Patent Law

HG Wells and plagiarism

Posted on May 07, 2009
An recent opinion piece in niagarathisweek recounts the story of plagiarism asserted against HG Wells by Florence Deeks.The story had been recounted in: The Spinster and the Prophet: H.G. Wells, Florence Deeks, and the Case of the Plagiarized Text, by A...

Abbott goes after J&J over Simponi

Posted on May 07, 2009
The WSJ notes Abbott is going after J&J and writes:Abbott, of Abbott Park, Ill., markets Humira, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions, which competes with J&J's Remicade. J&J's follow-up to Remicade, Simponi, was approved by the U...

Monsanto, DuPont tangle over stacking limit in license of biotech patent

Posted on May 06, 2009
The Wall Street Journal writes of a suit by Monsanto against DuPont over DuPont's new seed that contains two genes that have been modified to make the plant tolerate herbicides. One is a DuPont gene that allows the soybean plant to tolerate exposure to glyphosate-based weedkiller as well as to another herbicide called acetolate synthase...

PatentHawk says Edison never ran a company nor made a product

Posted on May 05, 2009
Joining the ranks of Edison misunderstanders (including Jaffe/Lerner and Merges/Nelson), PatentHawk (Gary Odom) stated on 4 May 09:Thomas Edison never ran a company, never made a product, never sold anything but patents. He did also say: Reinvention is the epitome of unproductivity, and so the idea of rewarding reinvention is antithetical to promoting technological progress...

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Google's US 7,508,978: "only in America"

Posted on May 05, 2009
There is some buzz on Google's US 7,508,978, titled Detection of grooves in scanned images, with first claimA system comprising: an infrared projector; a pattern mask located in an output path of the infrared projector; a stereoscopic camera to generate images of opposing pages of a document from which a three-dimensional image of a surface of the opposing pages of the document is generated; and control logic to process the three-dimensional image to locate a groove that is defined by the spine of the document and located between the opposing pages of the document...

More on the Meehan matter in Alabama

Posted on May 04, 2009
An opinion by Edward Blackwelder on the Meehan plagiarism flap in Alabama:Nick Cenegy's article on Jacksonville State University President Bill Meehan's allegedly having plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation is misleading. Webster's New College Dictionary defines plagiarism as "to steal and use the ideas or writings of another as one's own...

Josh Lerner's new book: Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Posted on May 04, 2009
A NYT blog ( CLAIRE CAIN MILLER) notes:Josh Lerner teaches a class on venture capital and will publish a book this fall called ?Boulevard of Broken Dreams? on how public efforts to spur entrepreneurship and venture capital have, so far, failed.He said the venture capital industry needs to focus on three other ideas to fix its problems...

The invention of Dr. Pepper?

Posted on May 04, 2009
An AP story describes the discovery by Bill Waters of an old book which may relate to Dr. Pepper:He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled "W.B. Morrison & Co...

Andy Grove likens patents to derivatives

Posted on May 04, 2009
Bloomberg wrote about Grove on patents:If the government awards a patent -- granting a limited monopoly -- the onus should be on the owner to develop a product, Grove said.?You should not grant a monopoly to people who don?t produce,? said Grove, 72. ?Patents have become derivatives of the invention and have a life of their own...

Pitchmen on Discovery

Posted on May 04, 2009
On 3 May 09, Philly's Channel 3 (KYW) pushed the upcoming "reality" series called "Pitchmen" on Discovery, involving major pitchman Billy Mays. Channel 3 pursued the "invention" angle, though an earlier story in the Daily News went with infomercial. Mays says ays about 60% of his products make money, a far better batting average than achieved by issued US patents...

What would Buffet say about patent valuation?

Posted on May 04, 2009
What would Warren Buffet say about patent valuation?In a piece on yahoo finance titled: Business Musings From Woodstock for Capitalists, one has the following text:Messrs. Buffett and Munger made clear their complete disdain for the use of higher-order mathematics in finance...

Concerning Georgia Pacific v. U.S. Plywood

Posted on May 03, 2009
The following was submitted to the PatentHawk blog [Patent Prospector]:Of your text -- The 1970 Supreme Court decision in Georgia-Pacific v. United States Plywood laid down what has become the case law bible for assessing damages, listing 15 factors for consideration in assessing damages--, note that the 1970 decision is a district court decision [ 318 F...

Prediction and postdiction, pollution, and Cass Sunstein

Posted on May 03, 2009
In 2008, the Michigan Law Review published an article titled Uncertainty revisited: legal prediction and legal postdiction [Vol. 108, page 467, which article also appears on SSRN].The abstract notes:Legal scholarship, following rational-choice theory, has traditionally treated uncertainty as a single category...

Apple on carbon fiber: "tired", unexciting look

Posted on May 02, 2009
In paragraph 6 of published application 20090110872, Apple inventors write:Despite the many benefits of carbon fiber composites, such composites are typically black and the carbon fibers are typically visible on the composite surface. In addition, the fibers (either as a unidirectional, woven, or nonwoven substrate) are typically variable in their construction and therefore are variable in their surface presentation...

Testimony on patent reform on 30 April 2009

Posted on May 02, 2009
Rick Merritt gave a summary of testimony on the draft Patent Reform Act of 2009 (HR 1260) which includedTop attorney's for Cisco Systems and Intel Corp.?both members of the Coalition on Patent Fairness?testified in favor of the bill, asking members to bolster provisions limiting damages...

Bob Park on "60 Minutes"/fusion: it's all one chemist

Posted on May 01, 2009
From Bob Park on 1 May 09 on Irving Dardik, whose company was featured in the "60 Minutes" episode on cold fusion:But Dardik doesn't do equations. Instead he hired a flack, Roger Lewin, to gush endlessly about him in a 2005 book, Making Waves, with a Forward by, uh, Michael McKubre...

