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October 31, 2007
The Empire Strikes Out
Judge
James Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia issued a last-minute preliminary
injunction against the USPTO imposing its new rules limiting continuations and
claims examined, finding merit that at least some of the rule changes may be illegal, exceeding
statutory authority.
Continue reading "The Empire Strikes Out"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 7:45 PM | The Patent Office
Called Card
AT&T
won a reversal of the stunning $156 million tab for infringing TGIP calling card
patents. Judge Ron Clark in the Eastern District of Texas
cast aside
a doctrine of equivalents (DOE) jury verdict based on non-infringement, given
claim construction.
Continue reading "Called Card"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:27 AM | Litigation
October 30, 2007
The Empire Strikes Back
Last
episode, Luke Tafas and Obi Wan GlaxoSmithKline assaulted the examination death
star, backed by legions of patent jedi. Now, Darth Dudas whips out
a sputtering
light saber in reply.
On November 1, 2007, the USPTO expects to implement rules aimed to improve the quality and efficiency of patent application examination, lead to higher quality patents, and reduce a growing backlog of applications that is crippling the Office. The rules are the product of extensive planning and development.
Continue reading "The Empire Strikes Back"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 8:07 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (1)
Patent Fairness
Economist
Pat Choate has produced a
research paper for the
U.S. Business
and Industry Council (USBIC), examining "the arguments in favor of patent
“reform” that are being spread by the
Coalition for Patent Fairness (CPF), the organization representing Big Tech
corporations on the issue." USBIC President Kevin Kearns asks the large-issue
questions:
These Big Tech multinationals were themselves start-ups with a few patents and a few dreams not that long ago, and do not need to alter the U.S. patent system to conform to their business model at the expense of other models. Simply put, do some of the most profitable corporations in America need to add marginally to their bottom lines by undermining the patent protections that a full range of other companies depend upon for their livelihood – not to mention their employees? Having made it to the top, should they be permitted to deny the next generation of small technology innovators the opportunity to climb the American ladder of success?
Continue reading "Patent Fairness"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:17 PM | The Patent System | Comments (3)
Concerns
Last
Thursday, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
faxed
a
letter to PTO honcho Jon Dudas, raising concerns about the imminent rules
for limiting continuations and examination of claims: "The proposed rules... may
have the unintended consequences of stifling... innovation, and I urge you to
consider delaying their implementation."
Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:19 PM | The Patent Office
October 29, 2007
Halloween
Patent
prosecutors will be tricked or treated before
All-hallow-even, as East
Virginia Judge James Chacheris has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to hear
GlaxoSmithKline's motion for an injunction against the USPTO's odious
examination rules changes, the day before the rules are set to go into effect,
establishing a pagan ritual of patent sacrifice, beginning All Hallows Day. The patent community cheers GSK in hopes of securing a
temporary restraining order from Judge Chaceris, whose choice of hearing date
intimates a just complaint.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:21 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (4)
October 27, 2007
Crusader
Hal
Wegner
sallies forth with a missive to John Whealan, former USPTO
Solictor, now on the Senate majority staff.
Twenty months ago in your role as the Solicitor for the United States Patent and Trademark Office you addressed the Bar Association of the District of Columbia; you spoke against a statutory elimination of excessive continuations applications because of an Agency "bubble" problem, while asserting that the Congress would clearly support repeal of multiple continuing applications – that your former Agency is now eliminating through rulemaking you helped craft in your former role.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:48 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (1)
Pick Me Up
SanDisk,
a flash memory maker, saw its shares plummet since publishing its Q3 results
on October 17. What better way to say "I'm a player!" than a rollicking
patent enforcement campaign. So Wednesday, SanDisk unfurled assertions
against 25 companies, with two beefy actions in the new hot rocket docket of
Western Wisconsin, and a large order of fries at the old stalwart ITC.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:20 AM | Patents In Business | Comments (2)
October 26, 2007
Beyond Black Thursday
Hal
Wegner on the bigger picture:
The Continuation Rules are the current focus of attention absorbing the attention of the patent community - will "Black Thursday" actually transpire next week, November 1st, when the Continuation Rules are scheduled to take effect? Will there be a preliminary injunction to block implementation? What, ultimately, will the Federal Circuit say about all this?
