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January 29, 2010
Diabetic
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. Weak move. The DJ worked: summary judgment of
non-infringement and anticipation of numerous claims of one patent. '551
underwent a bench trial, and didn't survive the operation: invalid due to
obviousness and unenforceable due to inequitable conduct. Abbott appealed.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:25 AM | Prior Art | Comments (0)
January 26, 2010
Restricted Reply
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."
37
CFR § 41.41, on reply briefs: "A reply brief shall not include any new or
non-admitted amendment, or any new or non-admitted affidavit or other evidence."
In a January 7, 2010 expanded-panel BPAI ruling
ex
parte Borden, denying a rehearing of an appeal, the Board ruled much
more restrictively on reply briefs: "The reply brief is not an opportunity to
make arguments that could have been made during prosecution, but were not. Nor
is the reply brief an opportunity to make arguments that could have been made in
the principal brief on appeal to rebut the Examiner's rejections, but were not."
Continue reading "Restricted Reply"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:40 AM | Prosecution | Comments (0)
January 25, 2010
Quinn the Eskimo
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. Quinn's expressed desire is "to encourage an atmosphere
free of the petty and vile Internet discourse that so many traffic in these
days." Apparently, someone else has the same goal. Invent Help is
suing Quinn for "false and misleading claims in their Internet advertising."
Invent Help and Quinn compete to service inventors. Quinn opines that "they
apparently do not like the fact that I have written about invention submission
scams..." Apparently not.
Continue reading "Quinn the Eskimo"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 8:11 PM | | Comments (19)
January 22, 2010
Vexed Fax
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. Catch Curve sued Venali with its five patents. A narrow claim construction resulted in requiring the use of the facsimile
protocol, and that transmission was over a switched telephone network. Caught
out, Catch Curve curtailed its assertion, but lost in summary judgment on
noninfringement, leading to a last gasp transmission to the appeals court.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:28 PM | Claim Construction | Comments (0)
January 19, 2010
Scan This
"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. This is one of the reasons why the average processing time
for a patent is roughly three years." - President Obama
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:57 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (9)
January 15, 2010
Going Up
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. The CAFC told the
district court where to go, while leaving the final destination indefinite.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:32 PM | Claim Construction | Comments (0)
January 14, 2010
Bull Run
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 $1.1 billion from patent licensing in 2009. But patent maven
Ocean Tomo holds that Microsoft's patent portfolio is three-fold more valuable
than IBM's. "The ultimate value is not some rating," toots Manny Schecter, IBM's
chief patent counsel. "It's the leverage we are able to get from the patent
[licensing] negotiations." Right there is the rub about Microsoft and patents:
they don't know how to monetize patents, nor even valuate them.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:15 AM | Patents In Business | Comments (1)
January 9, 2010
Unfried Chicken
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. Herein, RTI gets fried pursuing denial to a bitter
end.
Continue reading "Unfried Chicken"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:12 PM | Infringement | Comments (0)
January 8, 2010
Nabbed
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. This episode is a sad comment on
David Kappos, early in his tenure at the helm of the agency.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:22 AM | The Patent Office | Comments (48)
January 5, 2010
Interference
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.
Philips sued in Washington district court, where the judge sua sponte ditched
the case with prejudice, provoking appeal. The CAFC reminded of the intricate
rules that the PTO ignored, and the district court failed to heed.
Continue reading "Interference"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:44 PM | Prosecution | Comments (8)
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