Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Patent Law Blogs -> IPBiz

Patent Law

: IPBiz

More on Lemley and Intellectual Ventures

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The 271blog has a comment on the collaboration between Lemley and Intellectual Ventures on the extent of NPEs in patent litigation. Within, there is text:

Intellectual Ventures executive editor Wayt Gibbs said that an impartial study of patent litigation is necessary. "This is very important to innovation policy," Gibbs said. "It shouldn't be subjected to guesses and debates by highly interested parties."

Gibbs said the study is focused on the years 2000 through 2007, and includes "data on every single patent case filed" in that period. The roughly two-year project is being undertaken by a number of different Intellectual Ventures employees alongside Lemley, and is expected to produce several papers.

Apart from his errors in the technical area ["Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit." The inventors of the transistor thought it was only good for hearing aids.], Professor Lemley has been known to flip-flop on positions. Thus, if you don't like the first paper on NPEs in patent litigation, merely wait for the second.

One commenter at the 271blog observed Isn't Lemley a NPE?, possibly referring to the fact that Lemley is not a registered patent attorney, and thus a non-practicing entity in patent law.

A different commenter referred to some of Lemley's mistakes in the continuation area:

Does ANYONE take Lemley seriously? This is the same guy who argued FOR the new continuation rules because allowance the applicant an unlimited number of RCE's allows the applicant to 'bully' the examiner into allowing the case. (apparently he couldn't take 10 minutes to learn how the count system works and that examiners LOVE an applicant who keeps burning rce's and won't give up)

As one point of clarity, Lemley barely mentioned RCEs in his "Ending Abuse" paper. Once it became clear that RCEs were the most abundant form of continuing application, it was evident that Lemley's central assumption about continuations was wrong.

Nathan Myhrvold, a former Hertz fellow, ought to know better than to rely on a guy who thinks Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit, but then, this deal looks like mutual back-scratching.

See also

The chameleon-like nature of positions of IP professors

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2009: Lemley and friends starting new law firm

***Of other things at 271blog -->

http://271patent.blogspot.com/2009/02/crowdsourcing-patent-peer-review.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).