted on June 16, 2008
Slashdot:"On June 2nd, almost two-and-half years after the USPTO initiated a reexamination of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent, Amazon dumped another load of documents on the USPTO Examiner assigned to the case, asking for consideration of the 185 or so listed references and 'favorable action...

PatentHawk blog whacks Joff Wild

Posted on June 15, 2008
In a post titled The Snake, the PatentHawk blog takes on Joff Wild of IAM:Criticism of the USPTO has reached comical proportions, and the joke is on us: inventors and prosecutors. When there is a universal howl from the U.S. patent bar about the agency, while the PTO itself crows about a lurch down in allowance rate, and a federal court rules that the PTO acting illegally, you may think something afoot...

Tim Russert

Posted on June 15, 2008
The June 15 "Meet the Press" was a tribute to Tim Russert, who died on June 13. Panelists led by Tom Brokaw discussed the life of Russert in the foreground, while Russert's empty chair from the set was in the background. In an article in the New York times on June 16 titled --Recalling Russert as Political Operative in New York--, one has the textMr...

Nanotechnology research outpacing peer review?

Posted on June 15, 2008
Nanowerk quotes Drummond Rennie for the proposition that peer review determines "where", not whether, a paper will be published.There is also the question: "who benefits from patents arising from the work (or rather: who will get to patent new discoveries?)"Further, on patents, there is text:Of course it is naive to believe that researchers are always interested or encouraged to publish a paper on their research findings as soon as they have something to report...

Lewis & Clark Law Review on KSR

Posted on June 15, 2008
Note Colleen Seifert's contribution to the KSR issue, which contribution is directed to "cognitive processes."

Part of Whirpool's ITC action against LG dropped

Posted on June 15, 2008
Reuters reported: A U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled to terminate part of Whirlpool Corp's patent case against LG Electronics Inc's freezer features, LG said on Sunday, June 15.See alsoWhirlpool files ITC action against LG Electronics

What might have been in patent reform?

Posted on June 15, 2008
In a post titled --Patent reforms can shift research --, one has the text:Congress has a unique opportunity to help the millions of Americans afflicted by neglected diseases. The Patent Reform Act, now being considered in the Senate, could rework the national patent system to encourage breakthrough treatments for many chronic conditions that too often go unaddressed by drug makers...

Remember Sally Mason and bubble fusion?

Posted on June 14, 2008
Mason went to UIowa, which is becoming the lost university as flood waters rise.

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