Patent Law

Yamanaka scooped on iPS (stem cell) patent ?!?

Posted on January 05, 2009
TMCNews reports on 4 Jan 09:German chemical giant Bayer AG applied for a patent in Japan on June 15, 2007, for a technique to generate induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, from human cells, according to Patent Office data released by Sunday [Jan 4]...

IEEE gives Microsoft top score for patents

Posted on January 05, 2009
Imperial Valley News writes:The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers? (IEEE) annual Patent Scorecard, released in December 2008, gave Microsoft the top score among all categories. This is the second consecutive year Microsoft has topped the list...

Online reputation management-2

Posted on January 05, 2009
Prior to electronic filing, patent attorneys would send out much U.S. Express Mail to the USPTO. LBE, for one, typically did not receive much Express Mail. The other day, LBE did get a notice of delivery, left in the mail box. After waiting in line for over 30 minutes at the Bridgewater Post Office, LBE was told the package wasn't there...

On the duty of inquiry

Posted on January 05, 2009
Just_n_examiner discusses the duty of inquiry: This means that an applicant is obliged to actually read the references that they decide are relevant enough to submit in an Information Disclosure Statement.Of the problems facing an examiner with an IDS (1449): With an IDS, all I've got is a document image (so no text searching) that the applicant has told me is material to the patentability of their application, but with no clue as to why...

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Richardson withdraws as Commerce nominee

Posted on January 04, 2009
The AP reported on 4 Jan 09 that Bill Richardson has withdrawn as nominee for head of the Department of Commerce, the position above that of USPTO Director.Specific text from the AP story:New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday [Jan. 4] announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract...

Stem cells from adipose

Posted on January 03, 2009
Note from BusinessWire: Cytori announced Dec. 30 that U.S. patent # 7,470,537 (the ?537 patent) has been issued to the University of California, which covers a population of stem cells, progenitor cells and other replicating cells, which can be obtained from human adipose tissue...

Joe Biden's solid gold cufflinks

Posted on January 02, 2009
John Pickens found cuff links in a shirt he bought at a thrift store. Action6News of Philadelphia continued the story:"I went to a jeweler in Center City with just one of the links, to see if it was a fake. He said, 'No. This is solid gold."Pickens believes if the cuff links belong to Vice President-elect Joe Biden, he'd surely want them back...

Patent attorney works on product

Posted on January 02, 2009
The Seattle Times reported:Sales [of CankerMelts] have gone so well that {Jeff] Haley, who sank $700,000 of his own money into the startup, retired in 2006 from the Bellevue law firm he co-founded and has raised $1 million from investors. In the next two months, he hopes to raise another $1...

Scientific American discusses rejected Microsoft patent application

Posted on December 31, 2008
The post notes:Although the patent office rejected Microsoft's application, reports tech news Web site Ars Technica, the company laid out a plan for the future of computing, where bits and bytes are delivered to one's home similar to the way utility companies deliver electricity...

Outsourcing of legal work to India on the increase?

Posted on December 31, 2008
The legallyours blog has a Dec. 18 post which includes:Richard Susskind, author of ?The End of Lawyers??, in his article ?Turning to India at break-neck speed? talks about the research conducted by RSG Consulting and the reasons behind increasing business diverted to LPOs...

Can Tekturna replace Diovan?

Posted on December 31, 2008
wsj online notes: Sales of Novartis's blockbuster drug, Diovan, are expected to tumble when the high-blood-pressure pill's patent expires in four years. That puts Joe Jimenez, a former packaged-goods executive tapped to run Novartis's prescription-drug business last year, in the difficult position of finding ways to make up for some $5 billion in annual revenue...

CAFC upholds permanent injunction in Acumed v. Stryker

Posted on December 30, 2008
The CAFC wrote:Ultimately, this was a close case, especially with regard to the irreparable harm and lack of adequate remedy at law prongs of the four-factor test, in view of past licenses having been granted, and the public interest prong, in light of testimony that the accused product was a medically superior one...

Does LaHood choice offer insights into future USPTO director?

Posted on December 30, 2008
In an earlier post titled Possibilities for USPTO director, IPBiz mentioned some of the names for Director-nominee that were making the rounds. President-elect Obama made an interesting choice for DOE in Chu, but on the other side was LaHood, who has virtually no experience in transportation...

The Texas Republic, reprised

Posted on December 30, 2008
Russian academic Igor Panarin's view of a divided US is on wsj online.Panarin is projecting what "will" happen by 2010. Fifty years earlier, in 1960, MacKinlay Kantor postulated what would have happened if the South had won the Civil War. Alaska was never purchased by the US, and remained in Russian hands, as Panarin predicts for the future...

In re TS Tech to shut down patent biz in ED Texas?

Posted on December 30, 2008
Back in May, IPBiz asked Will VW shut down the patent biz of ED Texas?. With the CAFC order in the case In re TS Tech, the answer may be "yes." TS Tech wanted to get out of ED Texas. They succeeded. The CAFC stated:The district court is directed to vacate its September 10, 2008 order and to transfer the case to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio...

Intellectual property at Colorado State University

Posted on December 29, 2008
A story on Colorado State University mentions Bryan Willson of Solix (algae) fame:Yalin would know. The United States Patent & Trademark Office in March granted Yalin and a slew of collaborators, including EECL co-director Bryan Willson, a patent on technology replacing traditional sparkplugs with lasers in large, high-pressure natural gas engines...

