Patent Law

Internet whisper campaigns

Posted on June 06, 2008
Ben Smith's blog has the following:So was it even acceptable to ask the question? [about something Michelle Obama may, or may not, have said, according to postings on the internet]Before Obama could answer, communications director Robert Gibbs interjected: ?You just did...

Rule 11 issues in patent infringement filings

Posted on June 06, 2008
GERALD N. PELLEGRINI, appearing pro se against Analog Devices (represented by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP)took a beating in a case decided by the CAFC on 5 June 08.The case brings up the issue of Rule 11 in filing assertions ofpatent infringement:as the district court noted, this court has explained that [i]n bringing a claim of infringement, the patent holder, if challenged, must be prepared to demonstrate to both the court and the alleged infringer exactly why it believed before filing the claim that it had a reasonable chance of proving infringement...

Use of GenBank Accession numbers in patent applications

Posted on June 06, 2008
In a post titled "Patent Office Catch-22", Patent Docs discusses a presentation by Julie Burke, a "Quality Assurance Specialist" in Group 1600 at the Biotechnology/Chemistry/Pharmaceutical Customer Partnership meeting held at the Patent Office on 4 June 08...

StemCells gets patent on Enriched central nervous system stem cell and progenitor cell populations

Posted on June 06, 2008
A June 6 press release noted: StemCells, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued Patent Number 7,381,561 claiming the use of additional monoclonal antibodies for the prospective isolation of rare cells from human neural tissue, such as the Company?s HuCNS-SC® product candidate (purified human neural stem cells)...

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Patents play big role in "clean technology"

Posted on June 06, 2008
from CNNMoney ( Clean Technology Intellectual-Property Claims On The Rise ):[Bob] O'Connor said intellectual-property litigation will become the most prevalent in whatever clean-technology sectors have the most capital investment, as companies seek to protect those investments...

Sanders: "Algae is a key to energy problems"

Posted on June 06, 2008
Sanders writes in the biodiesel context: An average acre of algae grown today for pharmaceutical industries can produce 5,000 gallons of biodiesel each year. Algae need only sunlight, water, nutrients, and carbon dioxide to grow, have extremely fast growth rates, and some types of algae comprise 50 percent oil...

BlackLight/Hydrino criticized by Park

Posted on June 06, 2008
Bob Park went after BlackLight Power on 6 June 08:BlackLight Power (BLP), founded 17 years ago as HydroCatalysis, announced last week that the company had successfully tested a prototype power system that would generate 50 KW of thermal power. BLP anticipates delivery of the new power system in 12 to 18 months...

Mallun was backing Hillary

Posted on June 05, 2008
Inspection of the Huffington Post shows that Mallun Yen, VP of IP at Cisco, as backing Hillary Clinton to the max of $4,600.00 (2X $2,300).See alsoCisco's chief patent counsel is not a registered patent attorney?!?Does "telling whoppers" lead to insurmountable credibility problems?

CIRM hires attorney, not registered before USPTO, to give advice on IP

Posted on June 05, 2008
Californiastemcellreport noted: Nancy Koch has been hired part-time for six months through Oct. 7 on a $150,000 contract to deal with IP matters. Californiastemcellreport further noted on June 4:An attorney, who must remain anonymous but who is familiar with intellectual property law, sent the following re Nancy Koch in the item below:"Chiron's chief IP attorney, under whom she worked, was a strong and insightful patent portfolio strategist, so she probably has good experience from working with him...

On a lawyer writing a noninfringement opinion for client A when client B holds a relevant patent

Posted on June 05, 2008
Back in 2006, the Legal Ethics Forum discussed the ethics of a lawyer writing a "freedom to operate" (noninfringement) opinion for client X, when a relevant patent was controlled by client Y. The forum noted:On the noninfringement side, let me come at it from the easy way: Client A comes to a lawyer and asks, "I want to make a new pizza, do I infringe any patents if I do so?" and the lawyer says "no" after conducting a clearance search, analyzing the closest patent (held by a non-client) -- even though her firm represents hundreds of clients with thousands of patents...

Dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls?

Posted on June 05, 2008
David Pratt of the Vancouver Province got fired for lifting some imagery from from a Sept. 12, 2000 article in Sports Illustrated: "....dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a ___ in the other..."The discussion of the firing was of interest:"Within ethical standards of the newspaper, plagiarism, short of fabricating information, would be considered the most egregious of sins or transgressions a journalist can commit," said Wayne Moriarty, editor-in-chief of the Province...

Does "partially" include "completely"?

Posted on June 05, 2008
In the case Brocar v. Bobrick, the appellant argued that the plain meaning of ?partially? includes completely.The CAFC noted: Our precedent instructs that different claim terms are presumed to have different meanings. Applied Med. Res. Corp. v. U.S...

Another "appointments" challenge to BPAI judges

Posted on June 05, 2008
The 271 Blog notes that the "appointments defect" issue has been raised in the case Aldor Solutions Corp. v. Dudas, (1:08cv897), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia:The judges who sit on the Board qualify as "inferior officers" under the appointments clause of the United States Constitution...

genniferandpaula.com

Posted on June 04, 2008
Gennifer Flowers and Paul Jones have a new website. You can listen to a variety of "segments" for $1.99 each. And, yes, there is an IP dimension: This video presentation is the sole property and copyright of Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones.

"NBC Nightly Olds" strikes again

Posted on June 04, 2008
On Wednesday, June 4, "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" featured a story concerning "new" results on finasteride, the active ingredient in Merck's product PROSCAR.The "new" analysis of data from the year 2003 was actually reported on 19 May 2008...

Presumptions about provisionals

Posted on June 04, 2008
For a wandering discussion on provisional patent applications, see answers to the question:When an issued utility patent claims priority to a provisional patent application, is there a presumption that the claimed invention is supported by the provisional?For a dumber question, what happens when a provisional application is cited by number in a later provisional application, and is incorporated by reference, but NO nonprovisional application ever claims priority to the provisional application?In a discussion of HP's loss to Cornell University, Patently-O wrote:In a pre-trial decision, Judge Rader denied Cornell?s motion in limine and allowed HP to show the jury an unpublished masters degree thesis as 102(b) prior art...

PubPat smoked in another re-examination

Posted on June 04, 2008
See Patent Docs: Second Viread® Patent Survives Reexamination PubPat, along with FTCR (now Consumer WatchDog; John Simpson) were involved in the ill-fated re-exams of the WARF stem cell patents.

Daiichi Sankyo sues Mylan over Azor

Posted on June 04, 2008
CNN reports Mylan Daiichi Sankyo filed a Hatch-Waxman case over a paragraph IV certification in a New Jersey federal court June 3 against its India-based unit Matrix Laboratories Ltd., citing Matrix's application earlier this year with the Food and Drug Administration to sell a generic version of Azor...

Harold Wegner takes a walk on the dark side

Posted on June 04, 2008
In an IPFrontline post titled Keys to 111th Congress Patent Reform, Harold Wegner writes:If judged by the current Congressional stalemate, an apparently complete lack of understanding exists within bio/pharma/chemistry as to the needs of essentially all other mainstream industries where litigation costs (in red) far outweigh patent profits (in blue) as explained by Professors James Bessen and Michael J...

"The War at the Shore": Sikahema v. Canseco

Posted on June 03, 2008
Philly's channel 10 is pulling out all the stops in plugging "The War at the Shore" between Jose Canseco and Channel 10's Vai Sikahema. Channel 10 had both on the news at 5:50pm on June 3.Canseco, who does look more youthful than Sikahema, made some cracks like "I'm going to hit him once...

Plagiarism in the May 08 Harvard Law Review?

