Patent Law

Self-plagiarism

Posted on August 02, 2009
IPBiz has discussed self-plagiarism in a variety of contexts. A discussion of self-plagiarism from answers.com [below] does NOT cover the matter of Walter Wendler, who copied material he created while at Texas A&M into a proposal while he was employed at SIU...

The issue of copying sermons, re-visited

Posted on August 02, 2009
In the post Online sermon databases raise questions about plagiarism, JEFF STRICKLER re-visits a topic previously covered on IPBiz [ eg, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2006: Pastors who plagiarize with pride? and http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/07/website-on-famous-plagiarists...

The patent world of iPS (stem cells): Yamanaka, Bayer, and iZumi

Posted on August 01, 2009
Note to californiastemcellreport:A question a California taxpayer might ask is "how" has CIRM improved the life of average folks in California? You seem to say financing (ie spending money) and training are justifications. What is CIRM giving back? In defeating the stem cell bond proposal, people in New Jersey seemed to have figured out there weren't good answers...

BU grad student hit for $875K for illegal downloads

Posted on August 01, 2009
In a case heard before a jury and presided over by U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in D Mass, Boston University grad student Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $875,000 for illegal downloading. The student's attorney was Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson...

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Chester Carlson: the inventor did know best

Posted on August 01, 2009
The "good news" about the TechDirt post titled Why Segway Failed To Reshape The World: Focused On Invention, Rather Than Innovation is that Mike Masnick sees that invention and innovation aren't the same thing.The "bad news" is seen in the following text:Recently, in talking about how the Netflix Prize helped demonstrate the value of openness and collaboration when it came to innovation, rather than hoarding and taking the "inventor-knows-best" attitude towards things, Mark Blafkin of the Association for Competitive Technology (a tech industry lobbying group who tends to be a patent system supporter) took exception to what we said about the value of openness and collaboration instead of focusing on patents, by noting that Dean Kamen has also put a lot of effort into collaboration and prizes to award innovation, but also is a strong believer in patents (and, actually, making them stronger)...

"Cash for clunkers" and the USPTO: both out of money?

Posted on July 31, 2009
Back on July 24, IPBiz noted similarities between the USPTO and "Cash for Clunkers" in that both changed underlying data within an internet website. Now, 6 days after the program began, Cash for Clunkers ran out of money, not having foreseen adequately what was going to happen...

British science paper on "sperm from stem cells" retracted!

Posted on July 30, 2009
On July 24, IPBiz posted on a paper from the group of Karim Nayernia, on the creation of human sperm from stem cells. Although IPBiz noted scientific peers had questioned some of the results, a commenter going under the name "Medical Information" asserted that this had been "proved...

"Green Goo", the movie?

Posted on July 30, 2009
Remember the 1998 movie "A Civil Action" starring John Travolta as lawyer Jan Schlichtmann and Robert Duvall as the pragmatic attorney Facher?Note the news report on Rebecca Morlock who noticed what she calls "a green goo" seeping out of the ground below a former zinc-smelting plant in the town of Spelter...

Patent reformer morphs into patent troll?

Posted on July 29, 2009
Bedrock Computer Technologies (owned by Dave Garrod) has sued Google, Yahoo, Amazon and others in ED Texas over US Patent 5,893,120.In discussing Dave Garrod's actions in initiating a lawsuit in ED Texas, Ryan Paul wrote: Another characteristic that makes this case unusual is the person behind it...

Kappos at the Senate on July 29

Posted on July 29, 2009
William New, at Intellectual Property Watch, wrote of David Kappos before the Senate:But in the process, Kappos showed possible weaknesses in separating himself from his job at IBM and the need for international diplomacy on IP enforcement.Of nuts and bolts issues at the USPTO:Kappos said he has been asked by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to ?refashion the patent examination process...

Technology Review speaks of 20,000 gal/(acre year) biofuel production

Posted on July 28, 2009
Back in March 2009, IPBiz wrote:As noted by IPBiz, IAM used material in MIT's Technology Review to prop up Intellectual Ventures against a "troll smear" by Matt Asay. The IAM argument would seem to run: if it's discussed favorably by MIT Technology Review, it must be good technology, and thus IV has good technology in addition to whatever else it's doing...

Hedrick loses appeal on inventorship of stem cell patent

Posted on July 28, 2009
The CAFC decision begins:Marc H. Hedrick, Prosper Benhaim, Hermann Peter Lorenz, and Min Zhu appeal the judgment of the United States District Court for the Central District of California finding that they were not co-inventors of U.S. Patent No. 6,777,231, and granting a misjoinder motion pursuant to 35 U...

Apotex takes its last swings against Plavix

Posted on July 28, 2009
Peter Loftus at wsj in a post titled Apotex Asks US Supreme Court To Overturn Plavix Patent discusses the attempt of Apotex, through the vehicle of KSR, to attack the validity of claims of the Plavix patent through obviousness. The CAFC decision, discussed on IPBiz, was well post-KSR, so this appeal would involve convincing the Supreme Court that the CAFC was NOT practicing KSR the right way...

Reiffin loses (again) at CAFC over written description

Posted on July 28, 2009
Back in the URochester v. Searle case, the CAFC, when looking for text to cite about "written description," reached back to the 2000 case Reiffen v. Microsoft:?[T]he purpose of the written description requirement is to ?ensure that the scope of the right to exclude, as set forth in the claims, does not overreach the scope of the inventor?s contribution to the field of art as described in the patent specification...

