Patent Law

Made in Oregon?

Posted on April 15, 2009
IPBiz notes an interesting dispute over a ?Made in Oregon? sign atop the White Stag building in Portland.In Trenton, we have "Trenton Makes --the World Takes" on a bridge, reflecting a long ago time. We also had a naming dispute when Trenton State became College of New Jersey, the name formerly used by Princeton University.

The mistakes of journalists: cringeworthy?

Posted on April 15, 2009
The following comment at IAM evoked images of Eli Kintisch and Eugenie Reich:Nowadays, almost all generalist media (and even some specialist media) reports on even basic science, engineering, finance, law, etc. are plagued with cringeworthy factual mistakes and misunderstandings...

Roche sues Mylan in Hatch-Waxman case over Xeloda

Posted on April 15, 2009
Hoffmann-La Roche filed the lawsuit April 8, 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

What happens to the blog when the blogger dies? Are blogs eternal?

Posted on April 15, 2009
Dave Goldman writes: Sean Healy created a blog at unknowncolumn.blogspot.com and posted defamatory content about speedskater Shani Davis' mom, Cherie Davis.The complaint further alleges that Healy is now deceased, so he can no longer remove the content on Cherie's demand, and he did not have a "probate estate" to take over his blog...

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Alcatel-Lucent receives unfavorable re-exam result

Posted on April 14, 2009
Bloomberg reported: An Alcatel-Lucent SA patent that resulted in a $358 million jury verdict against Microsoft Corp. was rejected [in a re-exam Office Action] by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after the agency took a second look at the invention...

DeWitt goes after Fish piece in NYT on Churchill

Posted on April 13, 2009
As noted earlier by IPBiz, the piece by Stanley Fish on Churchill in the NYT had problems. Here is what Larry DeWitt said:It is unclear which report Fish read in preparation for his NYT column, perhaps he did not himself fully grasp the nature of Churchill?s actions...

Protecting boat hulls

Posted on April 13, 2009
A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division to protect the design of boat hulls. Hell?s Bay utilized several theories and had asked for a jury trial before a settlement was reached. Through its Orlando-based intellectual property attorneys of Beusse Wolter Sanks Mora, & Maire, P...

Edison and the light bulb

Posted on April 12, 2009
An IPBiz commenter wrote:i'm a Chinese undergarduate, your blog is very interesting and helpful.since i can not find your email ,i have to use the "comment" to ask some questions about edison's patent here,i am sorry but still hope that you can help,you may find them veey childish even ridiculous, first: edison got the 223,898 patent Jan,1880 and then the patent was ruled invalid in 1883,right? then he got around six years in litigation and finally got the patent valid 1889,right? Second, suppose i got them all right above, can a patent in litigation be used to against others? the edison company sued some other companies in 1885 and one of the claimed infinged patents was 223,898,but then the patent was invalid ,how can they do that Third, this may fall out of your expertise,but what exactly 223,898 patented? the improvememt on the process of making Filment or a whole new filment ...

Coverage by news media of IP issues, educating management about IP

Posted on April 12, 2009
IPBiz has been covering faulty (and/or deficient) coverage of IP in the news media for some time. If business managers really believe what they read in the media, they can form false impressions upon which they may act. IP Finance took a news piece in the Economist on the Nano and used it to criticize news coverage of IP issues:What am I supposed to make of the contents of the paragraph? After being told, in previous paragraphs, that the car is small but "surprisingly spacious"; that its zero to 60 mph takes 30 seconds, but that it is a good drive and fuel efficient; that the placement of the engine in the rear is a marvel of design; that it has some flaws (what car does not?), and that is the bane of environmentalists, we are now told that Tata has filed over 30 patent applications...

On software patents

Posted on April 11, 2009
See the discussion by Jonathan Corbet titled: An afternoon among the patent lawyers, [concerning a session at the Wolf Law Building, University of Colorado at Boulder March 19, 2009 ] which included text :Beyond their basis in legislation, patents should, according to the US constitution, serve to encourage innovation in their field...

New push for allowances at the USPTO?

Posted on April 11, 2009
Under a post at PatentHawk on changed overtime policies at the USPTO, one finds the following comments:I believe that the allowance rate is artificially low, although not due to churning...at least not exactly.I am a current examiner. Under Dudas, the PTO pursued a policy of "increased patent quality"...

Homewood, reprised

Posted on April 11, 2009
In the continuing saga of visits to the Homewood Suites in Baltimore, this author returned to the scene of past bad service. The most interesting thing this time was not the room, but the breakfast. There was an absence of silverware, most pointedly of spoons, which might be necessary for eating cereal with milk...

Hewlett-Packard to appeal in Cornell case

Posted on April 11, 2009
MarketWatch reported: Hewlett-Packard Co. on April 10 said it had filed an appeal in a patent dispute with Cornell University.See alsoAriad/MIT/Harvard smoked by CAFC in Lilly case

IP academics and IP practitioners: two worlds?

Posted on April 11, 2009
Patently-O had noted: IP Scholars Conference 2009: This annual event will be held at Cardozo Law in NYC on August 6th and 7th, 2009. This is usually a large gathering of IP focused academics and academic minded individuals presenting original works-in-progress...

