Patent Law

Blogger, Revealed

Posted on February 23, 2008
Live by anonymity, die by anonymity.Yes, I have been unmasked. It happened quite the way this blog happened - I got an anonymous email, from the guy who probably collected the bounty, telling me I better tell everyone who I am (and he clearly knew), or else he would take care of it for me...

Desire2Appeal

Posted on February 22, 2008
A Lufkin, Texas jury found for Blackboard in the Desire2Learn patent trial, finding the claims valid, infringed, and awarding $3.1 million in damages, according to Desire2Learn's blog and other newswires. News reports say that Blackboard sought $17 million...

Ted Frank on Patent Reform

Posted on February 22, 2008
Ted Frank is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and Director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest, and a blogger-contributor to Overlawyered ("Chronicling the high cost of our legal system"). Frank authored an interesting paper, published yesterday, titled "There Is a Role for Congress in Patent Reform...

Email From Sorensen

Posted on February 22, 2008
Dear Anonymous:It has come to the attention of Sorensen Research and Development Trust that your blog has made reference to SRDT, describing recently filed cases as a ?last gasp to get retirement money? and ?last gasp for filing infringement suits.?In the interest of fair reporting, you may want to investigate a little further...

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Mike Masnick on Intellectual Property

Posted on February 21, 2008
Mike Masnick of TechDirt has posted the first in what he promises to be a series exploring intellectual property. In the first installment, he explores the dialog between two of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, on the nature of intellectual property, and their concerns that too-strong intellectual property laws could lead to abuse...

Troll Wars

Posted on February 19, 2008
Some interesting developments in the Global Patent Holdings litigation going on in Nevada (against Zappos) and Florida (against Boca Resort). The long sad story is below, but for those with a short attention span, here is the abbreviated version: Essentially, Global Patent Holdings, hurting that Boca Resort called it a patent troll, said "oh yeah, GPH is really an 80-year-old and a 70-year-old in a wheelchair - who you callin' troll, son of Enron?" Meanwhile, at the same time in Nevada, GPH told the court that it, not the inventors, owned the rights to the patents...

Saffran Final Judgment Upped to $501 Million Against Boston Scientific

Posted on February 18, 2008
Judge Ward awarded $69 Million in pre-judgment interest, and entered final judgment in the amount of $501,261,011. You can download the final judgment here.

Business Method Patents To Face Scrutiny By En Banc Federal Circuit

Posted on February 15, 2008
Dennis Crouch has an excellent summary of the Federal Circuit's en banc order today, revisiting whether business method claims are patentable and whether State Street Bank should be overruled. Dennis lists the en banc questions and claim 1 of the Bilski patent here...

Friday Miscellany, 2/15/08

Posted on February 15, 2008
Here are seven random patent tidbits I have collected recently, thanks in large part to emailed tips.1) There have already been as many patent lawsuits filed in the Eastern District of Texas in February than in all of January there. A busy month, indeed...

Happy Valentine's Day

Posted on February 14, 2008
This being Valentine's Day, I thought I'd point out Michael Smith's humorous post about why some lawyers in Texas are hanging with Chad, while others choose Love.This is a good patent to litigate with Judge Love on Valentine's Day:Candy box construction and method, Steven W...

Taurus/Orion/Spangenberg Hold Off Ford in Madison; Blackboard-Desire2Learn Trial Begins in Lufkin

Posted on February 13, 2008
Dennis Crouch has an interesting post about the Erich Spangenberg dispute with car companies in Madison, Wisconsin. See his post here, complete with links to the decision of Judge Crabb, ruling that at this point, the court is not willing to pierce the corporate veil to hold that an agreement between Orion IP (a Spangenberg company) and defendants was binding on Orion IP's sister corporation, Taurus IP (a Spangenberg company)...

$432 Million Verdict in Marshall Texas Patent Case

Posted on February 12, 2008
This one deserves its own post. See the verdict here, awarding nearly $432 Million as a reasonable royalty to a New Jersey doctor against Boston Scientific. My prior post is below.Anyone know what percentage this is of the Boston Scientific accused product's sales? Email me.

