Source: http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/03/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 22:15:15+00:00

Document:
So that’s it, then. TomTom folded like a house of cards.
Much is made of IBM's being the top recipient of issued US patents. Not so much is made of what is in the patents. Published US application 20090083107, titled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR STRATEGIC GLOBAL RESOURCE SOURCING , is worthy of note.
An important challenge in shifting to globally integrated enterprises is planning the location and capacity of the global workforce. There is a need to provide a robust and reusable sourcing template to identify new/expand existing global resource pools, analyze trade-off between qualitative and quantitative aspects across multiple global locations and model the global nature of resource sourcing. While resource sourcing involves both qualitative and quantitative aspects, existing methods do not adequately consider both aspects in combination. For example, existing methods may consider both qualitative and quantitative aspects of sourcing, but they may be evaluated using two sets of metrics which are not readily comparable. In contrast, this invention allows decision makers to quantitatively explore trade-offs between one or more qualitative factors, or between qualitative and quantitative factors. Therefore, this invention provides a more effective method for making resource sourcing decisions.
IBM's patent application is about outsourcing.
optimizing the sourcing strategy with respect to said one or more quantitative measures subject to one or more constraints.
The first inventor is Ching-Hua Chen-Ritzo of Mahopac, NY, who also brought us 20080208658, METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ESTIMATING SUPPLY IMPACT ON A FIRM UNDER A GLOBAL CRISIS, and 20080177606, METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ALLOCATING CALLS TO CALL CENTER VENDORS (with Laura Wynter). Such patents fall generally in what is termed business method patents.
One can only ask: what was IBM thinking?
Research and Markets, one of the world’s largest research resources, has recently released a guide to Offshoring Patent Services to India. The report gives an exhaustive account of the Indian patent services offshoring industry, and deals with topics ranging from the present market players and future growth figures.
Bad lawyering for ColoradoU in Churchill mess?
Patrick O'Rourke, a CU attorney, saw his questioning backfire at one point when he asked Churchill if he was really arguing that he didn't recognize the Cohen essay when he had edited it once before, for another book, just months earlier.
O'Rourke had the title pages of both versions of the essay put up on a big screen in an attempt to show that they had the same title. But they did not.
One wonders if the two Cohen essays involved any self-plagiarism / multiple publication by Cohen or if O'Rourke made a self-evident mistake? If the former, using plagiarism to attack a plagiarist is sublimely ironic.
Churchill plagiarism investigation the flip side of Poshard story?
While on the stand, Churchill did concede that sections of an essay by Fay Cohen, a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, was used without giving her credit in the book "State of Native America," but he said that someone else - he's not sure who - was responsible for the content of the writing.
At one point, O'Rourke asked Churchill whether he was telling the jury that when he edited the second book just months after the first he didn't recognize Cohen's prose.
"Yes, that's what I'm telling them," Churchill said.
But O'Rourke's questioning backfired when he asked Churchill a second time how he could not have known both essays were written by Cohen when they had the same name. After Churchill challenged that assertion, O'Rourke had the two essays put up on a big screen in the corner of the courtroom, and that showed the two articles were, indeed, titled differently.
"You know what professor, you are right, I am wrong," O'Rourke said.
Later, he questioned Churchill at length about ghost-writing, pointing out that Churchill contends he wrote the piece that was published under Robbins' name and then later cited it as a source in other writings of his.
Asked if he disagreed that that was deceptive, Churchill replied, "Yes, I disagree."
Churchill argued that ghost-writing is an entirely accepted practice in the academic world, and he said he could bring numerous witnesses to the courtroom who would testify that way.
During his cross examination O'Rourke asked Churchill why he said that he preferred to be called doctor at the start of his testimony on Monday when he has only earned a master's degree.
Churchill: "I have an honorary doctorate.
O'Rourke: "They gave you an honorary title?"
IPBiz notes the Laurence Tribe matter got into the area of ghost-writiing.
IPBiz notes that Ben Franklin's title of Dr. was an honorary degree.
Some energy experts say that a lack of intellectual-property protection in China is a big impediment to advancing and disseminating designs for less-polluting power plants and the like. But Dr. Chu proposed that dropping intellectual property protection might actually be the way to go on some technologies.
So any area like that I think is where we should work very hard in a very collaborative way — by very collaborative I mean share all intellectual property as much as possible.
IPBiz asks does "sharing IP" mean "dropping IP protection"?
Asked about the idea of sharing clean technologies openly with other countries in a Green Inc. interview this week, Steve Fludder, the head of the green “Ecomagination” division of General Electric, aggressively refuted the idea.
Mr. Fludder said that he and others at G.E. “totally support the notion that the technology needs to get to where it should get to” — for example, making sure solar panels are installed in sunny parts of the world — but that there is a different way to accomplish that. He noted, for example, that G.E. already has a wind-turbine manufacturing plant in China that is employing locals and competing directly with other Chinese manufacturers.
If that is the case, it is an extraordinary thing for such a senior member of the Obama government to have said. If it in any way reflects what the President himself thinks, then it could signal a very worrying period ahead for IP owners in the US and elsewhere. Such a basic lack of understanding about how IP works is, quite frankly, terrifying.
Incredibly, the American chemical Society was meeting in Salt Lake City this week and there were many papers on cold fusion, or as their authors prefer LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions). These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look. They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it’s science.
