Patent Law

Crovitz on the loose again, parroting Bessen/Meurer

Posted on June 16, 2009
PatentHawk went after Gordon Crovitz (again), although not by name, in criticizing Crovitz' piece: Why Technologists Want Fewer Patents , which piece concludes:The Supreme Court may decide that more progress would be made with narrower definitions of what is patentable...

Richardson of Uniloc on invention

Posted on June 15, 2009
Further on the Uniloc case, Frederick Bailier Richardson III (Ric Richardson) is quoted in watoday:"Once you do something that you think is obvious and then realise that not only is it not obvious, but that people think you are making it up, you realise that you can do anything...

Patent reform: the house that lemmings built?

Posted on June 15, 2009
Whenever IPBiz sees a reference to lemmings, visions of IP law profs come to mind AND of course the great Disney hoax.Within an article about Bryce Harper:The problem I do have with it, though, is that there are no doubt thousands of delusional parents who will see this news and think that maybe it's a viable path for their nowhere-near-as-talented sons and daughters...

Park notes favorable citation by Eugenie Reich in WSJ

Posted on June 14, 2009
Bob Park's 12 June 09 WN included:In the Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2009, Eugenie Reich discussed "the five best books on scientific fraud," including my "Voodoo Science" (Oxford, 2000), which she referred to as "devastating" on the subject of "cold fusion...

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On blogging dynamics and blog sources

Posted on June 14, 2009
Intertwined with a recent story on the BPAI was a story about sources for blogs and decisions to use those sources.**May 21 post on IPWatchDog Is the Patent Office Really Muzzling Dissent?Today I read on Patently O that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interfences is shutting down dissent in favor of efficiency...

NLJ story on impact of TS Tech on ED Tx patent litigations

Posted on June 14, 2009
See More Defendants Seek to Blast out of Patent 'Rocket Docket' -->Lawyers say the May 22 decision in In re Genentech Inc. enhances the power of a Dec. 29 decision in a In re TS Tech USA Corp. because both decisions say the Eastern District of Texas abused its discretion by denying the defendants' transfer motion...

Big company abuse of the patent system?

Posted on June 14, 2009
An IAM blog post titled ACT calls on CAFC to rein in big company abuse of the patent system beginsPatent litigation is expensive.then goes toStrangely enough, while many big companies rail against patent trolls and the harm they are doing, very few seem to be as concerned about how litigation favours them in so many waysthen gets to the title text:With all that in mind, I was very interested to receive an email late yesterday afternoon from the Association for Competitive Technology [ACT] about an amicus brief it has filed in the TiVo v EchoStar case...

Satire: "Matt Groening Sues Obama For Plagiarism"

Posted on June 12, 2009
See IMAO for full post, which ends:For his part, Obama denied that any plagiarism took place, saying, ?Homer and I do trade ideas all the time, and you know he?s occasionally used lines of mine. Like that thing where he says ?Why you little!?? and starts strangling Bart? He TOTALLY got that from watching me & Biden...

Judge tosses Guardian's claims against Nintendo

Posted on June 12, 2009
AP notes: An order from U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real in Los Angeles dismissing Guardian's claims comes less than six months after the lawsuit by Guardian Media Technologies Ltd. was filed.Bloomberg gave further details:?Nintendo vigorously defends patent lawsuits,? Rick Flamm, Nintendo of America?s general counsel, said in a statement...

Stem cell flap over US 7,217,565?

Posted on June 12, 2009
Back in April 2009, IPBiz noted an anti-patent diatribe which appeared on californiastemcellreport. [http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/04/anti-patent-diatribe-on.html ]The initial californiastemcellreport post noted:[John M. Simpson] reported that Philip Schwartz, head of the Resource, said his organization's efforts to promote research with human neural stem cells has been effectively blocked by patents held by Stem Cells Inc ["SCI"]...

Good-bye from KYW on 12 June 09

Posted on June 12, 2009

Lithium batteries for cars

Posted on June 12, 2009
GreenTech Media discussed recent events in lithium batteries:Valence Technology, the Austin, Texas-based lithium iron magnesium phosphate battery maker, announced Tuesday 2 June 09 a partnership with German industrial giant Siemens to supply batteries for hybrid boats...

"Trolls on top?" or how not to cite relevant work?

Posted on June 12, 2009
In footnote 22 of the SSRN article titled Extreme Value or Trolls on Top? Evidence from the Most Litigated Patents by Allison, Lemley, and Walker, one has a reference to Mark A. Lemley & Nathan Myhrvold, The Complex Ecology of Patent Plaintiffs (working paper 2009)...

Buying intellectual property at bargain prices?

Posted on June 10, 2009
Dan Haugen at MinnPost wrote of an IP acquistion by St. Jude:St. Jude Medical has picked up some bargain-bin intellectual property from a liquidating Seattle neuromodulation company.Northstar Neuroscience had been developing a nonsurgical brain-stimulation treatment to help stroke survivors regain hand and arm functions...

Palin "plagiarism" incident

Posted on June 09, 2009
A story making the rounds is an allegation that Governor Palin "plagiarized" text from Newt Gingrich concerning Ronald Reagan in making a speech. From Politico:On Saturday [6 June 09], Huffington Post blogger Geoffrey Dunn accused Palin of lifting passages from a column Gingrich co-authored with Craig Shirley in November 2005...

Ever not recognize text that you wrote earlier?