Saffran v. Boston Scientific

Posted on February 12, 2008
Dr. Bruce Saffran sued Boston Scientific Corp. in December 2005 on U.S. Patent 5,653,760 ("Method and Apparatus for Managing Macromolecular Distribution"). Dickstein Shapiro (DC) filed the complaint, along with Eric Albritton. Kenyon & Kenyon appeared for Boston Scientific, along with Melvin Wilcox and Melissa Smith...

Two New Blogs I'm Reading on Global IP

Posted on February 12, 2008
Well, these blogs aren't new, but they're new to me.First, I am enjoying Spicy IP, a blog written by 9 contributers (including Duncan Bucknell, the clear non-Indian of the bunch but a well-known IP blogger). Spicy IP's goal is to "increase transparency in Indian intellectual property policy/institutions...

Acacia Sues Apple over iTunes ... In East St. Louis, Again

Posted on February 11, 2008
New Acacia subsidiary Restricted Spending Solutions, LLC sued Apple last Wednesday in East St. Louis, Illinois, in the Southern District of Illinois. Acacia sued Apple last November in the Southern District of Illinois over the iChat feature, as I reported here...

Patent Litigation Statistics for January 2008

Posted on February 08, 2008
At long last, here are my January 2008 patent litigation statistics. In total, PACER/ECF showed 230 patent cases filed in January 2008, compared to 210 in January 2007. This is a 10% year-to-year increase. PACER/ECF has a flaw in that it records what I have heard called ?false positives...

Global Patent Holdings' Amended Complaint in Florida and Motion to Dismiss in Nevada

Posted on February 07, 2008
In the case in Florida against the Boca Resort, GPH amended its complaint to add the following two passages:The coinventors of the ?341 patent were Anthony Rozmanith and Dr. Neil Berinson. Anthony Rozmanith is 80 years old; Dr. Berinson is now deceased but is survived by his 70-year-old widow; both live on Social Security payments and minimal royalties from their licenses...

Victory for Rembrandt

Posted on February 07, 2008
Rembrandt, a licensing entity that acquires patents and sues companies that make products, and that allegedly makes no products of its own, got $41M from a Marshall, Texas jury yesterday, according to Michael Smith's blog. Well, the verdict part was according to his blog, not the commentary on who is Rembrandt...

The Once-Company

Posted on February 05, 2008
I have used the expression "once-company" in some of my posts. Let me explain. Sometimes a company has a really great idea, builds products, hires people, files patent applications. Due to some factor -- maybe it's just the right product at the wrong time, maybe it's just poor sales and marketing -- the company doesn't make it...

Manic Monday

Posted on February 04, 2008
It's February now, and I'm working on the January patent litigation statistics. So I won't have much to post this week. But over the weekend I came up with a couple of posts, for today and tomorrow.Before I get into things, I wanted to note that Michael Smith is reporting that the Rembrandt v...

Nokia Sued for 17.7 Billion USD By IP Licensing Shop

Posted on January 31, 2008
That got your attention, didn't it? Thanks to a reader tip, we get a story from Cellular News that German IP licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co., KG, asserting German patents obtained from Robert Bosch GmbH, sued Nokia for $17.7B USD ($12B Euros) at the end of December in Manheim...

Boca Resort Opens New Front in Assault on Global Patent Holdings' JPEG-on-a-Website Patent

Posted on January 31, 2008
Ray Niro emailed me yesterday, complaining about the personal attacks being made on him in Slashdot. There's a right to free speech, but there's also a line. I don't care if one's address is public information or not: don't publish someone else's personal information in a blog post or in comments...

Hola

Posted on January 30, 2008
I have been counting visitors now for a little over 6 months. This morning, around 5am Eastern, visitor #100,000 came to the blog, from Mendoza, Argentina, through this link (hey, Digg in Spanish). Muchas gracias!

Patent Cases and Multi-District Litigation

Posted on January 30, 2008
Today at 9:30 am in Phoenix, Arizona, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will meet to select new cases for MDL treatment. The fact that they are holding the hearing at the site of the Super Bowl, so close to the big game, has to be coincidental, right? Ever try getting a hotel in a Super Bowl city so close to the game? Not easy...

I'm Being Hacked

Posted on January 29, 2008
Several email alerts from Blogger this morning, warning me that people are trying to figure out my password and log into my account. Blogger is not the paradigm of security, so who knows how much time I have left. Even though my password was already strong, to be safe, I changed it to something even stronger...