Continue reading "Beyond Black Thursday"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:53 PM | The Patent System | Comments (1)
Sinking Surfactant
6,593,318
& divisional
6,593,320, owned by Par Pharmaceuticals, "relate to stable flocculated
suspensions of megestrol acetate and methods for making such suspensions." Par's
patented work sprung from trying to design around
5,338,732, owned by Bristol-Myers Squibb. In the event, Par sued Roxanne for
infringement. Roxanne got a district court summary judgment of invalidity via
lack of enablement (§112 ¶1) because the claims were so broad. Par futilely appealed.
Continue reading "Sinking Surfactant"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:15 PM | § 112
October 25, 2007
On the Verizon
Verizon
and Vonage settled Verizon's patent assertion. Vonage had been found infringing
two Verizon patents, a ruling upheld last month by the CAFC, with a third
remanded for specific damage reassessment. Vonage has requested an en banc
rehearing. The price tag is $80 or $120 million, depending on the outcome of
CAFC decision; the lower figure if Vonage prevails.
Continue reading "On the Verizon"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:17 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (3)
Battle Stations
Reports flow in of siege at the USPTO
fortress over examination limits. Casualties have already occurred: the twin
angels of human relationships, Equity & Comity, appear seriously wounded. The
large caliber catapult known as IBM has rolled into position, lobbing projectiles at the fortress.
Now we hear that a defector is whispering dissent, that the cause may not be just,
aghast at the thought of innocent lives, infant inventions strangled
as they lie in their cradles.
Continue reading "Battle Stations"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:28 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (4)
October 24, 2007
Fair Value
One
of the red-meat brethren of corporations clamoring for statutory patent
evisceration, Intel, inked a $250 million dollar agreement with Transmeta,
settling patent infringement charges leveled in 2006.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:24 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
Rabble-rousers
The
Innovation Alliance squared off
with the Coalition for Patent Fairness
today. Chorused together, the sound is a keening for change, but not the slop
that sits on top of S. 1145, the Senate companion to H.R. 1908.
Continue reading "Rabble-rousers"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:51 AM | The Patent System
Hockey Helmets and Patent Markets
What
do patent owners have in common with hockey players?
Continue reading "Hockey Helmets and Patent Markets"
Posted by Michael Martin at 7:56 AM | The Patent System | Comments (1)
October 23, 2007
Invention Undermined
Bryan
Zerhusen of McCarter &
English opines that
KSR
& the
new USPTO obviousness examination Guidelines ring a death knell
for many constitutionally patentable inventions:
It is now apparent that in the view of the USPTO, KSR went much further than previously thought in eroding the certainty established by decades of Federal Circuit precedent. Taken together, KSR and the Guidelines result in an unfair system where the spirit of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution has been undermined. Furthermore, in some fields of art it seems as though only pioneering inventions are likely to be patentable.
Continue reading "Invention Undermined"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 9:33 PM | Prior Art | Comments (8)
Wasuri Mono
Chrishan Samuel hired
Townsend and Townsend to prosecute his
patent. On
May 20, 2005, Townsend employee Mr. R took the BART train to go to the post
office to file Samuel's application; he promptly fell asleep on the train, but
awoke just before his stop. Groggy, he left his bag with the application on the train. Samuel found out the next
day, and the papers were filed on May 21. Samuel petitioned the USPTO to waive
37 CFR §1.10,
to get the filing date wound back a day.
Continue reading "Wasuri Mono"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 5:36 PM | Prosecution | Comments (4)
Sovereign Immunity
Biomedical
Patent Management wants to sue the Department of Health Services (DHS) of the
State of California for infringing
4,874,693, claiming screening for birth defects in pregnant women. DHS has
intervened in a previous action against Kaiser, but this time sought a pass
using the sovereign immunity defense, under the Eleventh Amendment. That's all
it takes for the state to skip out; that the state involved itself previously in
a related action makes no difference; it's not "the case at hand," i.e., the
same case. (CAFC
06-1515)
Continue reading "Sovereign Immunity"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:07 PM | Case Law
Speculator
Bruce
Sewell, Intel general counsel, wailed in Washington Monday about "people
who buy up patents for the purpose of litigating them. We're not talking about
individual inventors who sue for patent infringement. We're talking about patent
speculators who warehouse patents and use those patents to go after successful
companies."