Posted on June 09, 2009
In a piece titled Top 20 websites every scientist (or engineer) ought to know, Mary Spiro writes:Ever read some of your own writing and not recognize it? Maybe you didn?t write it and just forgot to put in the citation. Recently, scientific plagiarism is in the news...

Qui tam suit over patent marking on Solo cups

Posted on June 09, 2009
The ABA Journal notes: Washington, D.C., patent lawyer Matthew Pequignot did some investigating after spotting patent markings on the lid to his daily cup of coffee and discovered that the patent had actually expired some 20 years before.Now the lawyer is seeking millions of dollars in damages in a qui tam suit against the lid maker, Solo Cup, that won a favorable ruling in March, the Associated Press reports...

Ariad returns?

Posted on June 08, 2009
Patently-O has a post entitled Written Description: Araid Petitions en banc Federal Circuit to Eliminate Separate Written Description Requirement which includes a brief signed by John Whealan but listing James Dabney (once of Pennie & Edmonds and later of KSR fame) and John Duffy as authors...

Hatch/Otellini: Fully funding the patent office is a key to economic recovery

Posted on June 08, 2009
In an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury News, Senator Hatch and Intel CEO Otellini write:Fee diversion is nothing less than a tax on innovation.A fully funded patent office with fiscal flexibility would at the very least mean more and better trained patent examiners, more complete libraries of prior art, and greater deployment of modern information technologies to address the agency's growing needs...

Mike at Techdirt returns?

Posted on June 08, 2009
After an absence of about six months, Mike at Techdirt left another content-less comment, this time on the IPBiz postGerman war on plagiarism with bounty hunters, or German confusion?. The link in question pertained to Mike Masnick's comments about the PALY High School (Palo Alto) plagiarism incident, and one can judge Mike's comment in that context:TechDirt: plagiarism as re-imagination and collaboration...

Heather Knox sues Victoria's Secret over US 7,074,108 (uplift bra)

Posted on June 07, 2009
Heather M. Knox, of Monroeville, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania asserts that the BioFit bra of Victoria's Secret infringes claims of her patent in its larger D and DD sizes, where it features what the company calls "power mesh."A story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette noted:"It's scary to go up against a big company, but I think in the end, the right decision will be made," said Ms...

Houston patent legend Tom Arnold dies at 85

Posted on June 07, 2009
The Houston Chronicle noted the passing of Tom Arnold at age 85. Included in the text:?He was literally the president of every association even remotely associated with patents, trademarks and copyrights,? John Lynch said. ?If there was a seminar somewhere, Tom was on the podium...

Larson v. Correct Craft on patent assignment

Posted on June 06, 2009
The CAFC, on jurisdictional grounds, does not resolve the assignment issues in Larson v. Correct Craft, but does at least itemize things that can go wrong in assignment matters involving non-employees.Larson's employment status was a topic of debate among the various parties, but he was asserting that he was inventor who (mistakenly) assigned his rights to Correct Craft...

Umbrella cockatoo

Posted on June 06, 2009
As a followup to a comment to the IPBiz post Cockatoo confusion in Trenton. Luna. Lex and Howard. , IPBiz still states that umbrella cockatoos originated from certain islands in Indonesia, and do not come from Australia. Other cockatoos, such as that in the tv show Baretta, do come from Australia, but it is the umbrella cockatoo that is most common cockatoo pet...

Joint claim construction chart due June 12 in UTexas/Valence lithium battery case

Posted on June 06, 2009
A kind IPBiz reader sent in a "stipulation" which gives the forthcoming schedule in HydroQuebec, University of Texas v. Valence case on a patent on lithium batteries.Coming up on June 12: File Joint Claim Construction chart with List of Supporting Evidence (Extrinsic and Intrinsic) and simultaneous exchange of Pre-hearing Claim Construction Opening Brieß (20 page limit) The claim construction hearing (WD Texas (Austin)) is set for June 22-23...

The discoverer of buckyballs, again...

Posted on June 06, 2009
A recent commenter to IPBiz (relating mainly to issues of the toxicity of buckyballs) included the statement:Dr. Colvin is a chemist at Rice University, the institution that discovered fullerene and that gives her and her colleagues a unique perspective...

German war on plagiarism with bounty hunters, or German confusion?

Posted on June 06, 2009
An article in The Local begins:The internet has made stealing content easy, but more German businesses and individuals are starting to wage war against growing online plagiarism.And there will likely be more severe legal consequences as ideas of intellectual property adapt to the web, Hamburg-based company Textguard told The Local on Friday...

On peer nominations in popularity contests

Posted on June 06, 2009
On May 5, 2009, AlwaysOn released the following:AlwaysOn, the insider's network covering the business of innovation, today announced its AlwaysOn East 100 Top Private Companies List. In order to be considered, private companies had to be nominated by their peers and demonstrate leadership in areas such as innovation, market potential, customer adoption, media buzz and investor value creation...

Visualizing plagiarism: the Meehan case

Posted on June 03, 2009
In an interesting post titled What does plagiarism look like?, VizWorld presents a composite picture of pages of Meehan's thesis, with copied text highlighted in yellow. Earlier, in the Poshard case at SIU, the SIU Daily Egyptian had a side-by-side comparison...

CAFC affirms ED Tx in PureChoice v. Honeywell

Posted on June 03, 2009
On the 112 P 2 question, the CAFC cited the Exxon case:A claim satisfies the definiteness requirement ?[i]f one skilled in the art would understand the bounds of the claim when read in light of the specification.? Exxon Research & Eng?g Co. v. United States, 265 F...

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