Condemning plagiarism is an easy saber to rattle. It's not a journalism thing; it's a common-sense thing. Grade-schoolers know better. And with the Internet, plagiarism is not only easy to do, it is easy to expose.
Less than ONE WEEK earlier, on 22 March 09, at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City, Professor George M. Bodner observed: Confusion about what constitutes plagiarism — not malicious intent — is the leading cause of plagiarism at the graduate school level.
IPBiz notes that, unless grade-schoolers lose their ethical compass on the way to grad school, Schlencker and Bodner both can't be right.
When I read Lee casually dismiss her alleged plagiarism as unintentional, I thought of the many real journalists who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. This is a brutal time for the fourth estate, and it's a real bad time to defend fundamental sins.
Remember when defenders of SIU's Glenn Poshard complained about the manner in which Poshard's plagiarism came to light?
And just because the misconduct investigation [of Churchill] grew out of the firestorm over the essay — which CU later determined to be protected free speech — didn’t mean the university could disregard the information it was getting about Churchill’s scholarship, [Michael] Carrigan testified.
As IPBiz noted in the Poshard matter, plagiarism is plagiarism, and can be evaluated independently of the motives of the exposer of the plagiarism.
In a further sign the jury is giving serious consideration to Churchill’s claims, one juror asked Rosse if he ever considered assigning someone other than CU law professor Marianne Wesson — who Churchill accused of bias — to chair the investigative committee. Questions from jurors are reviewed by lawyers in the case and then posed to the witness by the judge.
Rosse said he couldn’t remember.
There is a link to a press conference about a symposium at the American Chemical Society on LENR ("cold fusion"), which took place in Salt Lake City in March 2009.
The 'cold fusion' device produced this pattern of 'triple tracks' that may be caused by high-energy neutrons resulting from a nuclear reaction.
Twenty years ago this week, a pair of previously unknown scientists stunned the world by announcing they'd done the impossible by achieving nuclear fusion in a lab flask at room temperature.
Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons quickly became celebrities as the news media hailed them for discovering a cheap source of nearly limitless power. But it all fell apart as other scientists couldn't duplicate their results, and the pair later admitted they'd made mistakes in the experiments.
Now a U.S. Navy researcher, speaking on the anniversary of their announcement and in the same city where they made it, thinks Fleischmann and Pons may have been right.
In a paper presented on Monday (23 March 09), chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss told the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City that her team had gotten "very significant" evidence of some sort of nuclear reaction.
"To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from an LENR device," said Mosier-Boss, a researcher at the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, in a press release.
Highly energetic neutrons, which Mosier-Boss' team detected using special neutron-trapping plastic, are emitted from atoms splitting apart — or fusing together — and indicate that a serious nuclear reaction is going on.
"LENR" stands for "low energy nuclear reaction," which in this case happens in a lab flask containing palladium chloride mixed with deuterium, or "heavy water" made with a special form of hydrogen — the same setup Fleischmann and Pons used.
When an electrode was dipped into the flask and the power switched on, Mosier-Boss said, odd patterns of triple neutron strikes would appear on the adjacent plastic receptor.
Fleischmann and Pons' results centered on unexplainable excess heat resulting from the reaction. Mosier-Boss didn't get that, but the neutrons are even more significant.
"People have always asked 'Where's the neutrons?'" Mosier-Boss said in the press release. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons. We now have evidence that there are neutrons present in these LENR reactions."
In the knowledge economy patents need to take on the role of building rather than blocking. To create such a world firms will need to focus more on developing their patents focused on business goals not bonus schemes, as well as spending a great deal of time understanding the patents of others. In this world patent examination (note: examination not patents as such) becomes less important, as patents become more of a means to objectify knowledge for transfer as opposed to a means of blocking one another. Since only high quality patents are commercialised - studies suggest only 10% - and these 10% are scrutinised in depth, why is there a need to examine patents at all? Most examinations are irrelevant (the 90%) and the others are redundant. Just stamp all patents as valid and fine the hell out of those actors that later try to use those that were obviously not valid when submitted. Let the firms do more of the work as they need to do this anyway in the knowledge economy.
I don't really believe that patents will ever be automatically issued, nor do I really care, but issuing patents automatically is not any more ludicrous than filing patents without any thought of their business use or launching R&D and product development without a thorough understanding of the patent landscape. It was just a thought experiment to get people to focus on the responsibility of business and the significant effect that can have on the patent system outside of examing the patent system as a closed administrative system.
As a side note I'm not claiming that automatic issuance is a new idea and I am familiar with Lemley, who is a highly cited scholar. My argument is about business practice and the growing irrelevance or redundance of the patent institution if it is not better plugged into the strategic technology and business development of firms in the 21st century. This is the real challenge for us IP professionals - to be relevant to business not the PTO.
IPBiz notes that in the business world, there are "our patents" and "their patents." Of "their patents," an article in Harvard Business Review summed up the situation: "plagiarize with pride." Previously, one had the strategy, take it and make it your own. That's assuming the patents are read at all. The IT folks tell their engineers not to read the patents of others. Of "our patents," there will be expansion of claim scope and blocking patents. These uses by the business world of the patent system do not make the patent system either irrelevant or redundant, but they do create controversy.
