« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »
November 30, 2005
RIM Down
Research
in Motion (RIM) was dealt a double blow today in its attempts to settle its
infringement fiasco with patent holder NTP. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer
"finds the parties do not have a valid and enforceable settlement". RIM had
hoped that a half-page term sheet signed by both parties in March, allegedly
settling the dispute for $450 million, was legally binding. That supposed deal
fell apart in June. Neither RIM nor NTP have disclosed details of that tentative
settlement agreement or why it broke down.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:30 AM | Litigation | Comments (6)
November 29, 2005
Pfizer Trumps PUBPAT
Pfizer patent 5,969,156, related to its blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, survives a re-examination prompted by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT). PUBPAT claimed victory in narrowing the patent's scope.
Continue reading "Pfizer Trumps PUBPAT"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:32 PM | Patents In Business
Patent Visibility
Frank
Hayes of Computerworld and
Peter Zura of 271 patent blog have caught patent visibility fever. The
concept is creating a public database of software prior art. Frank went so far as to
suggest that Microsoft waste money on it. Hey guys, get a clue.
Continue reading "Patent Visibility"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:53 PM | Litigation | Comments (5)
Claim Breadth
IP
Innovation sued eight companies for patent infringement of
4,877,404. Five settled, but three fought on. The Appeals Court (CAFC
04-1571), in
affirming the district court's summary judgment of non-infringement, vindicated
the defendants' fighting spirit.
Continue reading "Claim Breadth"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:59 AM | Claim Construction
November 28, 2005
PBAI Claim Mixup
In a non-precedent case before the Patent Board of Appeals (PBAI 2005-0970), Xerox got a copy of the IPXL v. Amazon ruling: mixing claim types traverses 35 U.S.C. § 101 & § 112 ¶ 2.
Continue reading "PBAI Claim Mixup"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:34 PM | Prosecution
Supreme Injunction
eBay
has been granted a hearing before the Supreme Court in its effort to avert a
permanent injunction for infringing patents belonging to MercExchange. At issue
is the general use of injunctions for patent infringement; the Appeals Court
thought it appropriate in its March ruling (03-1600).
Continue reading "Supreme Injunction"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:10 AM | Injunction
November 27, 2005
The Power of the Dark Side
Last
week, organizations allied with Linux ballyhooed their bequeathed acquisitions of patents.
Purists against patents railed at the futility and wrong-headedness of this
approach. This commentator was assailed as insane for suggesting that Linux
programmers raise their sights to patenting their inventions.
Continue reading "The Power of the Dark Side"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:54 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
November 25, 2005
The Perfect Crumb
Ms.
Ruth M. Siems, 74, first-named inventor on U.S. patent
3,870,803,
one of the creators of Stove Top stuffing, introduced in 1972, died Nov. 13 of a
heart attack at her home in Newburgh, Indiana.
Continue reading "The Perfect Crumb"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:10 PM | Patents In Business
November 22, 2005
Sugared Preliminary Injunction
The
district court granted a preliminary injunction in Pfizer & Warner-Lambert v.
Teva & Ranbaxy for infringement of
4,743,450, which Teva Pharmaceuticals & Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals appealed.
And lost. CAFC 05-1331.
Continue reading "Sugared Preliminary Injunction"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:53 AM | Claim Construction
November 21, 2005
Don't Mix Claim Types
IPXL
Holdings assertion of patent infringement against Amazon.com for its one-click
checkout didn't click with the courts. What especially missed the click track
was tacking a method onto a system claim.
MPEP § 2173.05(p)(II): "A single claim which claims both an apparatus and
the method steps of using the apparatus is indefinite under
35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph."
Continue reading "Don't Mix Claim Types"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:17 PM | § 112
November 20, 2005
Dirty RIM
Presiding
over the current phase of the NTP v. RIM patent infringement imbroglio, fed-up
U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer may rule this week whether the $450 million
unconsummated settlement between NTP & RIM was, in fact, consummated, and if
not, within a short time thereafter, whether to proceed with an injunction
against RIM to halt its Blackberry wireless email service to lesser mortals,
excluding, of course, U.S. government workers, who rely on their Blackberries
for "essential government services", as if those exist in the form of wireless
email.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:37 PM | Litigation
November 19, 2005
Patent Penguin Exposed
Some
of those who care about open source are decrying the charade of touting patent
protection for Linux via measly cast-off patent pledges from corporations like
IBM. As Florian Mueller, founder of the
NoSoftwarePatents campaign that
successfully opposed a European patent bill earlier this year, ineloquently put it, "those
announcements by the OIN and the OSDL grossly overstate the effectiveness of
those partially ill-conceived approaches. By misleading people they don't put us
any closer to a real solution, but even further away from one."
