Source: http://techrights.org/2018/02/18/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 22:11:48+00:00

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THE USPTO will continue to grant software patents in the foreseeable future, but that does not mean that these patents will be able to cause much damage. Why not? As we shall show later today and tomorrow, PTAB smacks down many of these patents. It’s an invaluable mechanism of quality control, akin to oppositions and appeals at the EPO.
The answer is simple. There are tricks. The EPO and other patent offices too have tricks. Those are usually designed to bypass examiners’ guidelines — the sorts of guidelines that matter a lot less to courts which assess past court cases and underlying evidence, such as prior art and expert testimonies. Knowing that the courts are hostile towards software patents, many potential plaintiffs (patent holders) will not even bother suing. And that’s a good thing.
This post concerns few of the aforementioned tricks, which exploit loopholes. Many of them are nowadays buzzwords, which help dodge § 101/Alice (at least at a superficial level). At the EPO they like to use terms like “technical effect” or “device”, but in the USPTO it looks like “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) is currently one of the favourites because the corporate media resurrected that hype. Almost any algorithm can be framed as “AI” as it’s a rather nebulous concept. We previously wrote many articles about other buzzwords, such as “cloud”, not to mention the old “over the Internet”, “on a computer” and so on.
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP, a very large law firm, is still all about buzzwords in patents. Without even delving into the underlying granularities, the headline alone is rather telling: blah blah blah Artificial Intelligence blah blah.
I already wrote some algorithms related to this (self-driving tools) and the only “AI” in it tends to be some classifier trained on an image set to help segment an unseen image (or long sequence thereof). That’s hardly innovative. It could be made to work several decades agp and in fact there were working implementations a long time ago; they just lacked sufficient computing power.
In addition to § 101 concerns, AI in medicine raises questions of inventorship and ownership in patent law. The US patent system only recognizes individuals as inventors,38 not companies39 or machines.40 But with AI, it may be the machine that is taking the inventive leap, not the human programmer. Recently, both Google and Facebook have seen AI develop its own language to perform the assigned tasks, eschewing known languages in favor of a more efficient means of communication.41 As the use of AI grows in medicine and the life sciences, it is more and more likely that the AI will be the entity taking the inventive step, drawing new conclusions between the observed and the unknown. Indeed, current AI systems develop their own code as a result of the system’s training.42 If that is the case, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the courts will have to decide whether the current Patent Act encompasses computer-based inventors, and if not, who among the humans responsible for the AI should be considered an inventor.43 The list of possible human inventors includes the AI software and hardware developers, the medical professionals or experts who provided the data set with known values or otherwise provided input into the development of the AI, and/or those who reviewed the AI results and recognized that an invention had been made.
“She owns numerous software patents,” it said further down. Well, too bad they’re worthless now, eh? Here’s another new example of patents on software, this time from LINE. Again, these patents are worthless after Alice. Why are they being granted? As we shall show in a separate article, few grants are even being challenged; those that do typically perish (PTAB overturning examiners’ determinations).
How many of them (if any) are even worth anything?
“With Valentine’s Day upon us, one would rightly suspect that there is already an abundance of patents and patent applications related to online dating software,” lawyers’ media said some days ago. But software patents are worthless now. They themselves call it “software”. Do they conveniently overlook the issue? Don’t they try to disguise it by calling it something like “technology”?
Well, China — unlike the US — actually permits software patents, so there might be nothing wrong about this. There’s something wrong with the policy, sure, but not with the application thereof.
Honeywell (NYSE: HON) today announced that it has reached a settlement with Code Corp., a company that manufactures bar code readers, to settle Honeywell’s claims that Code infringed certain Honeywell patents related to bar code scanning technology.
The scanning techniques tend to involve sensory aspects that are hardware-side, not software-side heuristics. The projection and reflection of infrared lights for instance.
Aatrix sued Green Shades for infringement of two patents directed to systems and methods for designing, creating, and importing data into a viewable form on a computer. Green Shades moved to dismiss under § 101. The district court granted the motion and denied leave to file a proposed amended complaint. Aatrix appealed to the Federal Circuit.
The main question is, are these really software patents? Not every time Alice gets invoked will it work; it’s not a magic wand.
‘Early birds’ wrote about it in relation to 101/Alice, calling it “PRECEDENTIAL” and dubbing it “A Valentine for Software Patent Owners”.
The Federal Circuit faulted a lower court Wednesday for invalidating data manipulation patents as abstract ideas on a motion to dismiss, the second time in days the court has held that a judge too quickly found that patents failed the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice test.
THE patent policy of a country (or continent in the case of the EPO) matters. But it doesn’t matter so profoundly that slight changes in patent policies will make or break countries. That’s just common sense as there’s so much more in this world than patents. The economy too is more than just patents.
“That’s just common sense as there’s so much more in this world than patents.”The USPTO loosened a little on litigation and tightened patent scope, following decisions that had been made by the US Supreme Court (for the most part). This is a good thing as it enables US science and technology firms to operate in the lab rather than the courtroom. This, once again, is common sense.