None of this business use is directed to what the patent system is supposed to be about. The patent system is to foster disclosure of information, into the public domain for all to know, by giving protection to the inventor (information disclosure) against theft. Whether or not innovation arises is up to the free market system.
Of the remarks by Vic Kley, the PURPOSE of the US patent system is to foster public disclosure of useful information (inventions) by offering protection to the discloser from theft for a limited period of time. With the discloser-inventor protected, the free market system determines what inventions will lead to innovations, which actually change (and advance) the way we live. The patent system is directed to inventions, not to innovations.
Of Heiden, the issues with the patent system are NOT ones of irrelevance or redundance. Patent reform is not being sought because the system is irrelevant, but because some people think it is causing problems, largely in disputes over "how much" money should change hands.
AFTER an anonymous source revealed plagiarism in articles written by Heather Lee of Ocala Magazine, THEN the North Central Florida Society of Professional Journalists Professional Chapter rescinded awards given for her work. The REAL STORY is why the North Central Florida Society of Professional Journalists Professional Chapter gave the awards in the first place.
In some cases, articles contained four cases of plagiarism, said Norman P. Lewis, an assistant professor of journalism at UF.
“It’s pretty unusual to have multiple sources for a plagiarism piece,” said Lewis, whose research specialty is plagiarism.
Of the 85 to 100 examples of plagiarism he has studied closely, Lee’s are some of the worst, Lewis said.
“It’s certainly one of the more serious cases I’ve ever encountered,” Lewis said..
IPBiz wonders if Lewis studied the Poshard matter at SIU or the plagiarizing English prof at the University of Florida.
Confusion on the origin of most plagiarism?
What was George M. Bodner thinking?
SIUDE noted: The committee charged with revising the university’s plagiarism policy is expected to release a final draft this week, administrators said Monday.
If all goes to plan, the draft would be given to constituency groups this week and a final report be presented to the SIU Board of Trustees during its May 7 meeting.
Paul Sarvela, vice president of academic affairs, said the committee met with the university’s four constituency heads Thursday to go over a few final revisions before the policy is made public this week.
The episode of "Law and Order" of 25 March 09 combined elements of Bernie Madoff with the Larry Mendte Philly KYW Channel 3 email snooping.
As an odd coincidence in timing, the Law & Order episode immediately preceded a Channel 10 story on Larry Mendte's house arrest. In the channel 10 report, a picture of the Law & Order cast flashed across the screen during the Mendte news story, which related to the end of his house arrest and future problems defending a civil suit by former KYW co-anchor Alycia Lane.
Law & Order was without mercy in portraying the jungle-like atmosphere of local tv news rooms. The "Mendte" character intercepted and deleted an email from the account of the "Lane" character, which action placed another person in a life-threatening situation (and then death). Relying on the ruthlessness of tv news people, the prosecutors "leaked" their intent to charge the "Mendte" character with "depraved indifference" to the "Lane" character, who responded predictably. There were two murders in the episode, one by the "Madoff wife" character and one really done by the Cartagena drug cartel, who were bilked by the "Madoff" character, who was about to swindle Arab oil people to pay off the drug lords, who had learned of the Madoff scam BEFORE the scam went public. The SEC did not fare well in the episode, either, having repeatedly cleared the Madoff character prior to the meltdown.
“While investigating the murder of television reporter Dawn Prescott (guest star Audra Blaser), detectives Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) and Bernard (Anthony Anderson) discover that she was involved in a love triangle involving another reporter at the station. This leads them to another suspect, veteran anchor Joe Delaney (guest star David Rasche), who was threatened by the success of his younger co-workers and may have hacked into their email to gain an advantage. As they search for the killer, the detectives uncover that Dawn was working on a major story surrounding a huge hedge fund fraud and there may be a connection with the recent murder of Fred Decker, a whistle-blower who filed an SEC suit against hedge fund owner, Fredric Matson (guest star Edward Hermann) and his wife Irene (guest star Jill Eikenberry).
"In advising E-Pass to file and maintain their patent infringement claim, they spent $10 million in legal fees and costs without a sound basis to make the elemental case of patent infringement," said James Rosen of Rosen Saba, which filed the suit for E-Pass against its former lawyers at Moses & Singer and Squire Sanders.
900 year old book as prior art?
I use Google books search along with EAST/WEST, Google Scholar, and PubMed searches. Of course my art makes these databases readily useable. In fact just a couple of weeks ago I found some great prior art in a book that I would not have ever come across in any of my other searches. The book summarized information from a book in a foreign language originally written some 900 years ago. I would not have had access to this information if not for Google books.
IPBiz recalls a cite to Cleopatra as art against the use of some alpha-hydroxy acids in the skin care/nutraceutical area.
TomTom joined OIN on March 23. The OIN is an intellectual property company that was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative ecosystem. Its members include IBM, Novell, Sony, and Red Hat.
Confusion about what constitutes plagiarism — not malicious intent — is the leading cause of plagiarism at the graduate school level, according to an expert presenting here today [22 March 09] on the increasingly worrisome problem at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). George M. Bodner, Ph.D., who serves on the Ethics Committee of the ACS, which is the world’s largest scientific society, was among a panel of scientists who discussed plagiarism.
At least the SIU folks asserted standards were different now than in Poshard's time. Bodner makes "confusion" a forever excuse.