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:22 AM | The Patent System | Comments (6)
October 22, 2007
Insignificant Billions
Richard
B. Belzer, on behalf of masked men, ran numbers from masked men that led him
to conclude that the USPTO's proposed prior art Information Disclosure Statement
(IDS) rules related to the pending 5-25 examination rules are economically
significant, contrary to patent agency assertion. As in, $7.3 billion a year
significant. As former Senator Scoop Jackson of Washington state once mused: "a
billion here, a billion there; before you know it, you're talking real money."
Continue reading "Insignificant Billions"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:01 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (1)
MPEP E8r6
The
Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP), eight edition, revision six (E8r6)
is now available
in PDF format. The more convenient HTML format is not quite ready yet; stay
tuned for updates. That is all; carry on, fine prosecutors everywhere.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:00 PM | Prosecution
October 21, 2007
Domino
A
flaw of temporal displacement, but very human: in hindsight, most everything
appears obvious. Prior to the Supreme Court
KSR ruling, patentable inventions correlated to
real-world invention: incremental, and combinatorial. As Thomas Jefferson, the
first patent board director, observed, new inventions spring from previously
unthought combinations. Until KSR, concern about hindsight reasoning rendered
courts circumspect for a metric that grappled with this subtle and pernicious
tendency. No more.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:32 PM | Prior Art | Comments (2)
October 20, 2007
Thinning the Patent Thicket
Thanks
to KSR,
the bar of
§103(a)
is set obscenely high for patent prosecution. Examiner rejections
on obviousness, regularly combining three and four references to cover all the
claim limitations, reek of hindsight, and are pasted with the thinnest of glue:
e.g. "it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time of invention to combine four patentably distinct references of unrelated
subject matter because it would have been advantageous, as the applicant
claimed."
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:25 PM | Prosecution | Comments (1)
Madison Blues
AT&T
sued Vonage Wednesday in the Western District of Wisconsin for infringing
6,487,200, of 1996 vintage, claiming basic VOIP using a regular telephone.
This on the heels of
settling with Sprint, and still wrangling with
Verizon.
AT&T and Vonage had been negotiating for some time prior to AT&T losing its
patience.
Continue reading "Madison Blues"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:44 AM | Litigation
October 19, 2007
Stopping Limiting Continuations Continued
Inventor
Dr. Tafas was first
to the courthouse to sue Jon Dudas for the new examination limits,
specifically, limiting continuations.
GlaxoSmithKline followed suit.
Steven J. Moore
at Kelley Drye & Warren, Tafas
counsel, informs that "the Glaxo case has been consolidated into the Tafas
case." Tafas has filed an
amended complaint. And Hal Wegner analyzes the justifications, and pitfalls,
of late-stage continuation filings.
Continue reading "Stopping Limiting Continuations Continued"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:51 PM | Prosecution | Comments (1)
October 18, 2007
Drive Train
Paice
sued Toyota over three hybrid electric vehicle drive train patents:
5,343,970;
6,209,672;
6,554,088. Paice scored a doctrine of equivalents (DOE) win, with $4.3
million in damages. The district court sua sponte imposed an ongoing royalty on
Toyota. Toyota appealed the infringement verdict, while Paice wanted a permanent
injunction; neither got in gear. But the CAFC remanded for the district court to
justify its ongoing royalty rate, though considered it permissible for a court
to set such a rate, albeit gently discouraging it as general practice.
Dissenting judge Rader thought better: that the court setting the rate without
the parties' input smacked of a compulsory license.
Continue reading "Drive Train"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 9:59 PM | Damages
Spoiled Child
Susan
Dudley, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)
for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), overseer of regulatory
shenanigans by government agencies, is a bad mother to the errant child known as
the patent office; letting it eat far too much cake of its own baking for
everybody's own good. Ms. Dudley was the one who
let the examination limits
rules slide on by without so much as a "boo." Now comes a crowd of
community-minded citizens to complain once more, that Dudas the Menace is
fibbing again; this time over new rules for requiring Information Disclosure
Statements (IDS) for patent submissions: "In the proposed IDS Rule, USPTO has
again misrepresented to OMB the breadth and depth of the effects likely to
result. The proposed IDS Rule is clearly “economically significant.” If
finalized, it will impose billions of dollars of burden on patent
applicants and owners."