Cree/BU settle with BridgeLux over LED patent

Posted on December 29, 2008
MarketWatch reports: Cree, Inc. , a leader in LED lighting, announces that Cree and Boston University have agreed with Bridgelux, Inc. to settle the parties' patent infringement litigation and to dismiss all claims and counterclaims in the suits. See 2006 IPBiz post Cree sues BridgeLux over light-emitting diodes

Quinn blames Coalition for Patent Fairness for absence of patent reform

Posted on December 29, 2008
In Why Patent Reform Didn?t Happen in 2008, Quinn writes:Whether the tech giants that make up the so-called and horribly mis-named Coalition for Patent Fairness want to admit it or not, they are the problem and the reason that there is no hope for patent reform...

Did Darwin plagiarize?

Posted on December 28, 2008
The Australian writes:One group of critics has commissioned computer experts with specialised anti-plagiarism software to scour Darwin's book, published in 1859, for similarities to a paper released the year before by Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist who worked for eight years in what he termed the Malay Archipelago - primarily Indonesia and Malaysia...

Bilski Symposium on 14 Jan 09

Posted on December 28, 2008
On Jan. 14, The Brookings Institute, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Duke University will co-host a daylong symposium on software and business method patents post-Bilski, entitled ?The Limits of Abstract Patents in an Intangible Economy...

OS News on lawsuit by Cygnus Systems against Apple, Microsoft, and Google

Posted on December 28, 2008
A post at OS News On the suit by Cygnus over US Patent 7346850 - "System and method for iconic software environment management" begins:Large multinational software companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google, rarely - if ever - initiate patent infringement lawsuits against other software companies, probably because they themselves infringe on lots of patents too...

GA in algae business

Posted on December 28, 2008
An article by Mike Freeman noted: General Atomics and SAIC received the contracts from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. It is the military's research and development funding arm and is seeking biofuel alternatives for military aircraft, which make up a significant percentage of the $6 billion the military spends on fuel annually...

Matthews Show says Summers was right

Posted on December 28, 2008
In an incredible comment on the "The Chris Matthews Show" of 28 December 2008, Larry Summers (formerly Prez of Harvard) not only was mentioned as a comeback story for 2008 but also was stated to have been right in his comments about women.Was it Howard Fineman or David Brooks? No one on the panel (including Michele Norris and Norah O'Donnell) said a thing...

Acushnet to ignore CAFC injunction on Titleist golf balls?

Posted on December 25, 2008
CNNMoney reported:Fortune Brands Inc.'s (FO) Acushnet Co. said it will continue to sell its Titleist Pro V1 golf balls despite a federal appeals court ruling upholding a previously granted permanent injunction to stop selling them.The "Golf Equipment Examiner" employed greater imagery:U...

Kim fined in Korea matter involving K.Y. Cha

Posted on December 25, 2008
The Los Angeles Times reported: The Seoul Central District Court found that Dr. Jeong-Hwan Kim had damaged the reputation of Kwang Yul Cha, a fertility doctor and chancellor of a South Korean university with ties to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center...

Oprah Winfrey's Harpo sued for patent infringement

Posted on December 24, 2008
CBS2 reports Illinois Computer Research [ICR], LLC is suing the Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions Inc. for patent infringement for using software related to the Oprah Book Club. The case is before Judge Matthew F. Kennelly in ND Ill, and is docket 1:08-cv-07322...

Should creative patent attorneys be fired?

Posted on December 24, 2008
The InventBlog has text:What?s the most creative thing you?ve seen a patent attorney do?. In one of the answers, the answerer states that it is not a patent attorney?s role to be creative and if he/she is creative?he/she should be FIRED. Agree? Disagree?LBE posted:It was the patent attorney at Fairchild who pushed for what became the application for the integrated circuit...

KSR Grinch steals Sundance's Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2008
On Dec. 24, 2008, the CAFC ruled that ED Mich erred in granting patentee-Sundance's motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) that the ?109 patent was not invalid AND reversed the district court?s judgment that the asserted claims are nonobvious as a matter of law AND held as a matter of law that claim 1 of the ?109 patent is invalid for obviousnessThe CAFC noted:In a decision rendered before the Supreme Court?s holding in KSR, the district court granted Sundance?s motion for JMOL, ruling that ?there was not sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that one skilled in the art would have combined Hall and Cramaro so as to arrive at the invention?a segmented tarp used for truck covers...

Ricoh wins (partial) remand over Quanta at CAFC, which gives guidance on indirect infringement issues

Posted on December 24, 2008
Reuters reported of the recent CAFC decision in Ricoh v. Quanta: Ricoh Company won a battle in a patent fight with Quanta Computer over optical disc drives when a patent appeals court ruled on Dec. 23 that a lower court erred in tossing out Ricoh's lawsuit...

Dr. Reddy's settles with Schering over Clarinex

Posted on December 23, 2008
The Boston-Globe reported: Dr. Reddy's Laboratories said Dec. 23 it settled a patent dispute with Schering-Plough Corp. and Sepracor Inc. over the allergy drug Clarinex.Under the settlement, India-based Dr. Reddy's will be able to sell generic versions Clarinex-D 12 Hour, Clarinex-D 24 Hour, and Clarinex Reditabs starting in 2012...

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