Patent Law

Readily

Posted on April 04, 2010
Hearing Components sued Shure over hearing aid patents 4,880,076; 5,002,151; and 5,401,920, technologies used in Shure's earphones. The district court outcome was invalidity by indefiniteness for '920 asserted claims, and noninfringement for a few claims of '076 and '151 for Shure's product that used a straight nozzle...

Score Line

Posted on March 31, 2010
Pressure Products Medical Supplies invented a valve remover for an introducer, netting 5,125,904 & 5,312,355. Under a rolling claim construction, the patents were found valid and infringed by the jury, with Pressure Products awarded $1.1 million in damages...

Regulated

Posted on March 30, 2010
Power-One sued Artesyn for infringing power supply regulator patents, particularly monitoring point-of-load (POL) regulators. A permanent injunction resulted, followed by Artesyn's appeal over claim construction, namely, the term "POL regulator", with a side of obviousness...

Whole Wallet

Posted on March 07, 2010
Taking a break from the frigid east Washington winter, CAFC Judge Rader has been marshalling in Marshall. Rader's adjudicating an East Texas patent brawl between IP Innovation and Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell. Judge Rader takes no wooden nickels as the Linux twins sought to toss IPI's damages expert as a Daubert deuce...

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Cool Analogy

Posted on March 06, 2010
5,955,955 claims a computer drive bay fan, meant to cool the hard drives right in their own living room. '955 owner Comaper sued Antec for infringement. Trial found Antec willfully infringing some claims. Some claims were obvious to the jury, others validly novel...

Momentos

Posted on March 03, 2010
Media Technologies sued Upper Deck for infringing two memorabilia patents: 5,803,501 & 6,142,532. After a trip to the CAFC on district court summary judgment over res judicata (reversed), trial court proceedings were stayed pending reexamination. Both patents made it through reexam unscathed...

Static

Posted on February 27, 2010
Trading Technologies sued eSpeed and Ecco for infringing 6,772,132 & 6,766,304, which go to displaying "static price levels" on a computerized board for commodity trading. One service product infringed, but others literally did not, and applying the doctrine of equivalents was proscribed...

Crock

Posted on February 26, 2010
The International Trade Clowns (ITC) handed a crock to clog maker Crocs when it asserted 6,993,858 and D517,789: '858 was found obvious and '789 not infringed. Crocs squealed and appealed to the CAFC, which stepped in it and splattered the ITC with both feet: utility and design patent case law...

Fragments

Posted on February 24, 2010
Andrew Chapman and David King had a patent idea "directed to divalent antibody fragments comprising two antibody heavy chains and at least one polymer molecule attached to the heavy chains in a site-specific manner on each chain... Chapman's invention involves joining together two fragments with an interchain bridge containing a polymer, thus achieving a circulating half-life that is intermediate between that of an individual fragment and a whole antibody...

Floored

Posted on February 19, 2010
"Pergo and Alloc are direct competitors in the field of laminate flooring. Pergo owns the 6,421,970 and 6,397,547 patents, which relate to mechanical joints that enable flooring panels to be joined without the use of glue or other fasteners, such as nails or metal clips...

Relatively Stiff

Posted on February 18, 2010
Yousef Daneshvar filed a patent application claiming : "an apparatus for dressing a wound. The invention features a 'relatively stiff support' that is secured over the wound using one or more 'relatively stretchable straps.'" The BPAI rejected Daneshvar's claims as anticipated and obvious over 5,779,657...

Why the Hawk

Posted on February 09, 2010
A friend and client, India born, was telling me about the different prior art search firms he had used. "The Indians are cheap, and you get what you pay for. They find something and they quit. They know nothing about litigation, or U.S. patent laws...

Unpublished

Posted on February 08, 2010
ResQNet sued Lansa in 2001 for infringing five patents related to terminal emulation. Lansa found art, two unpublished user manuals for a software product called Flashpoint, that it argued anticipated one of the asserted patents, 6,295,075. But the district court wouldn't admit the art as public, and hence not legally prior art...

Deep Fryer

Posted on February 07, 2010
SEB sued Montgomery Ward and others for infringing 4,995,312 by selling a cheap deep fryer manufactured by Pentalpha. Speedy justice meant that getting to trial took a mere seven years, whereupon a jury found willful infringement, awarding $4.65 million in damages, which the district court judge hence cut by $2 million...

Inherent Anticipation

Posted on February 02, 2010
Abbott sued Beckton, Dickinson and Company and Nova Biomedical for infringing 5,628,890, which claims a glucose sensor. A jury found '890 anticipated. Abbott appealed the trial judge's jury instruction over the meaning of anticipation. The CAFC surveyed the boundary of inherency, and found the nugget: "all elements must be disclosed in an anticipatory reference in the same way as they are arranged or combined in the claim...