Bodner's background: B.S., 1969, State University of New York at Buffalo; Ph.D., 1972, Indiana University.
It is hard to imagine that GlaxoSmithKline and Dr. Tafas could have drawn a better three judge panel then they did for this appeal of Judge Cacheris’ ruling. The judges assigned to the panel hearing the case were Judges Rader, Bryson and Prost, who took turns laying it on the government attorney, USPTO General Counsel Toupin. It is hard to imagine based on the barrage of questions thrown at Toupin that this panel is going to do anything other than affirm Judge Cacheris’ decision and rule that the claims and continuations rules were beyond the authority of the Patent Office and cannot be implemented.
Hmmm, the 20 March 09 decision stated: we find that Final Rule 78 conflicts with 35 U.S.C. § 120 and is thus invalid.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment that Final Rule 78 is invalid, vacate its grant of summary judgment with respect to Final Rules 75, 114, and 265, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Judge Prost was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001. Prior to her appointment, Judge Prost served as Minority Chief Counsel, Deputy Chief Counsel, and Chief Counsel of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate from 1993 to 2001.
Judge Bryson was appointed by President William J. Clinton in 1994. Prior to his appointment, Judge Bryson was with the United States Department of Justice from 1978 to 1994.
Judge Rader was appointed to the United States Claims Court by President George H. W. Bush in 1989 and served on that court until his appointment to the Federal Circuit in 1990. Prior to his appointment, Judge Rader served as Minority Chief Counsel, Staff Director, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights from 1987 to 1988.
The 2 votes of the 2-1 decision were from a Republican appointee and a Democrat appointee. None of the judges has previous experience as a registered patent attorney.
Likely the most "reform-minded" judge of the CAFC is Judge Moore who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, and who was editor of The Federal Circuit Bar Journal from 1998 to 2006, which journal published three articles by Quillen et al. on very questionable assertions of high patent grant rate. Judge Moore was co-author of "Ending Abuse..."
While at Harvard, Obama said of the HLR: "Just remember, folks: Nobody reads it."
So I've closed the survey, and, with 265 votes, the results for "the top 20" are below. I think it tells us not a lot about "quality," though a fair bit about "perceptions," which certainly isn't irrelevant for younger scholars. But based just on the first issue, Journal of Legal Analysis is better than just about every journal in the top ten, though they failed to make the top 20 here. Of course, JLA may not sustain its quality or, more likely I think, perceptions will adjust with time.
Brian Leiter was a Visiting Professor at the Law School in the fall of 2006 and joined the faculty July 1, 2008, simultaneously founding the Law School’s Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values. Prior to that, he taught for more than a dozen years at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the youngest chairholder in the history of the law school, and also served as professor of philosophy and founder and director of the University of Texas Law and Philosophy Program. He has also been a visiting professor of law at Yale University, of law and philosophy at University College London, and of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.
The CAFC determined that the USPTO does get Chevron deference on procedural rules. Of course, what is a procedural rule?
the boundary between “substantive” and “procedural” rules should be defined.
the substantive standards by which the FCC evaluates license applications.” Id. at 327.
R.R. Co. v. Interstate Commerce Comm’n, 711 F.2d 295, 328 (D.C. Cir. 1983)).
The PTO's rules were found by the CAFC procedural, and therefore entitled to Chevron deference.
The Chevron "two step" began.
could have been submitted earlier—that is foreclosed by the statute.
However, we find that Final Rule 78 conflicts with 35 U.S.C. § 120 and is thus invalid.
265, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
they got a remand on 3 rules, and a narrow ruling on Rule 78.
Judge Rader dissents with regard to the classification of the rules in question. He begins by saying, “in my view, the Final Rules are substantive, not procedural.” Id. at *19. Yet he writes: “In the unique context of this case, it makes no sense to classify a rule as ‘procedural’ or ‘interpretative.’ Either of those labels leads to the same conclusion — that the rule is non-substantive.” Id. at 20. His later observations seem not only to dismiss the idea that a non-substantive rule can be both procedural and interpretive, but also cast doubt on the commitment to his initial point.
Beyond finding the PTO’s contested rules to be procedural and thus not facially invalid, Tafas II leaves many questions open: “This opinion does not decide any of the following issues: whether any of the Final Rules, either on their face or as applied in any specific circumstances, are arbitrary and capricious; whether any of the Final Rules conflict with the Patent Act in ways not specifically addressed in this opinion; whether all USPTO rulemaking is subject to notice and comment rulemaking under 5 U.S.C. § 553; whether any of the Final Rules are impermissibly vague; and whether the Final Rules are impermissibly retroactive.” Id.
Among those, the question concerning applicability of APA § 553 is most bothersome. It seems to reopen a central question about the meaning of § 2(b)(2)(B), something that, as noted above, was convincingly answered, if in dicta, in Cooper Technologies. That is particularly unsettling when, as seems true, all contested rules, regardless of obligation, were promulgated by notice and comment rulemaking.
Larson v. Aluminart on inequitable conduct; has the time come for en banc review?
Fourth Office Action cited the DE ’478 patent.
Kemp patent discloses this feature.
boilerplate reiterations of previous rejections.
with the “extending into screen tracks” limitation.
