Patent Law

Making the rounds: US 3,483,572

Posted on February 01, 2008
to Gyda Hallum in 1969 -->An automated bathing system or facility adapted for use in bathing large numbers of patients or persons in standing position by which the patients are suspended by means of a harness from an overhead rail and are moved along a conveyor belt floor past a wetting station,a soaping station,a rinsing station,and finally into a drying station where the patient is air dried still in standing position and is readied for redressing under conditions that minimize the danger of infirm or mentally incapacitated injuring themselves or others by struggling dur-ing the bathing procedure and that provide improved sanitation in that all steps of the bathing procedure are accomplished with the patient in a standing posi-tion such that wash cloths and towels are not needed.

IBM's Kappos on patents: substance or PR?

Posted on February 01, 2008
On 14 Jan 08, the San Francisco Chronicle had an article on an eco-patent commons which noted:IBM Corp., Nokia, Sony and Pitney Bowes are expected to announce Monday that they have put 31 inventions into an "Eco-Patent Commons" designed to make these Earth-friendly manufacturing and waste-reduction processes more widely available...

EFS-web

Posted on February 01, 2008
The USPTO tells you about EFS-webEFS-Web is a web-based patent application and document submission solution that utilizes standard web-based screens and prompts to enable you to submit portable document format (PDF) files, ASCII text files, or a PCT-Easy Zip file directly to the USPTO...

"What's New" furloughed

Posted on February 01, 2008
WN noted on 1 Feb 08 of its furlough:It will start next week. Issues of support need to be resolved. Except for the week the tree fell, it will be the first break WN has taken in 25 years. We'll be back when we can. I appreciate all 1274 opportunities I've had to share my concerns with you - there is much to be concerned about...

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

Stem cell research: disservice in the eye of the beholder?

Posted on February 01, 2008
As CIRM, Reed, and californiastemcellreport comment on the "disservice" of Bush's remarks in the "state of the union" speech, I noticed a piece on HomeSharing in my very local newspaper "The Somerset Reporter." In these tough economic times, HomeSharing matches people who can't maintain their home with people who have no home at all to form a sharing partnership...

An unwitting dupe, duped again?

Posted on February 01, 2008
A post on "experience not logic" is titled: A Dupe of the Opposition to U.S. Patent Reform? Me? and notes:IP law is tasked with finding a balance between the free use of ideas to further innovation, and rewarding and restricting the use of new ideas to encourage innovators...

BIO report shows absence of data for patent reform, but misses key references

Posted on February 01, 2008
Note that BIO [Biotechnology Industry Organization] has prepared a paper on 30 Jan 08 on the lack of empirical data supporting patent reform, echoing a theme previously expressed by, among others, Chris Cotropia.Mark Lemley is cited in footnote 13 ("Valuable Patents") and in footnote 74 ("Is the Patent Office a Rubber Stamp," attributed to the Standford [sic] Public Law Series...

Boost from "Chaos Manor Mail"

Posted on January 31, 2008
IPBiz received a compliment from "chaos manner mail" on its Coskata / ethanolcoverage:re: Ethanol from Biomass Hint #1 - when you read about a new technology that's going to change everything - start looking for patents. http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/01/gm-aligns-with-coskata-on-cellulosic...

Letters to Senators opposing patent reform

Posted on January 31, 2008
Relevant to an earlier post on IPBiz, maybe NJBiz (and others) should take note of the increasing opposition to patent reform (S.1145):Letter to Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee Opposing the Patent Reform Act, January 29, 2008. Letter to Senator John Cornyn from Texas Opposing the Patent Reform Act, January 24, 2008...

Judge Whyte on ALJ decision in Rambus

Posted on January 31, 2008
PatentHawk has discussion of a recent action by Judge Whyte in the long ongoing Rambus case, wherein Judge Whyte declined to enter into evidence certain findings by the ALJ in the parallel Rambus case at the FTC:The Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") had previously decided in favor of Rambus, and the FTC appealed "challeng[ing] virtually all of the ALJ's rulings and ask[ing] that the Initial Decision be set aside in its entirety...

Science reports on issues with rock art at Nine Mile Canyon in Utah

Posted on January 31, 2008
The Jan. 25, 08 issue of Science has an article titled "Dust Storm Rising Over Threat to Famed Rock Art in Utah", concerning Nine Mile Canyon, which includes a quote from chemist Marvin Rowe:"Think of a painting in your house that is placed over a fireplace that produces soot...

Rutgers: plagiarism with a sexual twist

Posted on January 30, 2008
Newsday reported on 30 Jan 08: Rutgers University has cleared three former graduate students of plagiarism and other academic misconduct charges and settled a lawsuit with them. The agreement may bring to rest a scandal surrounding former anthropology professor William Powers that goes back to the mid-1990s...

A response of sorts to Don C. Reed about covering both sides of CIRM

Posted on January 30, 2008
Don C. Reed made a comment to yesterday's IPBiz post on the "state of the union" speech of George Bush. The comment included:But I must object strongly to your characterization of David Jensen's California Stem Cell Report as "Fantasyland".(...)But Jensen is a reporter, who makes a genuine and ongoing effort to present both sides accurately...

Embodiment of figure is within claim scope

Posted on January 30, 2008
The case Oatey v. IPS involved a patent based on an application filed by Oatey in 1999 directed to outlet boxes for water for washing machines.The CAFC cited Phillips (citing Innova/Pure v. Safari, 381 F.3d 1111), went on to Verizon v. Vonage, 503 F.3d 1295, and concluded:We conclude that the embodiment in Figure 3 was improperly excluded from the scope of claim 1...

