Source: http://techrights.org/category/courtroom/page/3/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 10:34:16+00:00

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Earlier today patent maximalists from Patent Docs advertised the Federal Circuit Bar Association’s (FCBA) upcoming “webcast” about the Federal Circuit, which they have nothing to do with [1, 2] (misleading name). It’s just another one of those stacked panels.
A certain amount of comment has recently been evinced from the patent bar by the voicing from several members of the Federal Circuit, including the Chief Judge, of their dismay over the number of patent cases coming to the Court. In particular, this increase in the patent case census in Court is due in not some small degree to the number of cases arising from decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that the Court is tasked with reviewing regarding the validity vel non of patents from the various post-grant review proceedings (the largest number of which arise from inter partes reviews, IPRs). Perhaps in reaction to its dismay, the Court in several cases has remanded PTAB decisions based on failure of the Board to properly support their decisions to be amenable to appellate review; see, for example, Securus Tech v. Global Tel*Link (Fed. Cir. 2017) (IPR2014-01278) (Pat. No. 7,860,222); Ultratec v. CaptionCall and Matal (Fed. Cir. 2017). This basis for eschewing review has been much more rare in district court appeals but arose last week in the Court’s decision in Tris Pharma Inc. v. Actavis Laboratories FL, Inc.
The District Court found the asserted claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 8,465,765 (’765 patent), 8,563,033 (’033 patent), 8,778,390 (’390 patent), 8,956,649 (’649 patent), and 9,040,083 (’083 patent) were invalid as being obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Based on all these deficiencies the Federal Circuit remanded to the District Court for “further fact-finding.” Whether an increased frequency of these types of decisions based on Rule 52(a) in appeals from District Court opinions by a beleaguered Federal Circuit remains to be seen.
AS promised earlier today, here’s a quick outline of the smashing of software patents, erroneously granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) only to be squashed in district (lower) courts, the higher court (Federal Circuit, CAFC) and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), where inter partes reviews (IPRs) are undertaken.
As usual, it’s hard to find even a single example of a software patent withstanding scrutiny at a higher court (CAFC or SCOTUS). Those are rare exceptions — ones that patent extremists would tout for many months if not years.
An appeal would likely have this decision overturned because of the district’s notoriety. Charles Bieneman, a colleague of Amour apparently, meanwhile admits that gifting (or a gift certificate) is not an “invention” just because you do it “on a computer” or “over the Internet”; why does the USPTO grant such laughable software patents in the first place?
Patent claims directed to electronic gift certificates are not patent-eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and the Alice/Mayo test, according to a US magistrate judge’s recommendation to grant a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Coqui Technologies, LLC v. Gyft, Inc., No. 17-777-CFC-SRF (D. Del. Nov. 16, 2018). The court found that claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,580,864, entitled “Method for circulating an electronic gift certificate in online and offline system,” were “directed to the abstract idea of selling, gifting, and using electronic gift certificates” without an additional inventive concept.
Finding a lack of technical innovation, a court held claims for three features for a user-vehicle interface to be directed to patent-ineligible abstract ideas under the Mayo/Alice test and 35 U.S.C. § 101. Thunder Power New Energy Vehicle Development Co. Ltd. v. Byton North America Corp., No. 18-cv-03115-JST (N.D. Ca., Oct. 31, 2018).
Plaintiff, Thunder Power, alleged infringement by Defendant Byton of claims of Patent Nos. 9,547,373, 9,563,329, and 9,561,724. Byton moved to dismiss, contending that the asserted claims failed to recite patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The court granted the motion to dismiss.
Did Watchtroll find anything new that it can trumpet and shout about? No, not really. It returned to a month-old case, Ancora Techs. v. HTC Am., Inc.
“Did Watchtroll find anything new that it can trumpet and shout about? No, not really.”They say “recently” about something roughly a month old. They find it noteworthy because it’s a CAFC case, but Watchtroll is begrudgingly coming to accept that the high court, CAFC, is even stricter than PTAB when it comes to software patents as software patents almost always come there just to be thrown away. As Steve Brachmann put it a few days ago, “Federal Circuit Vacates PTAB Decision That Video Messaging Patent Claims Were Nonobvious” (most patent maximalists just tried to ignore it as it doesn’t suit their agenda).
CAFC very much insists that software patents are bunk and void. Here’s a new example titled “Fed. Circ. Won’t Reconsider Nixing Robotics IP Under Alice” (Section 101 basically).
