« November 2010 | Main | January 2011 »
December 29, 2010
Exclusion
WiAV
Solutions sued mobile phone companies for infringing nine patents related to
signal transmission (encoding) and reception (decoding), including seven patents
owned by Mindspeed Technologies. The Mindspeed patents went through ownership
gyrations: assignment, corporate spin-off, and licensing agreement. The district
court got lost trying to follow the ownership bread crumbs, deciding that WiAV
was deprived of constitutional standing by third-party licensing rights, and so
booted the Mindspeed patents. The CAFC saw differently - exclusivity because the
accused are not able to license.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:18 PM | Standing
December 28, 2010
Court Reform
The
Supreme Court has a busy docket of deciding patent law in 2011, with issues
ranging from: patentability; invalidity burden of proof; prosecution laches;
inequitable conduct; extraterritoriality; infringement (inducement, contempt);
and several others. This continues the iron-clad trend of Congress abdicating
its responsibility to fashion law to the courts, role-playing that extends to
every facet of this nation's legal system. Expect the 2011 Congress to waft
another "patent reform" bill, legislative flypaper solely intended to siphon
contributions to its ultimate cause (reelection). In the finale, for the seventh
year running, no passage. All the fireworks in the patent arena this coming year
will again be shot by SCOTUS, with the obligatory sideshow, courtesy of the
CAFC.
Continue reading "Court Reform"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:22 AM | The Patent System
December 24, 2010
Stewing
Over
a third of district court patent decisions are overturned, at least in part, on
appeal. That's a lot of mulligan stew. Claim construction, requiring a rather
intricate reading of ingredients, seems particularly vexing to black-robed
blokes. For years, patent-savvy Congressional Rep.
Darrell Issa has pushed a
bill to train district court judges in patent law. He finally succeeded.
H.R. 628,
establishing a limited pilot program, to test the apparently doubted hypothesis
that education matters, is expected to be signed into law.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 5:02 PM | The Patent System | Comments (1)
Elevated
An
11th-hour confirmation in the lame duck 111th Congressional session: Northern
District of Ohio Judge Kate O'Malley fills a vacant slot on the CAFC. Her honor
is the only district court judge in U.S. history to be elevated to the Federal
Circuit. The CAFC still has two vacancies.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:52 PM | The Patent System
Fine Print
Lazare Kaplan International owns patents claiming laser microinscribing of
gemstones. Two of them,
6,476,351 and descendant
7,010,938, were asserted against PhotoScribe and others. Claim construction
resulted in a summary judgment of literal noninfringement. But Lazare was
allowed to argue the doctrine of equivalents to the jury. The jury found the
patents not
infringed, and not valid. In a bench trial that followed, the district court
found inequitable conduct, for failing to disclose "the Gresser machine" to
the USPTO. Under contract, Herbert Gresser created a nifty machine to
air-cushion the inscriber for Lazare. '351 mentioned Gresser's work (and
patent,
4,392,476, which Lazare also owns), but only in passing.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:28 PM | Claim Construction
December 21, 2010
Chipper
Tessera
designs semiconductors, and thereby manufactures patent litigations. This
episode emanates from the ITC, in an action against several parties: Spansion,
Freescale, ATI, STMicro, and Qualcomm. Motorola settled.
5,852,326 and
6,433,419, going to a particular semiconductor packaging, were asserted.
After typical bureaucratic discord, the ITC found the patents valid and
infringed. The inevitable CAFC appeal inevitably went to claim construction,
infringement, and validity.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:36 PM | ITC
December 20, 2010
Bollocks to the Dollops
Akamai
Technologies, with MIT riding shotgun, asserted:
6,108,703;
6,553,413; &
7,103,645 against Limelight Networks. The patents generally claim delivering
content dollops that go along with serving a web page. The district court judge
overturned the jury's finding of joint infringement of the asserted '703 claims. That
was one for appeal by Akamai, along with claim construction tiffs that led to
non-infringement on the other patents. Joint infringement requires that the
major infringer controls the minor infringer (an agent that is "contractually
obliged"), or it'll blow the joint.
Continue reading "Bollocks to the Dollops"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 1:49 PM | Infringement
December 17, 2010
Resurrection
Medical treatment patents
6,355,623 and
6,680,302 were
flogged to death by the district court using §101. Resurrection came at the
CAFC under Bilski, applying the solitary machine-or-transformation (m-o-t)
test of the time. The Supreme
Court found m-o-t merely "a useful and important clue," and so vacated and remanded
the Prometheus v. Mayo case where '623 and '302 had been so buffeted.
Remand was a revisit, but with eyes wide open to a "liberal encouragement".
Continue reading "Resurrection"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 12:54 PM | § 101 | Comments (7)
December 15, 2010
Latitude
ColorQuick
sued VistaPrint and OfficeMax for patent infringement in the Eastern District of
Texas. Defendants wanted a transfer to Massachusetts. Denied. Petition to the
CAFC for a writ of mandamus, to overturn, failed. "In sum, there are cases where
to hold a trial court to a meaningful application of the § 1404(a) factors
presents only one correct outcome. In those cases, mandamus may be appropriate.
A case such as this, however, shows that a meaningful application of the factors
often creates a reasonable range of choice. Under such circumstances, it is
entirely within the district court's discretion to conclude that in a given case
the § 1404(a) factors of public interest or judicial economy can be of
"paramount consideration," Volkswagen II, 566 F.3d at 1351, and as long
as there is plausible support of record for that conclusion we will not second
guess such a determination, even if the convenience factors call for a different
result." This, with an approving nod to EDT Judge Davis from his
upstairs brethren: "the trial court performed a detailed analysis explaining
that it is very familiar with the only asserted patent and the related
technology, and where there is a co-pending litigation before the trial court
involving the same patent-in-suit..." (CAFC
2010-m954o) precedential
Posted by Patent Hawk at 11:37 AM | Case Law
December 11, 2010
Unzapped
To
limit blood loss during surgery, in a modern variant of cauterization, argon
gas-enhanced electrosurgical instruments are used to zap tissue. Three
competitors tried to zap each other with their patents: ConMed (4,781,175),
Canady (5,207,675)
and ERBE (5,720,745).
"The patents have been the subject of a variety of litigation since their
issuance." This episode is on non-infringement of '745 by Canady by way of
claim construction.
Posted by Patent Hawk at 10:23 PM | Claim Construction
Quiet Broken
For
a decade, Intellectual
Ventures has been amassing a fortune in patents, both by purchase and by
invention. IV has been quietly licensing. The silence was broken Wednesday, when
nine security-software companies who refused quiet negotiations were slapped out
loud with a lawsuit.
Continue reading "Quiet Broken"
Posted by Patent Hawk at 3:32 PM | Patents In Business | Comments (21)
prior art search + 
Newsfeed (RSS)