Glamourmom LLC v. Target Corp., No. 2008-1375, 2009 WL 349474, at *15 (Fed. Cir.
committing inequitable conduct.”); Young v. Lumenis, Inc., 492 F.3d 1336, 1349 (Fed.
claims from the prior art were not affirmative misrepresentations of material fact).
the claim limitations of the ’998 patent.
We agree with Aluminart on this point.
has come for the court to review the issue en banc.
Of course taxpayers should benefit directly from the fruits of the research they have funded.
This is not some harebrained, wacko leftist idea.
Back when the Bayh-Doyle Act governing federal funding of research was being debated, Adm. Hyman Rickover, the "father" of the U.S. nuclear fleet testified against the legislation.
He warned that giving private companies exclusive rights to taxpayer-funded inventions was forcing the public to pay twice: once for the research and once for higher prices made possible by the monopoly granted under a patent.
You can read more about this in Jennifer Washburn's excellent book, "University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education."
Simpson's allusion to Rickover understates an important point: Congress did not adopt Rickover's position.
Of Bayh-Dole itself, one notes that the federal government retains rights in patents arising from federally-funded projects, and is free to exercise those rights. Furthermore, Congress can interfere with rights of non-government funded patents, and even the executive branch can do things, as Simpson recognized in his previous allusion to the airplane patent pool during World War I (although Simpson misstated the outcome).
An issue with the "paying for things twice" viewpoint is that the costs of "making the invention" (the research and patenting costs) are generally DWARFED by the development/marketing costs. If someone can't get return on THOSE costs, they won't invest. If they don't invest, there is no product to benefit the public. All the public gets is an academic paper.
Simpson's argument about "paying for things twice" is more relevant to whether the public should get free access to the information, an issue which is currently being debated in the copyright context.
***Separately, whenever someone goes out of their way to state that something is NOT a harebrained, wacko leftist idea, look out.
but note comments by both Simpson and Ebert.
There is a "deck chairs on the Titanic" aspect to Simpson's position, in that there may not be any money to share in the case of stem cell patent royalties from Prop. 71.
Assuming for sake of argument that the funding of CIRM produced viable inventions/patents for therapies, one asks which the California taxpayer wants more in the next step of implementation: the cure or the royalty money?
In the Bayh-Dole world, the federal government generally stays out of the picture, and deals are made between the federal grantee as licensor and the private licensee.
The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.
In the vast majority of cases, it is very expensive to bring an inventive idea to the marketplace, and the patent costs are typically a minimal part of those costs.
TomTom goes after Microsoft with its own infringement action!
Further to Microsoft's patent suit against TomTom, and Tim Lee's comment on the tough situation of TomTom, TomTom has sued Microsoft.
"We are reviewing TomTom's filing, which we have just received. As has been the case for more than a year, we remain committed to a licensing solution, although we will continue to press ahead with the complaints we initiated in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and the International Trade Commission."
One might ask if the TomTom infringement suit is a substantial threat, or if is a page out of Morgan State v. Oklahoma (When you are 24 points down to one of the biggest companies in the US, what do you do? Hire a major law firm (Morrison & Foerster) and sue).
Groklaw posted the TomTom complaint which asserts Microsoft's Streets and Trips product directly or indirectly infringes [claims of] TomTom's U.S. Patent Nos. 5,902,350 ("the '350 patent"), 5,938,720 ("the '720 patent"), 6,660,994 Bl ("the '994 patent") and 6,542,814 ("the "814 patent").
activity in spite of such notice. It's the usual licensing talks gone bad.
The "urban legend" about an explosive growth of patent litigation evokes the previous "urban legend" that the USPTO might be allowing 97% of all patent applications. That wasn't true either, but the "urban legend" made its way to the US Supreme Court within a brief.
A bit of background is helpful here. When the Free Software Foundation drafted version 2 of the GPL, it included a clause saying that if a vendor is forced to place restrictions on downstream redistribution of software covered by the GPL (due to a per-unit patent licensing agreement, for example), that vendor loses the right to distribute the software at all. This clause acts as a kind of mutual defense pact, because it prevents any firm in the free software community from making a separate peace with patent holders. A firm's only options are to either fight to invalidate the patent or stop using the software altogether. This clause of the GPL actually strengthens the hands of free software firms in their negotiations with patent holders. A company like Red Hat can credibly refuse to license patents by saying "we'd love to license your patent, but the GPL won't let us."
This creates a problem for a company like Microsoft that wants to extract licensing revenues from firms distributing GPLed software. Ordinarily, a patent holder sues in the hope that it will be able to get a quick settlement and a nice revenue stream from patent royalties. But the vendor of GPLed software can't settle. And if the patent holder wins the lawsuit, the defendant will be forced to stop distributing the software, depriving the patent holder of an ongoing revenue stream. Either way, the trial will generate a ton of bad publicity for the patent holder.
IPBiz notes: if the patent holder wins, and gets an injunction, it's easier the next time. Check out the early years of the litigations by the Wright Brothers. And, yes, there was bad publicity. But, the lower courts nominally follow the law, even if the Supreme Court follows the election returns.
Regardless, TomTom is now stuck between a rock and a hard place. The GPL has left the firm with only two options. It must either fight Microsoft's patents to the death (literally) or it must settle with Microsoft and immediately stop distributing GPLed software. Given how deeply-entwined GPLed software apparently is in TomTom's products, that second option may be no option at all. So expect a long and bloody fight in the courts.
