Patent Law

Pittsburgh newspaper laments CAFC Bilski decision

Posted on December 23, 2008
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review writes:The 9-3 ruling by the appeals court in Washington against former Equitable Gas Co. executives and WeatherWise USA Inc. founders Rand Warsaw and Bernard Bilski is the latest setback in a saga dating back to the partner's original patent application for a mathematical way to manage bad weather risk by making hedged trades in the commodities market...

In re Wheeler on anticipation, scope of review of BPAI decision

Posted on December 21, 2008
In Wheeler, a BPAI finding of anticipation was reversed and remanded for appropriate further proceedings. The BPAI's factual findings were reviewed to determine whether they are supported by substantial evidence. See e.g., In re Berger, 279 F.3d 975, 980 (Fed...

Classen Immunotherapies smoked via Bilski

Posted on December 21, 2008
The opinion in Classen v. Biogen et al. says:In light of our decision in In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc), we affirm the district court?s grant of summary judgment that these claims are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Dr. Classen?s claims are neither ?tied to a particular machine or apparatus? nor do they ?transform[] a particular article into a different state or thing...

Derivative plagiarism in New Zealand; humor

Posted on December 21, 2008
The New Zealand Herald has a plagiarism piece including text relating to New Zealand plagiarist Noelle McCarthy:Specifically in my case, for many years I have been copying Noelle McCarthy's columns and using much of the lesser-quality work as my own. If I had used the better stuff it would've been too obvious, and as apparently some of that may have already been plagiarised, it could have meant I was plagiarising twice when I only really wanted to plagiarise once...

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Titan QB Vince Young sues over trademark rights in VY, Invinceable

Posted on December 21, 2008
Free Press notes: Vince Young is suing three men, including former Tiger Enos Cabell, for applying for a trademark to use his initials and "Invinceable" nickname to sell products without his permission.

"Meet the Press" sinking?

Posted on December 21, 2008
"Meet the Press" seems intent on capturing a lower age demographic, unfortunately a demographic that does not watch shows like "Meet the Press".For older folks, one has Andrea Mitchell, who demonstrated on 21 December 2008 that she can quote the US Constitution without knowing what it says...

Patent efforts of Ron Ace in geo-engineering

Posted on December 21, 2008
GREG GORDON of Mcclatchy-tribune writes of Ron Ace's U.S. patent petition for what he calls the most "practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable" and beneficial way to curb global warming and a resulting catastrophic ocean rise.IPBiz is not sure what a patent "petition" is...

"Clear, concise, and supported"

Posted on December 20, 2008
A comment on Patently-O speaking of indefinite claims notes:br /br /iIn Europe, Article 84 requires the claims to be "clear, concise and supported". After issue, the claims as granted is immune to Art 84-based attacks, until the patent owner seeks to amend...

Chamber of Commerce Recommendations to Incoming Admin on USPTO

Posted on December 20, 2008
a href="http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=41671dcn=todaysnews"GovernmentExecutive wrote of the Chamber of Commerce report/a on the USPTO:br /br /iThe Patent and Trademark Office is "an agency in crisis" that will face significant challenges in the Obama administration due to a 750,000-application backlog and other internal inefficiencies, a report by the U...

Macari, Drew University sued for theft of academic program

Posted on December 19, 2008
New England College [NEC] sued poet Anne Marie Macari and New Jersey's Drew University for theft of a college program, specifically a Master?s of Fine Arts in Poetry program. [In passing, this is the kind of suit that Texas A&M might have filed against Wender and SIU, but didn't]...

KCI sues Convatec over patent on VAC bandages

Posted on December 19, 2008
Kinetic Concepts [KCI] sued Skillman, N.J.-based Convatec Inc. and Boehringer Wound Systems LLC and affiliate Boehringer Technologies L.P. (Germany) in MD NC for infringement of claims of patents directed to vacuum bandages.A Dec. 18 press release had noted: ConvaTec, a world-leading developer and marketer of innovative medical technologies for community and hospital care, announced today it has signed a long-term global exclusive license agreement with Boehringer Technologies to market and distribute Boehringer's Engenex(R) Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) System incorporating Bio-Dome(TM) Interface Technology...

Demand for patent attorneys growing

Posted on December 19, 2008
The Nashville BizJournal reports:How is demand for patent attorneys compared to other professions? Demand for patent attorneys has continued to grow due to the increased importance of technology and intellectual property to the business community. We expect that trend to continue.

Gold-plating patents, Canada-style

Posted on December 18, 2008
Mondaq has an article on the "gold-plating" of patents that adds a Canadian twist:br /br /iThe gold-plating of patents is but one aspect of a more extensive proposal to address a certain type of litigation largely confined to the U.S., to restore some balance...

Paper linking graphene and hydrino!

Posted on December 18, 2008
From an abstract submitted 25 Aug 08:br /br /iWe study the dynamics of fermions on graphene (...) Special emphasis is given to the formation of hydrino like states and its lifting of degeneracy due to the presence of AB field. The flux of the AB field can be tuned to make the low angular momentum hydrino states stable against decay...

CitePatents.com

Posted on December 18, 2008
A press release announces:br /br /iFreePatentsOnline.com (FPO) has launched an informational site, www.citepatents.com, to help bloggers, journalists and others easily reference patent information, and to provide a free patent search box for adding to websites with a single mouse click...