Diabetic

Posted on January 29, 2010
5,820,551 claims single-use test strips for measuring blood sugar, useful for diabetics. Becton, Dickinson and Company threw down a declaratory judgment (DJ) action on competitor Abbott over a couple other patents. Abbott countered with a suit that also asserted '551...

Restricted Reply

Posted on January 26, 2010
37 CFR § 41.37, on appeal briefs, fully covers regulation of arguments made on appeal: "Any arguments or authorities not included in the brief or a reply brief filed pursuant to § 41.41 will be refused consideration by the Board, unless good cause is shown...

Quinn the Eskimo

Posted on January 25, 2010
Charming Gene Quinn of IPWatchdog is running a hot streak. An anonymous comment crowning Quinn "the King of Douchebags" put him enough out of sorts to change his web site to admit only registered supplicants to comment on his blog. One can only speculate as to his apoplexy if he instead had been titled the Queen of Douche Bags...

Vexed Fax

Posted on January 22, 2010
Catch Curve owns a family of five fax patents, the parent of which is 4,994,926. The patents "patents focus on the use of a computer-based device known as a 'store and forward facility,' or SAFF." A SAFF can forward a fax over telephone lines to a fax machine or to another SAFF...

Scan This

Posted on January 19, 2010
"Believe it or not, in our patent office -- now, this is embarrassing -- this is an institution responsible for protecting and promoting innovation -- our patent office receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically, then manually prints them out, scans them, and enters them into an outdated case management system...

Going Up

Posted on January 16, 2010
5,689,094 claims personal recognition that tells an elevator where to go. Patent owner Schindler Elevator tried to get a lift over Otis Elevator, but Otis got a summary judgment of noninfringement by construction of claim, which was a shame, because, on appeal, the district court took the blame...

Bull Run

Posted on January 14, 2010
For the 17th year running, IBM has gotten the most U.S. patents. "Their patent department is a profit center," observed Bruce Lehman, former PTO director, and now head agent provocateur at the International Intellectual Property Institute. IBM made something in the neighborhood of $1...

Unfried Chicken

Posted on January 10, 2010
Restaurant Technologies (RTI) sued Jersey Shore Chicken for infringing 5,249,511, which claims a system for supplying and disposing of cooking oil in restaurant fryers. If RTI had a good prosecutor, the patent wouldn't have read like a product manual, with too few embodiments, especially for means-plus-function claims...

Nabbed

Posted on January 08, 2010
However one may wish the USPTO well, they certainly are stingy bastards, seemingly bent on cheating their constituency, inventors, at every turn. Herein, Wyeth has to fight all the way to the CAFC to get their patent legally extended because the patent office was tardy in allowing a grant...

Interference

Posted on January 06, 2010
The noxiousness of the faux first-to-invent regime that the U.S. alone clings to is seldom exposed to the harsh daylight of the appeals court. Philips got its pulse up over a patent it inherited when it drew the short straw in a BPAI interference against Cardiac Science...

Broken: The USPTO

Posted on December 31, 2009
This begins a series on what is wrong with patents in this country. The constitutional goal of patents is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." But patents present irrepressible contradictions of purpose by the players of the patent game, and the pursuit of self interest by the players reveals their flaws and limits...

Stilted

Posted on December 29, 2009
William Armstrong and Joe Lin got a patent, 5,645,515, for a particular type of stilt used in construction, requiring a "resiliently lined yoke." Each formed a company for selling stilts: Armstrong created Southland Supply, while Lin sprouted Forest Group...

Pawns & Prawns

Posted on December 23, 2009
Two films about alien relocation reveal a stark difference in maturity - of their respective creators. James Cameron created cinema's most expensive cliché with Avatar, a juvenile cartoon sketch that won't go down as a science fiction classic. But what will, just released on DVD, is District 9...

Unpreserved

Posted on December 22, 2009
i4i sued Microsoft for a pissant feature in Word: editing custom XML. But to i4i's business, the feature was puissant. A seven-day trial found Microsoft willfully infringing a valid patent, with a jury award of $200 million. "Although statutorily authorized to triple the jury's damages award because of Microsoft's willful infringement, the district court awarded only $40 million in additional damages...

Clogged

Posted on December 19, 2009
Footwear importer Seaway sued Walgreens drug stores for selling those colorful plastic clogs, thereby infringing D529,263, D545,032, and D545,033. The district court booted the case in summary judgment because of anticipation by clog design patent D517,789, owned by Crocs...

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