Continue reading "Spoiled Child"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:53 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (4)
Revenge of the Jedi
It
is virtually impossible to find anyone outside the Patent Office who thinks the
new rules on claims and continuations schedule to take effect on November 1,
2007, make any sense at all. The new rules are simply absurd. Not only do they
limit the number of claims unless you want to file an Examination Support
Document, but they also limit the number of continuations you can file and they
are retroactive. On top of that there has been some evidence to suggest that the
Patent Office
started enforcing the new rules in mid October 2007, although they appear to
have seen the error of their ways and have stopped such enforcement. Who could
possibly think that any of this is fair?
Continue reading "Revenge of the Jedi"
Posted by Gene Quinn at 10:54 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (3)
October 17, 2007
Flawed Gem?
Gemstar,
which has a patent portfolio of over 200 patents, mostly related to online TV
guides, has sued Toshiba for infringing one of its Japanese variants. Gemstar
also has a current case against Digeo in the Central District of California.
Continue reading "Flawed Gem?"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 8:33 PM | Litigation
Lax
Feeling
the pressure of pendency no longer, the bowels of the USPTO are tightening for
the 5/25 examination limits, with the patent agency prematurely playing loose
with its own rules. While the limits are stated to be in effect November 1, de
facto implementation is already proceeding, as it appears unexamined patent
applications with more claims than allowed under the new rules are being pulled
from their dockets, effectively pre-retarded.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:10 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (2)
Willful Wavering
Owing
to the
Seagate CAFC ruling this past August, essentially scuttling patent
infringement willfulness, Southern California U.S. District Judge James Selna
mulled a new trial for Qualcomm in its double-damages loss of $39.3 million to
Broadcom. "It would be an understatement to say that the Federal Circuit rewrote
decades of case law interpreting the requirements for demonstrating willful
infringement," Selna penned in his opinion.
Continue reading "Willful Wavering"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:43 PM | Damages | Comments (3)
October 16, 2007
In the Red Hat
Showing
the way for Microsoft to stop shooting off its mouth about Linux getting a
patent free ride and slap down a lawsuit, as if Microsoft needs the money or
their market position is being imperiled; Linux distributors
Red Hat and
Novell are facing the sharp end of the
patent stick; the stick having on its sharp but gooey end moldy Xerox patents
now owned by an Acacia subsidiary:
5,072,412,
5,533,183 and
5,394,521. These patents claimed shared user interface workspaces, but are now
claiming to be able to rake money off the table.
Continue reading "In the Red Hat"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 4:51 PM | Patents In Business
October 15, 2007
Patent Malpractice
The
appeals court ruled in two patent malpractice cases today:
AMT v. Akin Gump
and Immuocept v.
Fulbright & Jaworski. Patent malpractice is found a federal issue under
28 U.S.C. § 1338.
Continue reading "Patent Malpractice"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 9:51 PM | Litigation | Comments (2)
October 13, 2007
Obvious Discrepancy
Translogic
Technology sued Hitachi and Renesas over electronics multiplexer patent
5,162,666. Beginning shortly after assertion, Hitachi threw mud until it
stuck: filing a series of five reexamination requests, later consolidated into
one. The reexam and litigation trains rolled on dual tracks. The patent having
withstood invalidity assault in court, Translogic scored an $86 million damages
award from an Oregon jury, and a permanent injunction from the judge. But the
reexam examiner found the patent combo-obvious; a finding upheld by the patent appeal board.
Hitachi appealed the court decision, while Translogic appealed the patent office
invalidation.
Continue reading "Obvious Discrepancy"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:27 PM | Prior Art | Comments (3)
Post-Grant Pogrom
The
Patent Reform Act of 2007 carries an effective presumption of patent agency
incompetence by offering a post-grant opposition challenge, a more hellish
version of the current reexamination action that works just fine. An innocent inventor
with a newly minted patent faces a corporation hell-bent on taking the patent
out of the picture, so the corporation files a post-grant opposition, a process
that ties up the patent for five years or more while costing the inventor up to
a half million dollars to defend his patent grant; not a cheery prospect
many inventors could afford.