Innovative Patented Technology Asserts Patent Not Invented By Scott Harris

Posted on January 29, 2008
I reported here that Innovative Patented Technology LLC, a James Beauregard Parker company, existed solely to assert the patents invented by former Fish & Richardson partner Scott Harris. So imagine my surprise when last Thursday, Innovative Patented Technology, represented by Niro Scavone, sued ICON Health & Fitness on a patent invented by Gary J...

Welcome

Posted on January 28, 2008
Welcome to all the new visitors to my site. Evidently, I was TechDirt'd, Slashdotted, and featured as the ABA Blawg of the Week all at the same time. Pretty cool.

Global Patent Holdings' JPEG Patent: Back to Reexamination

Posted on January 28, 2008
An anonymous third-party requester,* represented by attorney Vernon Francissen of Chicago (Ray Niro's next-door neighbor!), has filed a request for ex parte reexamination of the just-reexamined claim 17 of Global Patent Holdings' U.S. Patent 5,253,341, the JPEG-on-a-website patent...

Alexander Poltorak: Check Your Facts

Posted on January 28, 2008
Alexander Poltorak is CEO of General Patent Corp., an IP licensing shop I featured some time ago, nicknaming them "Acacia of the East" (watch out for falling houses). Poltorak has an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor today where he decries the impending patent reform that the Senate will soon take up...

Robert Dorf and Alexsam

Posted on January 25, 2008
Alexsam first came onto my radar in July 2007, when it sued Evolution Benefits & Humana in Marshall, Texas on an electronic gift card patent, 6,000,608. Alexsam is represented by McClanahan & Clearman in that case, which has just had its initial status conference, and discovery is just beginning...

J. Carl Cooper and Technology Licensing Corporation

Posted on January 24, 2008
What's a troll tracker to do? I have poor J. Carl Cooper's biography already written, but there are so many other tempting stories. First, there's this drivel, on how patent reform will ruin society and lead to the crash of our economy, etc. I'll respond in a couple of weeks - closer to the actual debate in the Senate...

Minerva Awarded Exclusive Right to Cellphones with Wireless Internet and Other Generic Features; Sues RIM, Apple, and Motorola

Posted on January 22, 2008
At 12:01 this morning, Minerva Industries (a Los Angeles patent holding corporation for Los Angeles inventor Ki Il Kim, represented by Los Angeles lawyers at Russ, August & Kabat, and who I featured previously), filed 3 lawsuits on recently issued U...

Paul Ware and Acacia

Posted on January 21, 2008
OK, people. I'm not dead yet. To the small inventor commentor on the last post, did you even read what I wrote?Since I have gotten so many emails and comments regarding how great the "small inventor" is and how these inventors are unfairly maligned, I thought I'd put the spotlight on a couple of prolific inventors...

The Writing Process

Posted on January 19, 2008
When I started this blog, I just wanted to focus on the great many patent cases being brought by companies that make no products, and exist solely to license patents and monetize them. There was a convenient term already out there -- I'm not Peter Detkin, so I didn't coin it...

Survey Results

Posted on January 18, 2008
View my survey results here. For those of you who just want the summary, read on and don't click through. Note that I couldn't enable the results with the "other" entries revealed, because a few of you provided personal information, such as phone numbers...

A Note About Civility

Posted on January 17, 2008
It is absolutely unacceptable for people to post threats in the comments. They will be deleted as soon as I see them. I was just made aware of one such threat posted over a month ago, and was appalled. I don't care if the threats are meant to be sympathetic towards me, it will be deleted...

Oral Argument in Quanta v. LG

Posted on January 16, 2008
The Supreme Court had oral argument this morning in Quanta v. LG, the patent exhaustion case. Maureen Mahoney of Latham & Watkins argued for Quanta. Thomas G. Hungar, Deputy Solicitor General, gave the United States' views on behalf of Quanta. Carter G...

Patent Exhaustion Takes Center Stage at SCOTUS

Posted on January 16, 2008
I'm pushing the survey results back until Friday because (1) I'm out of the office this week, (2) I haven't figured out how to share my results yet, and (3) I had forgotten that today is the Supreme Court oral argument in Quanta v. LG. I previously posted about the case here and here, but for the really best summary, I have two words for you: SCOTUS Wiki!!! Seriously, today is the first I have ever checked out this really cool website...