More plagiarism at Harvard

Posted on January 30, 2008
An account of plagiarism by a Harvard professor has some eerie similarities to the Poshard plagiarism at SIU:A British medical journal said today [Jan. 29, 08]it has retracted an article written by a Harvard doctor because it duplicates material previously published in another scientific journal by a different author...

30% of R&D wasted on re-inventing the wheel?

Posted on January 29, 2008
I/P Updates points to an EPO post: Why researchers should care about patents?The European post notes: "up to 30% of all expenditure in R&D is wasted on redeveloping existing inventions."Elsewhere the post notes that top scientific journals such as Nature refer to patents...

Patent reform 95% of the way there?

Posted on January 29, 2008
Reuters quotes HP General Counsel Mike Holston: "We're 95 percent of the way there. We're down to four (sticking points)," adding that Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appeared at the meeting. "We're in the final stretch...

Software patents in UK

Posted on January 29, 2008
ZDNet writes:I really can't believe - can barely understand, given its dense legalities - this latest ruling, which seems to want to reinstate software patents in the UK. I had thought that the reasons software should not be patented, but given instead other sorts of intellectual property protection, were by now widely understood...

Patents in the "state of the union" speech

Posted on January 29, 2008
George Bush's line in the State of the Union on 28 Jan 08 against patenting human life forms drew considerable applause. [Text of George Bush: So I call on the Congress to pass legislation that bans unethical practices such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life...

More on the Ohio University plagiarism mess

Posted on January 29, 2008
See Cheating: just a mouse-click awayand http://www.ohio.edu/engineering/integrity/resources/upload/CAI.ppt

FDA: broken, like the USPTO?

Posted on January 29, 2008
The New York Times quotes Peter Barton Hutt, a former top lawyer with the FDA who will testify Tuesday before the House Energy and Commerce committee:?This is a fundamentally broken agency, and it needs to be repaired.? Does this evoke Jaffe and Lerner or Quillen and Webster describing the USPTO?The Times also notes: GAO reports and a recent assessment by the FDA?s Science Board conclude that the F...

Gilead claims rejected in re-examination

Posted on January 27, 2008
MedicalNewsToday reported:The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday (Jan. 23) rejected four patents on Gilead Sciences' antiretroviral drug Viread, Reuters reports. Viread is known generically as tenofovir and is sold as part of Gilead's combination therapies Truvada and Atripla...

FBI's 100th anniversary in 2008 [?]

Posted on January 27, 2008
The story on "60 Minutes" on the FBI role with Saddam Hussein mentioned that 2008 was the 100th anniversary of the FBI.Some background from the FBI website:By 1907, the Department of Justice most frequently called upon Secret Service "operatives" to conduct investigations...

Port Huron patent dispute: CIRM microcosm?

Posted on January 27, 2008
The Times-Herald reports on an interesting patent inventorship dispute in Port Huron, Michigan:In 2005, Larry O'Keefe, then manager of the St. Clair County landfill, and his wife, Jan, filed a patent application along with two others - engineers Murugappan Subbarayan and Te-Yang Soong - who helped develop the bioreactor...

Patent Reform 2008: less protection for the underdog?

Posted on January 27, 2008
Alexander Poltorak has an op-ed piece on patent reform (S.1145) in the Christian Science Monitor:Second, the bill creates a mechanism for endless post-grant oppositions. This would throw a cloud of uncertainty over all issued patents, further diminishing the incentive to innovate and invest in the manufacturing of new products...

Bill Walton says James is better teammate than Bryant

Posted on January 27, 2008
In discussion before the Celtics/Magic game on Sunday, 27 Jan 2008, Bill Walton (commentator for ABC) was asked who he preferred as between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Unequivocally making the case for James, Walton kept bringing up the point, who would you rather have as your teammate?No one on ABC mentioned that Luke Walton is Kobe's teammate...

Using a citation to provide plausible deniability

Posted on January 27, 2008
Bob Park, in discussing Pope Benedict XVI and the current Sapienza matter, wrote:In a 1990 visit to La Sapienza, the Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, supported the trial of Galileo by quoting oddball science philosopher Paul Feyerabend: "The trial against Galileo was reasonable and just...

FDA pushed for warning on fluoroquinolones

Posted on January 27, 2008
Public Citizen is pushing the FDA for warnings on fluoroquinolones, including CIPRO and LEVAQUIN.Reuters noted: [Public Citizen] argued in a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.Public Citizen also argued that the FDA was violating federal law by not ruling on the petition...

Maybe they should call it "NBC Nightly Olds"?

Posted on January 27, 2008
NBC Nightly News had a piece on Saturday, 26 January 2008 on a Chinese guest teacherin Elberta, Alabama. There was even a reference to the Roadkill Cafe in Elberta.This was not exactly a newsflash. The linguafranca on 14 November 2007 had noted an AP article:ELBERTA, Ala...

Wegner: S.1145 to kill Cybor de novo review?

Posted on January 27, 2008
Harold Wegner has a post on IPFrontline suggesting an impact of S.1145 on Cybor, 138 F.3d 1448.Wegner describes the Leahy approach in S.1145 as taking a sledgehammer to a problem that could be fixed with a surgical needle.The bulk of Wegner's post is an excerpt from the Senate report on S...

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