Continue reading "Patent Penguin Exposed"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:59 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (3)
November 18, 2005
Clonetech Gets Clobbered
Invitrogen
v. Clonetech Labs is a patent law ecosystem unto itself: conception, enablement,
written description, and infringement. The factual bases are extensive, resulting in
a CAFC 47-page opinion (04-1039), but teasing out the legal reasoning in evaluating the facts
is the focus here.
Continue reading "Clonetech Gets Clobbered"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:35 PM | Litigation
De Novo Mongrel
Smarting from its en banc loss in
Phillips v. AWH after winning earlier, AWH has
petitioned the Supreme Court to address whether the appeals court has the
right to de novo review of claim construction.
Continue reading "De Novo Mongrel"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:26 AM | Claim Construction
November 17, 2005
Device-Specific Style
MicroStrategy
sued Business Objects for infringement of its
6,260,050 patent, to which the district court granted summary judgment of
non-infringement, hinging on claim construction. Interestingly, MicroStrategy
won its claim construction argument, but lost the interpretation of it with
regard to infringement (CAFC
04-1572).
Continue reading "Device-Specific Style"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:27 PM | Claim Construction
Smug RIM
Research
In Motion (RIM) is claiming satisfaction with its workaround to patent
infringement of NTP patents, claiming that an injunction would not affect its
Blackberry customers from receiving their wireless emails.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:02 AM | Litigation
November 16, 2005
Brain Compression
Something's
amiss. Daniel Ravicher of the Public
Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) today took a
re-examination shotgun
and pointed it Forgent Networks JPEG
patent cash cow:
4,698,672, claiming invalidity in light of other, similar patents generated
by Compression Labs, specifically
5,451,012, and inequitable conduct for not citing those other patents. Two
possibilities: Danny's off base, or attorneys representing more than 80
companies & law firms didn't do their homework.
Continue reading "Brain Compression"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:46 AM | Patents In Business | Comments (12)
November 15, 2005
Open Source Fig Leaf
In
a gesture to generate warm and fuzzy feelings that Linux has a pretense of
intellectual property protection, the "global consortium"
Open Source Development Labs has opened its
Patent Commons. The Patent Commons
is a set of searchable databases listing the "more than 500 patents pledged to
date".
Continue reading "Open Source Fig Leaf"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:03 AM | Patents In Business
Getting A Grip
Surprisingly,
the district court couldn't get a grip on the claim term "hand-grip size case"
for claim 1 in
6,043,663, owned by Joseph Kapusta, who sued Gale Corporation for
infringement of a TV cable test instrument. The appeals court (CAFC) made it
look easy (05-1091).
Continue reading "Getting A Grip"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:40 AM | Claim Construction
November 14, 2005
The Patented Internet
Causing
quite a stir, e-commerce pioneer Amazon has recently scooped three patents, two
for consumer reviews (6,963,848;
6,963,850), and one for categorizing query results (6,963,867).
That's just a tiny tip of the reality iceberg that the Internet is heavily
patented.
Continue reading "The Patented Internet"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:19 AM | Patents In Business
Business Methods Patents
The United States Patent and Trademark Office released a set of interim examination guidelines for assessing the patentability of business method patents.
Continue reading "Business Methods Patents"
Posted by Peter Haas at 9:20 AM | § 101
November 11, 2005
U.S. Crybaby
Supreme
Crackberry Uncle Sam cried to the district judge in the NTP v. RIM case today:
"please Daddy, don't take my Blackberry." The U.S. government claimed that
"essential government services" could be impaired if wireless services for
Blackberries were cut off because of a patent infringement injunction.