Of Hamilton's nomination to CA7

Posted on May 01, 2009
Within the article ?Hamilton sails through 2nd hearing?, one hasInstead, Coburn asked Hamilton about his view of using international law as guidance and about a comment he had made about judges writing the footnotes to the Constitution. Hamilton said he was making the point that judges are not trying to do something new, but are applying old principles and constitutional provisions to new situations...

Apparent Schizophrenia Redux

Posted on April 30, 2009
In a post titled Microsoft sends mixed patent message , Dana Blankenhorn talks about the mixed signals Microsoft sends on its patent policy.Perhaps Blankenhorn should read up on IBM's apparent patent schizophrenia.See for example:IBM patent policy: apparent schizophrenia? IBM's "apparent schizophrenia" on patent policy revisited Further query: do we need an "apparent schizophrenic" as USPTO director?**Returning to Microsoft, IAM notes a bit of a dust-up in the Microsoft/TomTom settlement:Speaking in a session based on the EPO's Scenarios for the Future project, [Keith] Bergelt [of OIN] explained that under Dutch law, a company only has to reveal how much it has paid to settle a dispute if the amount exceeds a certain percentage of its market capitalisation...

BusinessWeek presents Leahy (pro)/Rohrabacher (con) on patent reform

Posted on April 30, 2009
In "The Debate Room", BusinessWeek gave pro/con commentary on the proposition: The Patent Reform Act Means ProgressThe current U.S. patent system is broken. It stifles innovation. Congress needs to pass the Patent Reform Act now. Pro or con?On the pro-side, Senator Leahy wrote: Patent reform is about economic development...

On Hatch-Waxman settlements

Posted on April 29, 2009
FoxNews reports on the settlement of a Hatch-Waxman case between Orion and Wockhardt:Orion Corporation ("Orion") and Wockhardt USA, LLC and Wockhardt Limited (together "Wockhardt") today [April 29] announce that they have executed a settlement agreement on lawsuits filed by Orion in the United States against Wockhardt regarding Wockhardt's submission of abbreviated new drug applications ("ANDAs") for generic versions of Orion's Comtan(R: 25...

Bob Park says CBS has altered "60 Minutes" story on cold fusion

Posted on April 29, 2009
In his 24 April 09 "What's New," Bob Park says that CBS has Sikahema'd part of the "60 Minutes" piece on cold fusion:Last Sunday's edition of the CBS News program 60 Minutes was titled "Race to Fusion." It was 1989, Fleischmann and Pons are shown with the "cold fusion" test tube that would have killed them had they been right...

"Not victory, but progress"

Posted on April 29, 2009
Within the law review titled Remembering the Public's Interest in the Patent System - A Post-Grant Opposition Designed to Benefit the Public, one has the text:As the French essayist and moralist Joseph Joubert stated, "[T]he aim of argument, or discussion, should not be victory, but progress...

"Laws against stealing America's intellectual property"

Posted on April 29, 2009
Further to a comment by Joe Mullin [Copying, or the lack thereof, _is_ highly relevant to all aspects of the patent debate as long the public and Congress *believe* that patent lawsuits are about copying or "stealing." That's not a "Lemley-ism", that is just reality -- backed up by many sources...

Joe Mullin on copying

Posted on April 28, 2009
On April 26, IPBiz had a post titled Mike Masnick (TechDirt) takes on Gary Odom (PatentHawk), which mentioned a statement made by Gary Odom about Joe Mullin as noted by Masnick:Amusingly, when Joe Mullin from IP Law & Business called Odom to comment, Odom refused, saying: "You're a hack job, man...

iParadigms issues press release on victory at CA4

Posted on April 28, 2009
PRNewswire (April 27): The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a published decision on April 16 affirming a lower court's finding of fair use for iParadigms, LLC, the company that provides Turnitin, in a closely-watched copyright infringement case brought by four high school students...

Turning patents into money

Posted on April 27, 2009
The Deal has a story including the text:Michael Pierantozzi of iPotential: "Patent management used to be an afterhought. That's changing. There's been a transition from treating patents as legal assets to treating them as business assets." It's certainly not a new phenomenon, adds Pierantozzi...

Qualcomm to pay Broadcom $891 million to settle patent dispute

Posted on April 27, 2009
Yahoo Tech News reported: Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. said late Sunday [26 April 09] it will pay Broadcom Corp. $891 million over four years to settle a longstanding dispute over patents and royalties.The company said it will pay $200 million of the settlement in the quarter ending June 30...

Cheap fast food may not be good for you...

Posted on April 26, 2009
So many internet posts are about lists. Within Big Macs and Fries: What You Pay Per Calorie, one has a list of certain fast foods, grouped in terms of (dollars) per (100 calories). The somewhat obvious punchline:Looking at the cost per 100 calories of some items underscores what nutritionists have been saying for years: The cheapest calories typically aren't the healthiest...

Mike Masnick (TechDirt) takes on Gary Odom (PatentHawk)

Posted on April 26, 2009
An April 24 post at TechDirt tited 28 More Companies Sued Over Grouped Toolbars Patent begins:You may recall last summer that we wrote about Gary Odom (as known as Patent Hawk) who has been known to stop by our site here to throw around an insult or two (nice guy!)...

Sikahema'd again

Posted on April 26, 2009
John Molloy at ZDNet on an altered internet post relating to Microsoft:You know what? This is the Internet and this sort of stuff SHOULDN'T happen. So for your edification here is a link to the Google Cache of the original article:HereAnd if that goes down here is a link to a pdf of the original article:HereAnd here is a link to the sanitized version:HereBut probably isn't worth the effort as it seems to have Microsoft Marketing written all over it...

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