The “patents4life” blog (advocates just what it says in the name and by “life” it does not mean patent duration) seems to be upset again. Days ago it bemoaned “Weaknesses in IP Protection” (fancy words for “it’s harder to sue with patents”). So a strength in mental faculties and common sense is being framed as “weakness”? The article is actually a rant about Canada, India and Ecuador, three countries where public interest (the big majority) was put ahead of Big Pharma. Watch who the blog is citing; IPO is just a front group of patent extremists looking to patent everything on Earth. Who else can they rely on? The malicious lobby known as “Chamber of Commerce”, which is constantly attacking India* and is engaged in revisionism right now, calling “Father of American Innovation” a person who was not? He did not even innovate slave ownership (he ‘owned’ plenty of slaves).
I said he was “[s]till perpetuating the myth that the “patent system” is responsible for everything because this is what they do for a living” and his only response to me was something along the lines of me being an agent for China or whatever (even though I berate China for its own patent policies too — policies that mostly enrich oligarchs). Other people are attempting/pulling the “China” smears against me as well (as recently as last night; several times even).
Notice the theme here; just like the United States often blames Russia for just about anything the patent microcosm blames China for just about anything. Watch another emerging theme, which is shaming of technology firms. The patent microcosm is growingly vocal in its smearing of technology firms. It’s partly ironic because those are the firms that often bring money to lawyers.
“Notice the theme here; just like the United States often blames Russia for just about anything the patent microcosm blames China for just about anything.”The above claim (saying that “patent trolls” as a concept was made up by technology firms) is patently false. They used to be called “sharks” and other words. The graph that the person shows does not support what he says about it. It’s about one particular label, which is predated by other labels (for the same thing). But they carry on with this fiction, ignoring the growing concentration of patent trolls in the United States until some years ago (when the problem was belatedly being put under control).
Citing this new article about China (from The Economist, which blogged a chart), here we have another ‘genius’ who — seeing how the US continues its relative demise (e.g. compared to China) — blames it all on patents (not enough lawsuits?). China was actually making things while other nations got busy litigating and marketing. It spent decades regenerating itself for manufacturing. That’s why China is prospering now (in terms of measures that aren’t per capita).
This article focuses on the involvement of Section 3(k) in the process of patent application of Apple titled ‘a method for browsing data items with respect to a display screen associated with a computing device and an electronic device’. For reference to those unaware of this section, S 3 of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 bars patent eligibility of some inventions.
TECHRIGHTS has repeatedly written about Berkheimer, foreseeing a distortion and then rebutting it. Berkheimer does not change anything at the USPTO and it’s unlikely to change anything at the courts either (contrary to what patent maximalists are saying). The patent maximalists just cherry-pick sentences to bolster their bogus narrative that PTAB disregards facts or isn’t pursuing any facts.
In Berkheimer v. HP Inc. (Fed. Cir. Feb. 6, 2018), the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,447,713—directed to digital processing and archiving in a digital asset management system—were indefinite, and affirmed-in-part and vacated-in-part the grant of summary judgment that other claims were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
“It wasn’t a victory, it was not about Section 101, and it’s not the Supreme Court.”So Berkheimer made no substantial difference here, just as we expected.
The phrase “minimal redundancy” in a patent claim was indefinite under 35 USC § 112 where the patent specification inconsistently described levels of redundancy achieved by its system. Berkheimer v. HP, Inc., No. 2017-1437 (Fed. Cir. Feb 8, 2017) (precedential) (opinion by Judge Moore, joined by Judges Taranto and Stoll). Accordingly, the court affirmed a district court’s summary judgment that claim 10 of US Patent No. 7,447,713 was indefinite. The court also addressed the patent-eligibility of other claims of the ’713 patent; the patent-eligibility issues are dealt with in another post.
In a pair of interesting software-related cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appears to push back on one of the supposed goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank International decision. In Alice, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified and restated the Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus decision’s test concerning patent eligible subject matter. In doing so, the Supreme Court started a new era of U.S. patent law which made patent eligible subject matter a very important inquiry with respect to the patentability of inventions, particulary those in the software space—although Alice’s impact is felt in other technological areas. Since Alice issued, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has clarified the Alice test and notably provided guidance to patent lawyers on how to “avoid” or “comply” with Alice.
Importantly, one of the purported benefits of Alice was to allow for the early dismissal of claims based on patent eligible subject matter. An alleged infringer could conceivably quickly raise patent eligible subject matter and get a claim dismissed on either a 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim or a motion for summary judgment. In additional push-back to Alice, the Federal Circuit in Berkheimer v. HP (February 8, 2018) has recently held that even after claim construction a motion for summary judgment on patent eligible subject matter may be improper because of genuine issues of material fact.
Since the Supreme Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank in June 2014, the USPTO regularly issues new memoranda explaining its implementation of the § 101 framework. This includes some of the more notable memos for prosecutors: the memo on Enfish v. Microsoft from May 2016, the memo on McRO and BASCOM from November 2016, and dozens of eligibility examples. The USPTO also maintains a quick reference sheet on decisions holding claims eligible and identifying abstract ideas, and a chart of subject matter eligibility court decisions.