Continue reading "U.S. Crybaby"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 4:44 PM | Litigation
Patent Law Seminars
Law Seminars International is sponsoring two upcoming CLE workshops on patent
law. The presenters are veteran prosecutors, litigators and corporate counsel.
Continue reading "Patent Law Seminars"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:15 AM | Patents In Business
First-to-File Unconstitutional
The Patent Reform Act of 2005 proposes provisions that would change the granting of patents from the so-called first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. The first-to-file provisions of the Act violate Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, which limits Congress to granting patents only to "Inventors". A system enacted by Congress for granting patents to anyone other than a good faith inventor would be unconstitutional.
Continue reading "First-to-File Unconstitutional"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:08 AM | The Patent System | Comments (1)
Linux Patent Momentum
Tarmac is being laid for a new Linux patent runway: IBM, Sony and Philips
have joined forces with Linux distributors Red Hat and Novell to create Open
Invention Network (OIN), a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free. This
could be a harbinger of a huge shift in the software business, as the press is
playing it up, or it could just
be this year's software buzz.
Continue reading "Linux Patent Momentum"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:03 AM | Patents In Business
November 10, 2005
Space Oddity
You
can only wonder what Boris Volfson has got parked in his garage. What he has in
his file cabinet is USPN
6,960,975 (pdf).
If you want to sell your anti-gravity powered spaceship with hollow
superconductive shield, you better first take a patent license from Boris.
Either that, or go intergalactic to evade infringement. As to the patent office
granting this, it's a spacetime anomaly indeed.
Continue reading "Space Oddity"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:06 AM | Prosecution | Comments (1)
November 9, 2005
RIM's Silver Lining
Yes, it looks grim for RIM. U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer began this morning the process of deciding whether to enforce an injunction against Research in Motion Ltd. for its Blackberry handheld devices. "I intend to move swiftly in this," Spencer said. "I've spent enough of my life and time on NTP and RIM." But ultimately, it's most likely that RIM will pay NTP and settle the matter.
Continue reading "RIM's Silver Lining"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:13 AM | Litigation
November 7, 2005
Removably Attached
Child's play over a child's car seat goes awry. The Court of Appeals made a rather bizarre ruling in Dorel v. Graco (05-1026), agreeing with the district court in crucial claim construction, but then overruling non-infringement on summary judgment.
Continue reading "Removably Attached"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 7:15 PM | Litigation
November 6, 2005
Patent Notification Smart Response
Receiving a patent notification letter offers options: 1] no response; 2] delayed response, including requesting time for investigation; 3] initiate negotiations; 4] avert further infringement by discontinuing sale of infringing products; 5] initiate a declaratory judgment suit. As to the most appropriate response, consider the source. But always validate.
Continue reading "Patent Notification Smart Response"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:26 AM | Patents In Business
November 4, 2005
Definitely Swinging
Fisher-Price
sued Graco Children's Products, and its parent, Newell Rubbermaid, for patent
infringement regarding a collapsible infant swing (6,520,862).
The district court threw the case out in summary judgment owing to the asserted
claims being indefinite. The appeals court (CAFC
05-1258) had a
different swing, giving the patent holder the benefit of the doubt in readily
understood technology.
Continue reading "Definitely Swinging"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:12 PM | § 112
November 3, 2005
Coffee Beer
Nestec,
a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestlé, has filed patents (WIPO
application) in every major market worldwide for "coffee beer". Nestec's
non-alcoholic coffee beer smells like strong coffee, has a caffeine kick like a
mule, and foams like beer when poured.
Continue reading "Coffee Beer"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 8:47 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
November 2, 2005
Chief Oops
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recused himself from further proceedings in the appeal of the Laboratory Corp. of America v. Metabolite Laboratories patent suit, after taking part in the early stages. Big John acknowledged he shouldn't have touched the case to begin with.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:32 PM | Litigation
November 1, 2005
R&D leading to IP Strategy at Corning
As reported by MIT Technology Review, over the last four years Corning focused a significant percentage of its R&D on a new way of cleaning up Diesel exhaust. While dirty, this is does not appear to be a sexy business. Regardless, it does provide an interesting example of a firm willing to dump the status quo, give up a lucrative market, invest heavily, and establish a proprietary position through IP in a growing market.
prior art search + 
Newsfeed (RSS)