Quillen and Webster alive and well at Patently-O?

Posted on July 28, 2009
One finds the text Most notably, around ten percent of the published applications will never issue and would not have been otherwise published. within the Patently-O post titled Published Applications as Prior Art in the larger text:In 2001, the USPTO published its first patent application...

Medtronic, Abbott settle patent litigation over stents

Posted on July 28, 2009
Press release (MarketWatch) on July 27: Medtronic Inc. said Monday, July 27 that it has resolved all outstanding intellectual-property litigation with Abbott Laboratories As part of the agreement, Medtronic will pay $400 milion to Abbott and $42 million to evYsio Medical Devices LLC...

IAM on TechDirt post: "palpable nonsense"

Posted on July 27, 2009
Joff Wild takes on TechDirt in the IAM post titled Techdirt plays fast and loose with the patent facts about India. See also:http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-it-real-or-is-it-masnick.htmlhttp://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/mike-at-techdirt-returns...

"Substantial evidence" vs "sufficient credible evidence"

Posted on July 27, 2009
In federal IP cases, one encounters the "substantial evidence" standard. Substantial evidence is relevant evidence that a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. Note the discussion of "sufficient credible evidence" in a New Jersey criminal case, following on State v...

Searching the web for copied articles

Posted on July 27, 2009
Although the title of the article is Start-up aims to make plagiarism profitable, the text is more along the line"start-up aims to make --being plagiarized-- profitable."The article by Clifford-Marsh states:Attributor's model is based on scanning web pages and identifying articles produced by participating publishers...

Capturing infringers in the 21st century

Posted on July 27, 2009
IPBiz notes how quickly infringers/copyists can be snagged in the 21st century:Tweetmeme, an aggregator that finds popular content on Twitter, accused a still-unlaunched competitor called Retweet.com of copying its code verbatim. Although Retweet.com hasn?t yet opened to the public, Tweetmeme?s founder Nick Halstead discovered some code through a commenter, who left a link to his rival?s development environment on a review of the site over the weekend...

BlackBoard whacked by CAFC

Posted on July 27, 2009
BlackBoard's case took a bad turn at the CAFC, as it continued to lose on claims 1-35 and additionally lost on claims 36-38.CampusTechnology wrote:Blackboard's patent on learning management system technologies has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [CAFC]...

If Sessions can vote against Sotomayor, voting against patent reform is easy

Posted on July 27, 2009
Senator Jeff Sessions concluded a piece in USAToday on the nomination of Judge Sotomayor with the text:I don't believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism. She has evoked its mantra too often...

Law Review on continuation application issue

Posted on July 27, 2009
An article by Hedwig Murphy titled CURRENT ISSUES IN PUBLIC POLICY: LIMITING CONTINUATIONS: A PHARMACEUTICAL BASED PERSPECTIVE [6 Rutgers J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 856 ] contains the text:Accordingly, the statistics provided by the Patent Office "show a steadily growing inventory of unexamined patent applications that currently exceeds 900,000...

July 28, 1932: tanks deployed in Washington, DC

Posted on July 25, 2009
An AP story, titled Report: Bush mulled sending troops into Buffalo, concerning proposed actions related to what would become the Lackawanna Six, concludes with the text:Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, told the Times that a U...

Tuscaloosa News story mangles facts in Meehan plagiarism matter

Posted on July 25, 2009
On July 25, Adam Jones of the Tuscaloosa News wrote about the Meehan plagiarism matter:JSU professor David Whetstone claims JSU President Bill Meehan, while a graduate student at UA in 1999, used large parts of Whetstone?s dissertation in work Meehan submitted as his own dissertation...

KCI wins "negative pressure" US re-exams

Posted on July 25, 2009
A press release on July 24 from patent challenger Smith & Nephew indicates that Kinetic Concepts [KCI] has won a round in the US re-examination fight but suggests outcomes have been different in other jurisdictions (countries):Smith & Nephew Inc.'s Advanced Wound Management division announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Patent Office) has issued actions in re-examination proceedings involving three of the negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) patents licensed to Kinetic Concepts, Inc...

Cash for clunkers

Posted on July 24, 2009
The relevant website is www.cars.gov, which reportedly crashed today. Somewhat reminds one of some performance at www.uspto.gov . To participate, one needs a registered, working 1984 (or newer) vehicle with combined mileage figures of 18 mpg (or less).

Teva, J&J settle over Tri-Cyclen

Posted on July 24, 2009
Reuters quoted &J spokesman Greg Panico: "This settlement compensates us for loss caused by their [Teva's] at-risk launch and recognizes the patent is valid and enforceable," suggesting that Teva was folding the tent on this Hatch-Waxman case [but see below]...

Controversy surrounds research on "human sperm" from stem cells

Posted on July 24, 2009
AP noted the publication by the research group of Karim Nayernia, of Newcastle University in the journal Stem Cells and Development on the topic of creating human sperm from embryonic stem cells but separately noted the work had been criticized by Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield and Azim Surani, a professor of physiology and reproduction at the University of Cambridge...

"Microsoft's Five Fatal Flaws"

Posted on July 24, 2009
The "five fatal flaws" refer to problems ("fatal flaws") in the decision by the CFI [the European Court of First Instance] in the Microsoft case. In a law review article titled "Microsoft's Five Fatal Flaws" [ Alan Devlin and Michael Jacobs, 2009 COLUM...

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