One likely result will be to create a serious PR problem for Microsoft. Some people might remember the infamous GIF patent wars of the 1990s. When Unisys tried to collect patent royalties on the GIF format, the Internet community responded by switching in droves to the PNG format. In the process, Unisys earned a ton of bad press and a terrible reputation among computer geeks who care about software freedom. Microsoft risks a similar fate if it pursues this litigation campaign against Linux. And given that Microsoft is in a business where innovation is king, it's probably not a good idea to become a pariah in a community that includes many of the world's most talented software engineers.
Hmmm, what did Tim say about the Eolas patent?
reminding us that non-infringement can be an alternative defense to invalidity.
In two investigative news stories, Adam Marcus describes the case against anesthesiologist Scott S. Reuben. This prominent Massachusetts pain researcher is accused of faking data that served as the basis for a minimum of 21 published medical studies. At least plagiarists “borrow” data that are ostensibly real and therefore might have some medical validity. Fabricated data benefit no one but the author who is looking to bolster his reputation by fattening his portfolio of published studies.
As background on this, recall that, although IPBiz takes a strong stance against plagiarism (repeatedly ridiculing the Harvard Business Review [HBR] text "plagiarize with pride"), IPBiz has always said that publishing false things does more damage to society than publishing true things, without giving credit to the original author. Both are bad, but circulating falsities does more damage.
With this background, observe that the IAM blog post Is it time to end patent examinations? is pushing the envelope on both points.
The text therein -- studies suggest only 10% - and these 10% are scrutinised in depth, why is there a need to examine patents at all? Most examinations are irrelevant (the 90%) and the others are redundant. Just stamp all patents as valid -- pushes what Lemley argued in 2001.
The fact that the numerous criticisms to what Lemley said were ignored in the IAM post pushes the "false things" part.
You are completely missing the point. Bo made a suggestion. I reported it. I was not breaking any news and I did not claim to. At no stage did Bo claim to have unique insight or a groundbreaking new opinion. He merely expressed what I considered to be an interesting idea. Why Bo should cite anyone else who has ever mentioned not examining patent applications when engaged in a casual conversation with me is, as I said before, not immediately obvious.
"Why Bo should cite anyone else"
This approach sets an interesting baseline presumption: unless one says it's new, it probably isn't. Of course, that's the opposite presumption from the world of patents, wherein applications are presumed novel until the examiner says they are not. Patent "reformers" do not apply the rules of patenting to themselves.
"Reformers" do repeat a lot of things. The Quillen/Webster approach was accepted by Lemley, until he wrote "The Patent Office is Not a Rubber-Stamp," dumping Quillen/Webster sub silentio.
EarthTimes reports: Smith & Nephew Inc.'s Advanced Wound Management division announced that the German Federal Patent Court in Munich has held the Wake Forest patent for negative pressure (NPWT) licensed to Kinetic Concepts, Inc. invalid in Germany.
Kinetic Concepts, Inc. announced March 17 that the German Federal Patent Court has ruled that a German patent licensed to KCI from Wake Forest related to KCI’s V.A.C.® technology is invalid. The validity of the German patent (EP 0620720 (DE 69224847)) is being challenged by Medela, Mölnlycke Health Care AB, and Smith & Nephew plc. The decision is not final and KCI and Wake Forest intend to appeal the decision to the German Federal Supreme Court. The patent remains valid in Germany until a final ruling from the appellate court. While today’s patent decision may result in new devices being marketed in Germany, should KCI prevail on appeal, it would be entitled to damages.
All appellants lose at CAFC in KCI v. Blue Sky on vacuum bandages, wherein the patent was valid but not infringed.
A so-called "smart drug" popular with young people may carry more of an addiction risk than thought, a small government study suggests. Scans of 10 healthy men showed that the prescription drug Provigil caused changes in the brain's pleasure center, very much like potentially habit-forming classic stimulants. Modafinil, the drug's generic name, is sometimes used as an illegal study aid by college students.
"It would be wonderful if one could take a drug and be smarter, faster or have more energy," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who led the study with a Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist. "But that is like fairy tales. We currently have nothing that has those benefits without side effects."
The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, may bust the myth that the drug is safe for healthy people, experts said.
This was a patent case in the area of ends for beverage cans: Crown and Rexam are both in the business of selling can ends and bodies to fillers associated with major beverage companies.
of the case.” Pandrol USA, 320 F.3d at 1362–63.
mechanical devices, such as the ones at issue here. Id. at 39.
1581 (Fed. Cir. 1983). In Hanson, 718 F.2d at 1082–83, we held that 35 U.S.C.
case, and we are therefore bound by the rule of Hanson.
The D Del decision was reversed and remanded.
The San Diego Union-Tribune noted: Wireless giant Qualcomm said yesterday [March 16] that it scored a victory against rival Broadcom after a federal judge threw out a patent case that sought to upend Qualcomm's licensing business model.
Judge Hayes agreed with Qualcomm: "Although Broadcom acknowledges that Qualcomm possesses thousands of patents relating to wireless chipsets and handsets, Broadcom does not identify with any specificity the patents which it requests that the court declare exhausted," he wrote. "The court cannot make this determination on the facts as alleged in the complaint because Broadcom does not identify with any specificity a patent that was substantially embodied in a chipset or handset, or an exhaustion triggering sale or license."
