Patent Law

U Turn

Posted on February 29, 2008
Micron sought declaratory judgment in Northern California against memory-chip competitor MOSAID, the day before MOSAID filed in East Texas. Northern California district court pitched the DJ matter. Micron appealed. The appeal ruling is a textbook of current case law for declaratory judgment jurisdiction and district court discretion...

Checking Out

Posted on February 28, 2008
The "upgrade" to Movable Type (MT) 4 was a bilious bumble. Basically, it blew chunks, and it was no self-revelation that I make a cantankerous janitor. MT seemingly gave no consideration to backward compatibility. Among other tedious wankings, subscription notification went to hell in a bucket without leaving a "thank you" note...

Screening

Posted on February 28, 2008
The University of California and Abbot went after Dako for infringing DNA screening patents 5,447,841 and 6,596,479. After a district court priority blunder, and turning aside a preliminary injunction motion, claim construction gave Dako a noninfringement out; until appeal...

Shorted Out

Posted on February 27, 2008
Tessera, semiconductor miniaturization maven, took a half-dozen companies to task before the International Trade Commission (ITC), including Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor, and ATI, a unit of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Monday morning, just before the ITC trial was scheduled to begin, Administrative Law Judge Theodore Essex brought the tent poles down, pending reexamination outcome of the asserted Tessera patents...

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Fish Tank

Posted on February 27, 2008
Myth tells us that fish grow to the size of their tank. Reason suggests, related to a USPTO examiner, this myth may prove out....

Willful

Posted on February 26, 2008
Monday, the Supreme Court snubbed certiorari for the CAFC en banc Seagate decision that practically eviscerated willful patent infringement. Nor reason was given. To seek enhanced damages, the Seagate standard requires that a patent holder prove that an infringer was "objectively reckless" in knowingly infringing a patent...

Down Boy

Posted on February 26, 2008
Medtronic's lawyers were hammered for malpractice in patent suit against BrainLAB last week. Now a different legal crew barking for Medtronic has been slapped a $10 million fine for similar malfeasance....

Relief

Posted on February 26, 2008
Carlos Amado owns 5,293,615, which claims an interface method between spreadsheet and database programs. Amado sued Microsoft for its Office product infringing, and won 4¢ per copy royalty, and an injunction. The injunction was stayed pending post-trial motions, during which Amado got 12¢ per copy royalty...

On-Line Chat for Independent Inventors

Posted on February 26, 2008
Every couple of months the USPTO hosts an on-line chat, allowing independent inventors to ask questions regarding the patent process. The next chat: Thursday, February 28th, from 2 to 3 PM (EST)....

Worldwide Patent Survey

Posted on February 25, 2008
Joff Wild of Intellectual Asset Magazine surveyed the 2007 international patent scene, and found some patent puppies with growing pains, while old dogs are up to tricks both old and new....

Exuberance Rewarded

Posted on February 25, 2008
Last February, the appeals court found Medtronic's four-patent assertion against BrainLAB worthless, upholding Colorado district court Judge Richard Matsch overturning a duped jury verdict of infringement. Back before the district court, entertaining a post-trail motion by BrainLAB to recover all attorneys fees and costs, Judge Matsch raked Medtronic's attorneys over the coals, particularly Terrence McMahon and Vera Elson of McDermott Will & Emery...

No Surprise

Posted on February 24, 2008
Rick Frenkel's setup for blogging always seemed a bit queer - anonymously blogging voyeuristically, by supposedly peeking behind the curtain of non-practicing patent holders quietly enforcing their patents, as if anyone should care about that ipso facto...

Exam Plan

Posted on February 24, 2008
USPTO registration exam questions have remained very similar throughout the years, some word-for-word identical, but the overall focus of the 100-question exam has shifted drastically. Is this merely the necessary result of a shift in exam format, or is it an indication of a change in focus at the PTO? Regardless, for those currently preparing for the Patent Bar, modify your study plan accordingly...

Follow the Money

Posted on February 23, 2008
If you wonder why, for the Patent Reform Act, Senator Leahy is so hot to trot, it's that he got paid and bought. Of the $2.4 million packed into Leahy's political piggy bank in the past five years, three-quarters of a million came from "lawyers and lobbyists;" not surprising, given that Leahy is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman...

Blackboarded

Posted on February 23, 2008
Blackboard suing competitor Desire2Learn for infringing 6,988,138 spurred academic outrage, but a hillbilly east Texas jury paid the pointy-heads no heed, awarding $3 million in damages....