When Microsoft doesn’t blackmail the competition using software patents it is trying to invalidate others’. Precious.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday said it would not reconsider an earlier decision that likely doomed patent litigation cases the licensing firm WiLAN Inc brought against industrial automation companies Rockwell Automation Inc, Schneider Electric SE and the Emerson Electric Company.
Perhaps one day the USPTO will stop issuing such patents. Patent quality is very important, more so than revenue of the Office.
The quest for an objective measure of patent quality continues. Scholars have attempted many, many ways to calculate such value, including citations, maintenance fee payments, number of claims, length of claims, and so forth. As each new data source has become available, more creative ways of measuring value have been developed (and old ways of measuring value have been validated/questioned).
The economic literature emphasizes the importance of patent citations, particularly forward citations, as an indicator of a cited patent’s value. Studies have refined which forward citations are better indicators of value, focusing on examiner citations for example. We test a metric that arguably is closer tied to private value—the substantive use of a patent by an examiner in a patent office rejection of another pending patent application. This paper assesses how patents used in 102 and 103 rejections relate to common measures of private value—specifically patent renewal, the assertion of a patent in litigation, and the number of patent claims. We examine rejection data from U.S. patent applications pending from 2008 to 2017 and then link value data to rejection citations to patents issued from 1999 to 2007. Our findings show that rejection patents are independently, positively correlated with many of the value measurements above and beyond forward citations and examiner citations.
PTAB faces some hostilities from the new Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), who cites perceived ‘issues’ expressed by patent maximalists like himself. The reality of the matter is, companies that actually make something support and appreciate PTAB.
Watchtroll, as always, keeps bashing PTAB. As recently as yesterday (Sunday) Steve Brachmann wrote about PTAB invalidating yet another patent and one day earlier Watchtroll had published “The PTAB Promotes Petitioner Promiscuity” (yes, this anti-PTAB extremists’ site used the word “promiscuity” and maybe tomorrow these extremists will call judges “prostitutes”).
These patent lawyers and law firms are awful. The latest attack comes from David Wanetick, who calls himself “a world-renowned authority on the issue of intellectual property valuation” (there is no such thing as "intellectual property" as we last explained yesterday).
PTAB nowadays uses or leverages § 101 to squash hundreds of software patents per month. It is not hard to imagine who would oppose that.
For the past several years, I have been conducting an annual patent law moot court competition at Mizzou. This year – the eighth annual – the case was was captioned as an appeal of a recent dismissal by District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Cardionet, LLC v. Infobionic, Inc., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177305, 2018 WL 5017913 (D. Mass October 16, 2018). In her decision, Judge Talwani dismissed the case for failure to state a claim — ruling CardioNet’s heart monitor patent is directed to an abstract idea rather than a patent eligible invention. U.S. Patent Number 7,941,207 (“the ‘207 patent”). The moot court is sponsored by McKool Smith and so the winner receives $1,000.
Those are very rare. They’re also far less interesting or relevant than Federal Circuit appeals.
On Friday, November 9th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential decision in NuVasive, Inc. v. Iancu, which vacated certain findings of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an inter partes reexamination proceeding involving a NuVasive patent covering a system and methods for minimally invasive surgical procedures. The Federal Circuit panel of Circuit Judges Pauline Newman, Raymond Chen and Todd Hughes determined that on the issue of secondary considerations the PTAB erred in finding no nexus between NuVasive’s claimed method and the surgical procedure actually commercialized by NuVasive. The panel also held that further fact-finding was required in order to determine whether an asserted prior art publication teaches a certain nerve-monitoring technique necessary to support the Board’s determination of obviousness. Therefore, the decision of the PTAB was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Court’s opinion.
NuVasive asserted the ‘057 patent in an infringement suit filed against Globus Medical in October 2010. The following February, Globus filed the request for the reexamination on claims of the ‘057 patent to determine obviousness based on combinations of four pieces of asserted prior art. In the first office action, the examiner rejected all claims as obvious because all of the references pertained to minimally invasive surgical techniques and a skilled artisan would have found it obvious to combine them to achieve the claimed system and methods.
This is another case of cherry-picking because, based on last year’s year-long statistics, CAFC affirms PTAB’s decisions about 80% of the time (in the rare cases it even expresses willingness to reevaluate).

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