Broadcom said in a statement it intends to refile the lawsuit within two weeks.
IAM blog re-cycling Lemley's "rational ignorance"?
Although this is basically a copy of Lemley's (bad) idea [and it may be Lemley was not the first], there is no mention of Lemley or of the various subsequent criticisms of Lemley's idea. If this were a patent application, one might be finding inequitable conduct here.
See various posts on IPBiz, including the following, and check for cites to Lemley's 2001 article in the Northwestern University Law Review.
It's truly sad when the IAM blog stoops to re-cycling an eight-year-old Lemley-ism, without even giving credit for the bad idea.
The first purpose of the patent system is to make useful information public (see for example 8 JMRIPL 80). To this end, not examining patent applications is about as reasonable as not reviewing/refereeing science papers. It's about the information, stupid.
Thanks for the reply. I do think you missed several points.
First, the issue is whether or not to EXAMINE applications. By EXAMINING applications, one weeds out applications which are not useful, not novel, obvious, not enabled, or not even described. In the world of non-examination, an inventor would have to dig through a world of crap that would make up "published" applications. Reading Jules Verne doesn't teach you how to make a submarine or a rocket. If the IT people are complaining now, imagine what they would say in a world of non-examined applications. So, your bringing up publication, as distinct from examination is a bit of a red herring to this argument.
Second, in the world of patents, inventors are charged with knowing prior publications anywhere in the world. An inventor can't say, I'm from Sweden so I don't have to know what's going on in the United States. One would hope someone billed as a "prominent IP thinker" would be aware of the literature of the world, especially when the previous literature is directly on point to the argument at hand, examination of patent applications.
Using available data regarding the cost and incidence of patent prosecution, litigation, licensing and other uses of patents, he demonstrates that strengthening the examination process is not cost effective. The core insight is that very few patents are actually litigated or licensed; most simply sit on a shelf unused, or are used only for noncontroversial purposes like financing. Because of this, society would be better off spending its resources in a more searching judicial inquiry into validity in those few cases in which it matters than paying for a more protracted examination of all patents ex ante.
As a third point, the issue of copying sometimes arises in the US, whether in speeches or in writings. I am not aware of anyone yet using a defense such as: Bo is based in Sweden and Qatar, I am based in the UK. Why either of us should mention Mark Lemley is not immediately obvious to me - even if this is a subject that he has written/talked about. Generally, a basic point of a patent system is to publish information so people don't "reinvent the wheel," and pass off as "news" something discovered eight years earlier, and subsequently criticized as not workable.
An irony here is that "patent reformers" who criticize patent offices for not finding prior art tend to show a remarkable ignorance of "prior art" relevant to patent reform.
The arguments against a registration system are similar to those against rational ignorance. The patent system is about public disclosure of inventions which are (among other things) novel and nonobvious. We don't want the clutter of a registration system.
Detailed claim construction at the USPTO exam level is a Napoleonic code approach to a system already crumbling.
from GEN: Roche is taking over innovatis, a provider of automated cell analysis solutions, for €15 million, or $19.56 million. The firm focuses on cell counting, viability testing, and cell function analysis in research as well as bioproduction.
Microsoft switching to offense in patent litigation?
John Fontana at network world writes that analyst firm Gartner said it has little doubt that Microsoft will switch to playing offense with its patent interests and that Microsoft is clearly “beginning to treat its burgeoning patent portfolio as a revenue-generating business." He gives a look at the 10 most recent patent applications from Microsoft.
In terms of "patent quality", which has been a little less discussed in "patent reform 2009" than in "patent reform 2005", Fontana might have mentioned Microsoft's published application 20070300174 (MONITORING GROUP ACTIVITIES ).
Within the article is discussion of the knapsack problem (KP). There was a comparison of the "prize system" to the "market system." One conclusion: "significantly more participants reported the correct solution [in the market system] than under the prize system.
The conclusion: "our experimental findings suggest the patent system is not a universally superior way to incentivize intellectual discovery." In their model of "markets-based system", compensation for inventions is shared.
IPBiz note: Meloso et al. might contemplate the "compensation shared" angle with history, as in Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and various empire-builders. "Take it and make it your own" is not about patents/prizes but it is not about sharing, either. The Venetians knew what they were doing; does Meloso?
The March 6 issue also contains the article "Responding to Possible Plagiarism," by Tara C. Long, Mounir Errami, Angela C. George, Zhaohui Sun, and Harold R. Garner." See 323 Science 1293. It includes the line: "Authors must all commit to both the novelty and accuracy of the work they report." Relevant to peer review: "Volunteers who agree to provide peer review must accept the responsibility of an informed, thorough, and conscientious review." As to editors, the article states they must also "verify the originality of the manuscripts they publish."
This is part of the reason why, when I was an associate in BigLaw, I always had to suddenly go to the restroom whenever some partner said "We should write a law review article / white paper on that." I also scrupulously avoided any kind of law review in law school.
While IPBiz might appreciate the sentiment, IPBiz is not sure of its relevance to THAT IPBiz post.
The affirmative act of providing a cite can be related to mutual back-scratching (like blogrolling?) and the neglectful act of omitting a relevant cite (legally disfavored for patent applicants but not so for patent law professors) is problematic. Neither is a reason for not writing a law review (or a blog). The fact that "no one" reads them (refer to Barack Obama) is a different matter.