Is the United States Navy the Latest Patent Troll?

Posted on January 15, 2008
Network Signatures, LLC of Rancho Santa Margarita, California, is the exclusive licensee of U.S. Patent 5,511,122, a patent which is owned by the U.S. Navy. This patent relates to secure communication and authentication methods involving the use of public and private keys...

New York Times Article Sets the Stage for Upcoming Patent Reform Debate Renewal

Posted on January 14, 2008
The New York Times had an interesting feature on the soon-to-be-renewed fight in Washington over patent reform. The reporter, John Markoff, highlighted that the big corporations were for patent reform, and that certain individual inventors are against it, and summarized some of the reasons given for the positions of both sides (e...

Troll Call and Other Statistics for December 2007

Posted on January 11, 2008
We reached the end of 2007. All the other blogs are reporting an overall decrease in IP litigation, a cutback from 2006, or are reporting the slightest of increases in patent filings from 2006 to 2007. That's simply not true. By the real count -- the number of defendants sued for patent infringement -- 2007 was a record year...

Global Patent Holdings Sues Boca Raton Resort & Club

Posted on January 10, 2008
Check out all of those JPGs on the website at the Boca Raton Resort & Club. I guess somebody had a bad stay there or couldn't get a good tee time, for on Tuesday 1/8, Global Patent Holdings asserted its JPEG-on-a-website patent in SDFL against the Club...

Wednesday Miscellany, 1/9/08

Posted on January 09, 2008
A bunch of tidbits today, mainly thanks to reader tips. Before I get to them, if you haven't done so already, you have two days to take my Patent Troll Tracker Blog Survey before it closes. I'll provide the results next week.1) My post last Friday on Mondis prompted Inpro to take Dechert off of its "extended team" on its website...

Number of Utility Patent Claims Issued By USPTO Per Year Has Quintupled in 30 Years

Posted on January 08, 2008
Dennis Crouch had an interesting post from December 23 on rising claim counts. Dennis provides a graph showing that the number of average total claims in a U.S. Patent rose from about 10 in 1976, to 15 in 1995, to nearly 20 in 2004.Looking at 1976 through 2006, we can go here to find the number of utility patents issued per year, and multiply it by Dennis's number, to get roughly the following graph, of the number of patent claims issued per year, over a 30-year period (imagine that there are actually readable numbers along the x-axis representing years from 1976 to 2006 - it's amazing I was even able to figure out how to do this graph - can't figure out how to get the years on it so anyone can read them, but you get the picture)...

Rembrandt's Interesting Injunction Strategy (Possibly)

Posted on January 07, 2008
There is one patent troll case (that I know of) going to trial this month in the Eastern District of Texas: Rembrandt v. Ciba Vision. Rembrandt may be up to something interesting.Besides Rembrandt's foray into high tech patents, Rembrandt also bought contact lens patents, and put them in a shell named Rembrandt Vision Technologies, L...

4 Interesting New Cases From Last 2 Weeks of December

Posted on January 04, 2008
Well, what do we have for you today? How about the Rothschild family investing in a Eurotroll, and suing in Marshall, Texas? How about an ex-Fish & Richardson associate buying patents for millions of dollars (while an associate) and being D/J'd in Sherman, Texas after trying to shake down an EDTX company? How about a couple of lawsuits by a guy who, with related patents, has made the Electronic Frontier Foundations' 10 Most Wanted Invalid Patents? How about yet another Scott Harris/J-Beau/Ray Niro lawsuit? Yeah, you could read those other ABA-nominated patent blawgs, but I've got your juicy patent news right here!WIAV Solutions: Choongsoo ParkLet's start off with the D/J case of American Microsystems Ltd...

Acacia December 2007 Update

Posted on January 03, 2008
Turning to our busiest patent troll in 2007, Acacia, it kept up momentum in December with new lawsuits.Acacia's new subsidiary Coronary Stent Visualization Corp., established in Delaware on 11/19/07 with a principal place of business of 500 Newport Center Drive, 7th Floor, Newport Beach, CA, filed a lawsuit less than a month after formation...