Patent Law

Fitless

Posted on March 23, 2009
The antitrust raver FTC has decided not to challenge a reverse-payment agreement between UCB, owner of 4,943,639, and generic drug makers Mylan, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, and Cobalt Pharmaceuticals. '639 claims an anti-epileptic drug that UCB markets as Keppra...

Frivolous

Posted on March 22, 2009
E-Pass sued 3Com/Palm for infringing 5,276,311, claiming a multi-function card. E-Pass then went after Visa and PalmSource. The district court consolidated the cases, then granted summary judgment of non-infringement because E-Pass couldn't show all the claimed steps being practiced...

Procedural Kowtow

Posted on March 20, 2009
The CAFC considers most everything a matter of law. Substance/facts are a legal inconvenience best boxed so that the entire container can be subject to rule-of-law disposition. With that mindset firmly entrenched, a confusion between substance and procedure is natural...

Screen Door

Posted on March 19, 2009
Judge Linn, concurring in Larson v. Aluminart, observed that the CAFC "has significantly diverged from the Supreme Court's treatment of inequitable conduct and perpetuates what was once referred to as a "plague" that our en banc court sought to cure in Kingsdown Medical Consultants, Ltd...

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Canned

Posted on March 18, 2009
Crown Packaging and Rexam Beverage Can are trying to pop patents on each other. Crown tried to crown Rexam with 6,935,826, while Rexam counterclaimed to cane Crown with 4,774,839. Both came a cropper in summary judgment of non-infringement. From the appeal came a squeal of "no deal," with a toot of there being a dispute in fact...

Kindled

Posted on March 18, 2009
Discovery Communications, parent of the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, has asserted 7,298,851 against Amazon's Kindle electronic reader. '851 was filed in September 1999, a CIP, and issued November 2007. A goodly amount of cited art. The '851 claims are rather well drafted, with many various dependent claims, but are nonetheless open to obviousness attack...

Presumption of Innovation

Posted on March 17, 2009
US patent rights have gone the way of "innocent until proven guilty" as our country plunges headfirst into a deep cavern of morally gray, with a permeating attitude of destruction over creation. The founding principal of making every attempt to protect intellectual property has degraded into making every attempt to control and limit that protection, while completely forgetting "to promote the progress of science and useful arts"...

Campaign

Posted on March 16, 2009
In case you haven't noticed from the last two entries, patents as a scourge is singing hot across the wires, the mainstream press replete with pleas from well-oiled machines that something must be done. In the months ahead, expect more of a focus on how gutting patents will "save jobs...

Distortion

Posted on March 16, 2009
"Patents are not ordinary assets; they are options to litigate. While patent lawyers and other intermediaries benefit directly from the scope and scale of IT patents, that volume represents potential liability for companies that market useful products...

Baby Gorilla

Posted on March 16, 2009
Matt Buchanan on Promote the Progress has a tidy analysis of Google's self-interest in patent reform. Matt makes two points: 1) as a youngster (a decade-old company), Google has no patent experience other than being sued. 2) Google already has monopoly power...

Danger!

Posted on March 16, 2009
Intel warned AMD today that attempting to transfer their patent cross-licensing agreement to AMD's manufacturing spin-off, GlobalFoundries, was a violation. Intel considers GlobalFoundries a separate company. AMD owns a 34.2% share of GlobalFoundries, with 50% voting rights...

Black Kettle, Says Pot

Posted on March 16, 2009
The patent office is barking about its brethren offices worldwide. John Doll, acting alpha dog, announced that "the USPTO has noticed a significant number of international applications filed in the United States Receiving Office (RO/US) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) where the applicant has chosen an International Searching Authority (ISA) which is not competent for the subject matter of the claimed invention" ...

Too Far

Posted on March 15, 2009
The cheesiest propaganda has a "gee-whiz, this ain't right" flavor. The rubes eat it up. So, whoever bothers to read the oxymoronic Christian Science Monitor is in for a treat. Correspondent James Turner gingerly spews gosh-darn hogwash, aided by an addled Daniel Ravicher, anti-patent kid wonder...

Spiked

Posted on March 13, 2009
The best day for ICU Medical in asserting 6,682,509 against Alaris Medical Systems was the day it filed. '509 claims a needless valve, used in medical IVs. Herein, a claim construction saga, with a written description twist, that finds the district court copasetic and ICU spiked with patent loss, shelling out for the other side's attorneys fees, and sanctions...

Remedied

Posted on March 12, 2009
Claim 2 of  Natures Remedies' herbal weight loss patent 5,945,107 lost terminal weight before the BPAI, based upon a § 102(b) prior art application in Demark for clinical testing of an anticipatory compound. On appeal to the CAFC, the anticipation of the reference was undisputed...

Jaw

Posted on March 11, 2009
The usual suspects headed to the Hill today to jaw in the Senate about patent reform, including representatives from corporations, lobbyists, and academic stuntman Mark Lemley. The patter was as expected. California Senator Dianne Feinstein put the writing on the wall about getting to a passable bill, especially over the highly contentious damages issue: "High tech seems to feel that they're going to get whatever they want out of this bill...

Up in Smoke

Posted on March 11, 2009
Robert Chapman (11/391,897) followed on the heels of Michael Casner (7,153,966) in his formulation for a synthetic opioid, oxycodone. In a USPTO interference, Casner knocked out the upstart Chapman on obviousness. On a spiteful appeal, Chapman tried comeuppance...

Reexamination

Posted on March 09, 2009
The validity of a granted patent may be challenged before the USPTO at any time during a patent's life. There are two types of reexamination: ex parte and inter partes. Both start by petition to the Office, with the petitioner citing "a substantial new question" of patentability in the form of prior art...

Continuing Royalty

Posted on March 09, 2009
H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui, Assistant Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School, Portland, Oregon - In eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006), the Supreme Court held that traditional equitable factors apply to injunctions in patent and copyright cases, and that therefore the mere fact a defendant has infringed a patent or a copyright does not necessarily mean a final injunction must issue...

Non-Contributor

Posted on March 08, 2009
A co-inventor is no inventor who adds nothing to a patent but the prior art, so the CAFC ruled last week. Though precedential, the appeal panel ruling is nothing new either. This in a case where a vehicle parts maker, Natron, sued its suppliers for patent infringement over a car seat with massage effect...

Already Stewed

Posted on March 07, 2009
Serial patent infringers banded together years ago in a determined siege to bribe Congress to pass new legislation. Consider that the courts have been patents' pressure cooker in recent years, and those effects need a longer view before jumping into the deep end with more radical changes...

Marked Marketing

Posted on March 06, 2009
Lewis Ferguson et al filed a patent application claiming marketing methods, and, really, the pits of vagary, claims of a "paradigm for marketing." The prosecutor needs to have his head examined. The examiner rejected the 68 claims under prior art and indefiniteness...

Hanging Tree

Posted on March 05, 2009

Expert

Posted on March 05, 2009

Qualifications

Posted on March 05, 2009

Cacophony by Design

Posted on March 04, 2009

Jumpy

Posted on March 04, 2009

Guitar Zero

Posted on March 03, 2009

Excitement

Posted on March 03, 2009

Whoopspool

Posted on March 01, 2009

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