Layoffs can tarnish a firm's reputation and hurt recruitment, though experts say that stigma is fading, given that firm layoffs are now widespread. That grim reality was on display during the week of Feb. 9 to 13, when more than 1,000 attorneys and staffers were given their walking papers from at least 10 firms.
This [use of layoff criteria] is increasingly important because more attorneys than ever before are taking legal action against their former firms, Hathaway said.
"Ten years ago, associates wouldn't sue [law firms] because it hampered their employment prospects," he said. "We're seeing more of that now. It's a new phenomenon."
Indeed, Nixon Peabody; Dechert; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom are among the major firms sued in recent months by fired associates.
Its [SDI, "Star Wars} rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr. Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect, suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with an entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
Mosquito laser gun offers new hope on malaria: The laser – dubbed a weapon of mosquito destruction (WMD) – has been designed with the help of Lowell Wood, one of the astrophysicists who worked on the original Star Wars plan to shield America from nuclear attack. Note Times Online does NOT mention the Intellectual Ventures connection but does note The WMD laser works by detecting the audio frequency created by the beating of mosquito wings. A computer triggers the laser beam, the mosquito’s wings are burnt off and its smoking carcass falls to the ground. The research is backed by Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire.
As they say at the Harvard Business Review: Plagiarize with Pride! (unless you are Lee Simon).
That's why the president and Congress must protect incentives for private investment into stem-cell research and the continued development of cures and therapies. Doing so requires that they pursue public policies that balance the need to increase access to today's medicines with the need to develop tomorrow's cures.
One early test will come as Congress considers reforming our nation's patent laws. The recently introduced Patent Reform Act would weaken intellectual property rights by softening penalties for those who violate them. If patent laws are watered down, investors will redirect their money toward industry sectors that provide more certainty and a faster rate of return, creating a chilling effect on scientific innovation and the race to find cures for unmet medical needs.
But see also IPBiz posts on patent application of Gerald Schatten in the area of stem cells. Schatten collaborated with Hwang Woo Suk in the fraudulent paper published in the journal Science.
Bloomberg noted on March 13: Dr. Lee Simon stepped down after the school completed a review of the charges of plagiarism, which began last year, Cameron said. Simon, a clinical professor of medicine at Harvard, also gave up his job at Beth Israel Deaconess, where he has not seen patients in at least a year, said Jerry Berger, a spokesman for the hospital.
There is a connection to UTexas Southwestern: “Multiple consecutive pages of text in Simon’s 32-page article were nearly identical to passages” in an earlier study by Roy Fleischmann, a University of Texas Southwestern researcher, Scientific American said in a Jan. 30, 2008, report. Fleischmann’s paper originally appeared in the journal Expert Opinion on Drug Safety, the magazine said.
There is a connection to New Jersey: Simon was an associate professor of medicine at Harvard in 1995 to 2003, according to a 2008 statement from Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc., of East Brunswick, New Jersey, where he has been a director since 2006. As an FDA staffer, Simon directed the agency’s division that oversees pain and arthritis drugs from 2001 to 2003, the statement said.
There is a connection to Glenn Poshard who copied multiple pages. Poshard copied in his Ph.D. thesis, while Simon copied for a review article on "Best Practices". Poshard remains President of SIU.
More plagiarism at Harvard. Laurence Tribe and Doris Kearns-Goodwin remain at Harvard.
After losing a motion for a temporary restraining order, at which time Judge Pfaelzer raised questions about the patent's validity, ICU and its lawyers at Paul Hastings filed an amended complaint with new infringement claims. With the new claims, ICU accused Alaris of infringing on a valve that did use a "spike."
Judge Pfaelzer found that the patent with the "spikeless" claims was invalid and that the "spike" claims weren't infringed by Alaris' valves. The "frivolous construction and assertion of the 'spike' claims in the amended complaint, concurrently justified sanctions under Rule 11," she wrote at the time.
On top of that, according to the courts' rulings, internal documents revealed in the district court case showed that ICU itself didn't even believe that Alaris was infringing on its "spike" claims.
"Normally, [patent lawyers] do thorough prefiling investigations or they don't take positions that are contrary to their own records," said Neil Smith.
At the Federal Circuit, ICU Medical was represented by Fish & Richardson's Frank Scherkenbach. Asked for comment, Scherkenbach e-mailed that "we [Fish & Richardson] were not counsel who were unsuccessful in, and sanctioned by, the District Court."
1313, 1319 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
inventor’s contribution to the field of art as described in the patent specification.’” Univ.
sought, he or she was in possession of the invention.
described a method of digital image compression.
Via Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure all actions brought in federal court have a pre-filing investigation requirement. Rule 11 demands that before any claim is asserted, the party asserting the claim must have performed an "inquiry reasonable under the circumstances" as to the legal and factual merits of the claim. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b). The Supreme Court has instructed that Rule 11 "imposes on any party who signs a pleading, motion, or other paper – whether the party's signature is required by the Rule or is provided voluntarily – an affirmative duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the facts and the law before filing, and that the applicable standard is one of reasonableness under the circumstances." Business Guides, Inc. v. Chromatic Communications Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 533, 551 (1991) (interpreting Rule 11 pre-1993 amendments).

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