Collage culture and mashups

Posted on December 18, 2008
A post by Eva Domínguez makes reference to the concept of "innocent plagiarising":br /br /iInnocent plagiarising happens frequently on the Internet, especially with visual material. Who hasn't taken photographs for school projects, professional presentations or for family occasions that can now be seen on the web?/ibr /br /This evokes the "inadvertent plagiarism" concept advanced by the folks at SIU in the Poshard matter...

"Online reputation management"

Posted on December 18, 2008
Of a href="http://www.securinginnovation.com/2008/12/articles/ipcom-inc/companies-in-conversation-on-twitter/"recent text/a iIn today's online social media world, businesses of all shapes and sizes must actively participate in online reputation management/i, IPBiz thought of various back-and-forths on blogs as better examples of "reputation management" than examples from business...

"Eleventh Hour" depicts evil university/industry cabal in biotech

Posted on December 18, 2008
The CBS show "Eleventh Hour" on Dec. 18 depicted biotech work gone bad at the fictional University of California/Fillmore. The "buying" of academic research by industry also came in. Recombinant DNA work involving venom from scorpions was involved...

Dreier LLP law firm seeking bankruptcy protection

Posted on December 17, 2008
Plotline for a future Law Order? From yahoo.news: iProsecutors accused Marc Dreier of posing as if he were peddling heavily discounted investments in a New York City real estate development company because original investors, damaged by the world's financial crisis, were backing out...

School, court reach OPPOSITE conclusions in plagiarism case!

Posted on December 17, 2008
At Central Connecticut State University, Cristina Duquette and Matthew Coster accused one another of copying. The school believed Duquette but a judge did not. BILL LEUKHARDT reported the story-- br /br /In her Dec. 3 decision in Superior Court in Waterbury, CT, Judge Janet Scholl cited a preponderance of evidence supporting Coster's claim that Duquette had copied Coster's term paper...

Microsoft and Alcatel/Lucent reach settlement over most patent cases

Posted on December 17, 2008
In reporting the settlement on Dec. 16, the IHT noted:br /br /iFinancial terms were not disclosed. The agreement covers six lawsuits, including one that resulted in the largest patent verdict in U.S. history before it was thrown out by a judge. Microsoft will continue its appeal of a $368 million verdict it lost that swelled to $511...

NBC Nightly News does kudzunol on Dec. 15

Posted on December 17, 2008
Roger O'Neil reported a piece on Doug Mizell of Cleveland, Tenn. on fermenting the sugars of kudzu to make ethanol.br /br /In other memorable television. on Dec. 16, NCIS had a sub-plot on patent infringement, the Mentalist's main plot was research fraud at "Leyland" University in California (the cover-up thereof causing the chancellor to murder two people), and the next show having a Robert E...

The valuation of claims of patents

Posted on December 16, 2008
The blog INTANGITOPIA discusses patent valuation and RPX and Article One and the like in a post titled: The IP Store?. There is some interesting text about academics:I would believe that many people want to look at the IP market the way we have looked at every other marketplace the last half century or so...

Avocent v. Aten: no personal jurisdiction

Posted on December 16, 2008
A Taiwanese company escaped a DJ action through absence of personal jurisdiction.The CAFC recited the standard pronouncements: ?Determining whether personal jurisdiction exists over an out-of-state defendant involves two inquiries: whether a forum state?s long-arm statute permits service of process, and whether the assertion of personal jurisdiction would violate due process...

ITC to investigate claim by Kodak against Samsung, LG

Posted on December 16, 2008
William McQuillen of Bloomberg reports that he U.S. International Trade Commission [USITC] said on Dec. 16 it would investigate a complaint brought by Kodak against Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. relating to importation of goods violating claims of Kodak patents in the area of mobile phones with digital cameras...

Article One praised, sort of

Posted on December 16, 2008
In a post titled Kuddos to Article One Partners, Gene Quinn writes I have a feeling that Article One might be more successful than I orginally anticipated, and even if that is not the case at least they are trying to do something productive about the growing problem of bad patents...

SJ grant of noninfringement affirmed by CAFC

Posted on December 15, 2008
The CAFC in Welker Bearing v. PHD found that a claim term to a "mechanism" triggered "means plus function" treatment under 112 P 6-->This court has had several prior occasions to consider the applicability of means-plus-function treatment in the context of the claim term ?mechanism...

Google on net neutrality

Posted on December 15, 2008
Yahoo Finance states:Google Inc. denied that it had reversed its stance on the issue of "Net neutrality" and dismissed a story in Monday's edition [15 Dec. 08] of The Wall Street Journal on the subject as "confused."Citing undisclosed sources, the newspaper reported that Google had been in talks with major cable and phone companies about getting preferential treatment for traffic to and from its sites...

TechDirt on patent reform on Dec. 15

Posted on December 15, 2008
In covering an FTC hearing on patent reform, TechDirt wrote:And then, of course, there's a big lobbying fight, and the pharmaceutical companies (who don't want any sort of patent reform whatsoever) win -- and the bill gets killed. It's an annual tradition...

Reducing patent application backlog a top priority

Posted on December 14, 2008
CongressionalDaily wrote: Reducing the Patent and Trademark Office's growing backlog of applications should be one of the highest priorities for the agency in the Obama administration, several former high-level PTO officials agreed Thursday, Dec. 11...

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