Posted on June 03, 2008
From a submission by John Jay McKelvey IV, titled May, 2008, Note on the ?Ministerial Exception? to Title VII:More generally, it was my understanding that the Harvard Law Review?s purpose is to publish original work on important topics. Why is the Review publishing material which apparently was plagiarized from a losing Ames moot court brief placed on the internet six months ago? Further, if the Review is willing to publish unsigned notes which plagiarize from earlier published, student-written work, might it at least have the scholarly scruples to only plagiarize from objectively crafted scholarship, and avoid plagiarizing from briefs which were researched and written by students who were randomly selected to argue for the position advocated in the brief (i...

Mars whacked by CAFC in Coin Acceptors case

Posted on June 02, 2008
Mars, represented by John Pegram of Fish & Richardson, took a hit in the Coin Acceptors case.The case touched on the interplay of rights of parents and subsidiaries. Here, Mars?s former subsidiary?Mars Electronics International, Inc. (?MEI?)?manufactures and sells vending machine coin changers with the ability to recognize and authenticate coins electronically...

MetLife and Bancorp tussle over financial services patent 5,926,792

Posted on June 02, 2008
In Met Life v. Bancorp, the CAFC addresses patent claims in the financial services area. If you recognize the term COLI/BOLI, you will be at home with this opinion. As in the days of biotech, the CAFC refers to an earlier opinion in order to give a cite to background concepts: Bancorp Services LLC v...

Myhrvold's "System for obfuscating identity"

Posted on June 02, 2008
Note Myhrvold's published patent application 20080127350 titled System for obfuscating identity with first claim:A method comprising:receiving a first input associated with a first possible dataset, the first possible dataset including data representative of one or more target biological material identifiers; anddetermining data representative of one or more obfuscating components for the one or more target biological material identifiers based on the first possible dataset...

Impact of a covenant not to sue on declaratory judgment jurisdiction

Posted on June 02, 2008
Mark E. Waddell discusses declaratory judgment issues concerning the impact of a covenant not to sue within the case of Merck & Co., Inc., v. Apotex, Inc. , Civ. No. 06-230, Memorandum Opinion (D. Del., May 21, 2007) and Caraco Pharmaceutical Labs., Ltd...

Mass confusion on burning water?

Posted on June 01, 2008
IPBiz ran across the following discussion of the Kanzius "burning water" process, which discussion was purportedly written by two physicists:The phenomenon is actually pretty well understood in physics: The electromagnetic field is ripping the water molecules apart into hydrogen and oxygen atoms...

CBS Sunday Morning on RFK

Posted on June 01, 2008
CBS Sunday Morning led off June 1 with a Jeff Greenfield story about Robert Kennedy. A few points of trivia not discussed. RFK grew up in Bronxville, New York, and attended Bronxville School, the public school in Bronxville from 3rd through 5th grade...

The Chicago Tribune pours gasoline on itself, and lights up

Posted on June 01, 2008
The Chicago Tribune discusses a different high school plagiarism incident in the Chicago area. While perhaps reaching the right conclusion (not plagiarism), the logical contortions made by the Chicago Trib are more interesting, and pathetic, than the underlying incident...

Sikahema to fight Canseco on July 12 in Atlantic City

Posted on June 01, 2008
Dick Harmon gives some background on the upcoming boxing match between Vai Sikahema and Jose Canseco:Canseco is 43; Sikahema is 45. Canseco is 6-foot-4, 240 pounds. Sikahema, who was 5-9 and 185 as an NFL kick return specialist, now is almost 210. Canseco is considered a bad boy; Sikahema is a positive icon in the City of Brotherly Love...

Coalition for Patent Fairness member HP whacked with $184 million infringement verdict

Posted on June 01, 2008
Newsday reports that a jury has found Hewlett-Packard guilty of infringing a patent of Cornell Professor Professor Hwa Torng from the 1980s and awarded $184 million in patent infringement damages. Hewlett-Packard is a member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which has lobbied to alter the way patent damages are calculated...

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