Wegner, USPTO both scorched by CAFC in Takeda

Posted on April 10, 2009
A process patent issued as U.S. Patent No. 5,583,216 (the ?216 process patent to Takeda) on December 10, 1996 led to the double patenting issue in the appeal of the Takeda case, argued for Takeda by Harold C. Wegner. The opinion written by Judge Rader began: The United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that later developments in the art may inform the ?patentably distinct? determination for double patenting...

Rove, Biden tussle over "what Biden told Bush"

Posted on April 10, 2009
Yahoo News noted of statements by Karl Rove about statements supposedly made by Joe Biden:The former Bush adviser [Rove] was referring to Biden?s comments earlier this week on CNN that he and President George W. Bush once had an exchange in the Oval Office, where Bush said, "Well, Joe ...

Some patent cliffs can't be seen

Posted on April 09, 2009
A post on Motley Fool made the "drug patent situation" one of facile predictability:The patent cliff that almost every drugmaker is facing is the dark side of developing blockbuster drugs. Be it Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE) Lipitor, Eli Lilly's (NYSE: LLY) Zyprexa, or AstraZeneca's (NYSE: AZN) Nexium, it's going to hurt when the drugmakers start to face generic competition...

"Networking is building relationships through helping people"

Posted on April 09, 2009
Mike Evers of Inside Counsel writes:Susan Sneider offers several definitions of networking from successful attorneys in her fabulous book, ?A Lawyer?s Guide to Networking.? But my favorite definition among those offered by Sneider comes from John Mitchell: ?Networking is building relationships through helping people...

Boeing wins patent case against NASA over aluminum alloy in shuttle

Posted on April 09, 2009
The Los Angeles Times noted: Boeing Co. may get hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation after winning a patent-infringement claim against NASA over an aluminum alloy used to build the space shuttle.As this was a suit against the federal government, it was heard in the Court of Claims...

EPO rule changes: compulsory response to search reports

Posted on April 09, 2009
Patent Baristas notes rules changes at the EPO, includingCompulsory response to European search reportsAt present, an applicant does not have to reply to any search report that the EPO issue. However, this will change when the new rules come into force...

CAFC addresses patent exhaustion in Transcore

Posted on April 09, 2009
Exhaustion was found and the patentee lost.Of note:Rather, our analysis begins with the premise that one cannot convey what one does not own. This principle is particularly important in patent licensing, as the grant of a patent does not provide the patentee with an affirmative right to practice the patent but merely the right to exclude...

Original owner wins parrot custody battle

Posted on April 09, 2009
ABCNews covered a custody battle over a lost-then-found African grey parrot, which was resolved in favor of the original owner. A law professor was quoted; David Favre seemed to think the "new" owner had a chance.One commenter wrote that this sort of thing was an economic stimulus package for lawyers...

BusinessWeek pushes Lemley book on patent reform

Posted on April 09, 2009
In an article Are Patent Problems Stifling U.S. Innovation? < BusinessWeek promotes the upcoming Lemley/Burke book The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It.According to the article, the "biggest" change in the Patent Reform Act of 2009 is "first to file": The biggest change: Patents would go to the first to file an application, rather than the first to invent, which is often hard to determine...

The demise of Encarta, and wikipedia, whither?

Posted on April 08, 2009
Naomi Alderman wrote of the demise of Microsoft's Encarta:Wikipedia is not Encarta. The unanswerable force of the market has shown that most of us prefer a free and infinitely expandable source of knowledge, even if it's somewhat rough in patches, to a manicured, guarded encyclopedia we have to pay for...

Churchill jury: professorial plagiarism not a fire-able offense?

Posted on April 08, 2009
Further to the Ward Churchill business at CU, InsideHigherEd has some discussion which includes the text:To find in Churchill's favor, the jury had to determine that his political views were a substantial or motivating factor in his dismissal, and that he would not have been fired but for the controversy over his opinions...

CAFC denies mandamus in Cypress Semiconductor

Posted on April 07, 2009
The bottom line from the CAFC: To decide the question presented by this mandamus petition, we need only decide whether Cypress has shown that the Commission clearly and indisputably erred in ruling that the Commission may proceed with its investigation...

CAFC affirms BPAI decision in Kubin: obviousness found

Posted on April 07, 2009
At issue was the question of whether the existence in the prior art of a purified protein, combined with "routine" cloning methods, renders obvious a claim to a nucleic acid encoding the protein. The patent applicants in the Kubin case lost for obviousness: For the reasons stated above,the Board did not err in finding appellants? claims obvious as a matter of law...

Ariad/MIT/Harvard smoked by CAFC in Lilly case

Posted on April 06, 2009
Ariad/MIT/Harvard lost: Ariad sought and obtained the broad claims we now hold to be invalid. For its own reasons, Ariad maintained the breadth of these claims through claim construction and into trial. Although surviving an inequitable conduct charge, theacademics had patent claims which did not survive a written description challenge...

Earthquake prediction?

Posted on April 06, 2009
Reuters ran a story about Gioacchino Giuliani, who predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before it hit in April 2009, based on the presence of radon gas. **http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2223236/posts**Citing in the internet ageSources for Did You KnowIP Shift Happens

Ehrlich paper at Coalition for Patent Fairness: this dog won't hunt

Posted on April 06, 2009
The Coalition for Patent Fairness website has a paper by Everett Ehrlich about "job loss" if the patent damages aren't reformed.LBE sent a comment to IAM:The "jobs issue" is an interesting one. A question for Dr. Ehrlich is "where" the jobs would be...

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