Continue reading "Post-Grant Pogrom"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:55 PM | The Patent System | Comments (1)
October 12, 2007
Hucksters
In
a woe-is-us shuck-and-jive press release, the same folks that'd have you think
ethanol from corn is a good idea want the Patent Reform Act of 2007 to pass as a means of eviscerating patent enforcement. "American
Corn Growers Association (ACGA)... does not oppose new technology such as
GMOs, but we must... level the playing field for small farmers." Leveling
the playing field means
getting the same subsidy for infringing intellectual property that corn farmers
receive for growing their crops in the first place; looking to Uncle Sam for
another hand-out. That's why it's called "free enterprise."
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:32 PM | The Patent System | Comments (3)
Speechless
5,799,273
covers software speech recognition. Asserted by AllVoice against Nuance Communications,
summary judgment shot the patent down to indefiniteness and best mode. The
appeals court reversed. The district court had failed to consider the level of
one of ordinary skill in construing the claims; definite enough to one skilled
enough. The CAFC also relied upon claim differentiation for construction. As to
best mode: "every claim need not contain every feature taught in the
specification."
Posted by Patent Hawk at 2:10 PM | Claim Construction
October 11, 2007
Necessary Medicine
GlaxoSmithKline is attempting to vaccinate inventors
from the examination limits pandemic about to hit, which inexorably will lead to
digestive distress and headaches for prosecutors, as well as depression for
inventors who cannot adequately protect their inventions. GSK's medication was
injected in the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday against Jon Dudas as USPTO
honcho.
Continue reading "Necessary Medicine"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:04 PM | The Patent Office | Comments (2)
October 10, 2007
Lights Out
Ole
Nilssen reaped a slew of patents related to electrical lighting. He asserted 15
against Osram Sylvania. Osram got the district court to find five reasons that
the patents were unenforceable due to inequitable conduct, and the CAFC
concurred. While not egregious in outrageousness, the number of reasons puts
Nilssen in the Guinness Book of Bad Patents.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:21 PM | Inequitable Conduct
The Obvious Guide
The
USPTO
published its examination guidelines for determining obviousness in light of
the SCOTUS KSR v. Teleflex ruling.
From the patent office announcement:
“The Guidelines stress that the familiar factual inquiries announced by the Supreme Court in its much earlier decision, Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), remain the basis for every decision regarding obviousness,” noted Commissioner for Patents John Doll. “That is, patent examiners will continue to consider (1) the scope and content of the prior art, (2) the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art, (3) the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art, and (4) objective evidence relevant to the issue of obviousness.”
Continue reading "The Obvious Guide"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:33 PM | Prior Art | Comments (5)
October 9, 2007
Anti-Submarine
Attention
Inventors - the Peer-to-Patent
people want you to expose yourself. You'll need a waiver to wag it, because the
whole thing is barely legal. The USPTO-sponsored pilot program to let nerds with
too much time on their hands play whack-a-mole with your patent application is
promoting itself. Given that the program is limited to 250 applications, and has
been going for months, with name-plating from major corporations, who apparently
are not participating very actively, this smacks of desperation.
Continue reading "Anti-Submarine"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 5:33 PM | Prosecution | Comments (4)
Backhand
Slapping
a happy face on a dressing down, the patent agency carries the torch of the
recent
GAO report dunning them for not slapping a happy face on examiners so
they'll stay working at the USPTO, and for not hiring enough examiners to meet
workload. An internal office website posting has USPTO Director Jon Dudas
praising the GAO report.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 5:08 PM | The Patent Office
Examination Limits Briefing
Examiners
have just been briefed on the examination limits. The USPTO PowerPoint
presentation, available
here, serves as an excellent walk-through of the impending rules, with,
naturally, occasional agency spin.
Continue reading "Examination Limits Briefing"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 4:53 PM | The Patent Office
Trial Lawyers' Nightmare
19
attorneys that represented Qualcomm in its debauched video compression patent
suit against Broadcom are fighting to defend themselves against accusation of
hiding evidence, hobbled by sacrosanct attorney-client privilege.