Retractable

Posted on February 22, 2008
6,733,328 has been treated like a commodity. It was originally assigned to Ultra Products, then transferred to Taiwan-based Transpower Technology. Transpower made Retractable Technologies LLC exclusive licensee, capable of enforcing the patent; although Dallas-based Data Drive claims to be exclusive licensee, but that Retractable could license the patent with permission...

SPEcial Powers

Posted on February 22, 2008
With USPTO allowance rates at an all time low, there has been frequent analysis and speculation regarding cause and implication. There is a player in the shadows: the supervisory examiner....

Factual Fiction

Posted on February 22, 2008
For now, the CAFC retains a polite fiction: "We review claim construction de novo on appeal. Cybor Corp. v. FAS Tech., Inc., 138 F.3d 1448, 1456 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (en banc);" de novo because claim construction is considered a matter of law, not a factual inquiry...

Rocket Dockets

Posted on February 21, 2008
The Eastern District of Texas has become the most popular court for patent litigation. As a result, with stuffed docket, time to trial has stretched to about two years. Other districts are taking up the slack, notably the Western District of Wisconsin and the Eastern District of Virginia, but there is a potential drawback to the also-rans...

Wireless & Witless

Posted on February 21, 2008
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) and Moto Q maker Motorola sued each other Saturday for patent infringement. Illinois-based Motorola chose Delaware and the Eastern District of Texas, while Ontario-based RIM chose the Northern District of Texas...

On-Sale Bar Ruffle

Posted on February 21, 2008
In reply to potential customer Sealy, a bed mattress maker, Atlanta Attachment developed a sewing machine for automatically creating gusset rufflers. There was a verbal understanding of confidentiality. Over time, Atlanta Attachment sent prototypes to Sealy, in September 2000 invoicing Sealy for the third of four prototypes ultimately delivered...

A View from Tel Aviv

Posted on February 21, 2008
Bernard Frieder is a consultant to technology companies in Israel, miffed at the U.S. Congress for threatening to wreck the U.S. patent system with its Patent Reform Act of 2007. Because inventors, research organizations and startup ventures around the world rely on US patents to protect the output of their labor, changing the US patent system has global repercussions...

Loaded Gun

Posted on February 21, 2008
George Margolin of the Professional Inventors Alliance had a graphic response to last week's editorial in the Washington Times by Senators Leahy, touting S. 1145, the Senate bill to deform the U.S. patent system. "All inventors strongly disagree with [Leahy], but he wouldn't know that because he has allowed few, if any, real inventors speak before his committee," Margolin conjectured...

Infringement Kimchee

Posted on February 21, 2008
Korea Aerospace University Professor Lee Keung-hae invented software for automatic linguistic switching between Korean and English. Lee lost his initial patent assertion against Microsoft for its Korean version of Word, in 2000. At the time, Lee claimed $42,000 in damages...

All Good

Posted on February 20, 2008
The U.S. Patent Reform Act of 2007 is a gift, a most welcome change, if you are an Indian generic drug maker. The view from Mumbai: The immediate impact of the law change will be to ease challenges on drug patents and also lower legal costs in such challenges...

Frank Piasecki

Posted on February 19, 2008
Igor Sikorsky flew the first helicopter in 1941. In 1943, Frank Piasecki flew the second helicopter, the PV-2, built from junk auto parts in a Philadelphia garage. The PV-1 never made it past the drawing board. The first PV-2 flight was rambunctious: Piasecki had only 14 hours flight experience in a small Piper Cub airplane...

CAFC on Patent Reform

Posted on February 19, 2008
Chief Judge Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit (CAFC), addressing the Association of Corporate Patent Counsel on January 28, 2008, backhandedly took Congress to task for being duped by asinine academics, essentially rumor mongers, jumping to conclusions, ignorant of facts...

Preliminary Injunction

Posted on February 19, 2008
A vacated pair of precedential preliminary injunction appeals put claim construction and KSR as the cruxes of justification. In Erico v. Vutec & Doc's Marketing, though hotly contested, KSR Obzilla stomps in to quash a preliminary injunction. In Chamberlain Group v...

Patents as Intangible Asset Partitions

Posted on February 18, 2008
Everybody knows that corporations shield shareholders from liability for debts of the corporations. But corporations perform another function, which may be even more important for startups: corporations shield the corporate assets contributed by one shareholder from being raided by the creditors of other shareholders...

Interest

Posted on February 17, 2008
As reported last week, Dr. Bruce Saffron nabbed Boston Scientific for patent infringement to the tune of $432 million. Friday, the presiding judge tacked on $69 million in pretrial interest. Saffron's lead attorney pipped: "$69 million is a nice amount...

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