Continue reading "Trial Lawyers' Nightmare"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:25 AM | Inequitable Conduct | Comments (6)
October 8, 2007
Vonage & Sprint Settle
Vonage
settled its patent flap with Sprint Nextel, agreeing to fork out $80 million for
past damages and ongoing license.
Continue reading "Vonage & Sprint Settle"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:22 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
October 7, 2007
Fore
Patent
infotainment at the 19th hole: John Paul Newport in his Golf Journal at the Wall
Street Journal putts
an interesting tale of golf ball patents.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:09 AM | Patents In Business
October 6, 2007
Bad Religion
Ever-congenial
IBM has withdrawn USPA
2007/0162321, claiming outsourcing of services, after a
Slashdot nerd
raised a ruckus.
Continue reading "Bad Religion"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:10 AM | Patents In Business
October 5, 2007
Not Extortion
Judge Marsh Pechman in the Western District of Washington
sanctioned Eon-Net for
its swing at Flagstar and others for infringing
6,683,697. "The Court was shocked to learn" that Eon-Net had an enforcement
campaign going, Pechman diddled. She then got hammered for her naiveté by the CAFC: Eon-Net deserves some
respect.
Continue reading "Not Extortion"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:58 AM | Litigation | Comments (1)
Counterproductive
As
pendency has ballooned, USPTO management has been pushing a crack-the-whip
production system for examiners which has met
stiff resistance
from POPA, the examiner corps professional
organization. Now the oversight GAO fingers the PTO for ignoring the burgeoning
backlog in its hiring goals, and not adequately addressing examiner attrition:
culprit #1 - production goals.
Continue reading "Counterproductive"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:21 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (6)
October 4, 2007
Later Generation
Genetically
engineered herbicide-resistant plant seeds are the blooming sprout in the
agri-business patent crop. Monsanto, which has an extensive portfolio, tried to
twist Sygenta's ear of corn for infringing
5,538,880,
6,013,863 and
4,940,835. One
fact that led to summary judgment of non-infringement was that Sygenta's seeds
were a later generation, the progenitor seed pre-dating the asserted patents.
Another was that Syngenta had license to produce progeny seeds. And the kicker
was that Sygenta didn't perform all the process steps of an asserted claim:
Monsanto did the initial claimed steps. Another problem that Monsanto had was
claiming a process for all plants, when it had fiddled just a few.
Continue reading "Later Generation"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 9:51 PM | Claim Construction
October 2, 2007
Amateur Hour Open Season
Chris
Wong, project manager of the
Peer to Patent pilot program, where select voluntary patent applications are
rousted by amateur-found prior art, wants the law changed to allow third-party
prior art submission for all patent applications.
Continue reading "Amateur Hour Open Season"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:40 PM | Prosecution | Comments (2)
Patent Buddy
Patent
Buddy looks like a Hello Kitty version
of George Orwell's 1984 for patent people. It'll at least serve as a ready spyglass
for patent law firm personnel poaching.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:42 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
Useless Patents
Steve
Perlman is a Silicon Valley computer maven, who helped colorize the Macintosh
back in 1986, and invented WebTV. In the British online publication
The Register, whose byline is "Biting the hand that feeds IT," Perlman
extols the reality of the Patent Deform Act of 2007: "This is isn't pharm versus
high-tech. This is people who need patents versus people who don't need
patents." That includes those in the
Coalition for Patent Fairness, a corporate lynch mob who'd rather be free to steal IP than
have license to protect it.
Continue reading "Useless Patents"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:06 PM | The Patent System | Comments (2)
October 1, 2007
Defective Non-Assignment
IpVenture
sallied forth to rake money off Prostar Computer and Midern Computer for
infringing
6,216,235; Douglass Thomas, and his dad, Alan, inventors. The defendants got
a squeamish district court to dismiss the case owing to lack of standing. The
appeals court thought the lawsuit standing was copasetic.
Continue reading "Defective Non-Assignment"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 7:01 PM | Case Law
Past Time
Incompetence
takes two basic forms. One is lacking skill to implement: a lack of
craftsmanship. Implementation incompetence is, at best, low aptitude. The other is
inability to conceptualize: a lack of comprehension. You can't clue the
clueless. Incompetence thrives at the top tier of the USPTO, and it is damaging
our country.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:49 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (7)
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