THE US has a problem of corporate influence in universities. Not only the US has this problem. As a former academic myself (I worked a few years as a postdoc), I’ve seen it from the inside and I still hear about it from friends or former colleagues. Corporations funnel money in exchange for things; even the EPO now pays scholars in the UK and in the US (in exchange for papers that help promote the UPC). Certainly the policy of the USPTO is impacted by this; a lot of academic papers should state openly which corporations fund the authors’ (or investigators’) department/s. There’s danger, however, that by insinuating such corruption of academia one leaves room for patent extremists to attack academics they dislike. So let’s just say that scholars are, in general, more credible than think tanks and front groups (like IPO); but they’re not impenetrable to outside influence or even soft bribes.
Why are we saying all this? Well, Scott McKeown, writing at Ropes & Gray’s site, has just written about an old subject which we covered here before, noting that a federal court will soon wrestle with the questions about “sovereign immunity” for academic institutions, specifically in relation to PTAB.
State-affiliated entities enjoy immunity from suit in federal courts under the 11th amendment. To date, a handful of such entities have successfully leveraged the same immunity theory to avoid review of their patents before the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB). While still other Patent Owners have aligned themselves with Native American Tribes in an effort to benefit from their sovereign status in the hopes of avoiding PTAB review.
More recently, in Ericsson v. Regents of the University of Minnesota the PTAB has determined that sovereign immunity is waived where the sovereign entity files an infringement suit.
Another law firm wrote about this the other day, noting that the State, as per an infamous old law, enabled universities to abuse taxpayers’ money to collect patents and then give these to trolls (who soon attack these very same taxpayers). Why should they — the universities that nowadays incubate startups and privatise publicly-funded research — at the same time they pursue these patents also be immune from scrutiny?
The PTAB’s decision also did not state whether UMinn had any input in Toyota’s strategy to request adverse judgment. Thus, from the record, it is not clear whether Toyota adequately represented the interests of UMinn in this case.
Right now, owing to the above cases, Big Pharma is attempting to shelter its controversial patents using tribes (for tribal immunity). The situation has become quite unreal.
Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat’s recent well-reasoned post and longer article add much to the discussion about standing to appeal from the PTAB. Standing has recently garnered significant interest from the Federal Circuit. Building on existing scholarship, we have written a concise synopsis of standing law as applied to PTAB appeals, forthcoming in Catholic University of America Law Review.
In our view, as a matter of standing alone, the PTO can participate as an intervenor in virtually all AIA appeals from the PTAB—and many reasons are consonant with the principles on which Professor Vishnubhakat bases his reasoning. We make no judgment here on the merits of the positions the PTO solicitor has or will adopt, or the frequency of intervention. While there is a valid debate about the policy choices and the frequency with which the PTO has intervened, that debate is distinct from the legal question of whether the PTO has, or must have, standing as an intervenor beyond their express statutory grant. Professor Vishnubhakat reasons correctly; he just goes a bridge too far.
We already know what they’re trying to accomplish because it’s well documented (for years). They hope to weaken if not abolish PTAB by comparing patents to “property” (a lie) or “rights”, then alluding to terms like “property rights” (which meant an entirely different thing when the term was conceived).
Last but not least, there’s this new paper from Jason Reinecke. It makes one wonder if Stanford University is now lobbying against software patents and — if so — who’s paying their School of Law for it (patent extremists will no doubt blame Google, for it’s closely connected to Stanford). Even though the title of the paper is a loaded question (“Is the Supreme Court’s Patentable Subject Matter Test Overly Ambiguous?), the conclusion seems to be an effort to debunk a myth promoted by patent extremists.
This Article provides the first empirical test of these assertions. In particular, 231 patent attorneys predicted how courts would rule on the subject matter eligibility of litigated software patent claims, and the results were compared with the actual district court rulings. Among other findings, the results suggest that while the test is certainly not a beacon of absolute clarity, it is also not as amorphous as many commentators have suggested.
JUST before the weekend we noted that the EPO had virtually stopped talking about the UPC. The acronym or the words “unified” and “unitary” recently escaped the EPO’s lexicon. It wasn’t always like that.
“They’re also totally silent regarding the inaction some days ago in the British political scene (Bristows too chose to remain silent about it).”We mentioned the context to this before; “Indications so far mostly point to admissibility,” I told him, “including next week's debate in Bavaria” (it’s only a couple of days away).
What we found fascinating, however, was this new self-promotional piece from Joff Wild (IAM). A year ago IAM was pushing fake news about the UPC [1, 2, 3] (after the EPO’s PR firm had paid IAM). Now? Not so much optimism. They’re also totally silent regarding the inaction some days ago in the British political scene (Bristows too chose to remain silent about it).
Brexit and the UPC: Of course, no patent-related event in Europe these days is going to escape discussion of either Brexit or the potential impact of the Unified Patent Court – should it ever get up and running.
On the former, there was wide agreement that as things stand, no-one has much idea what is going to happen. Patents and patent owners are not directly affected by Brexit because there is no unitary patent system in Europe, but it was noted that over recent years there has been a trend for European patent judges to spend more time talking to each other, with courts in one country now prepared to give much more weight to judgments handed down in others when hearing similar cases. As England and Wales is perhaps Europe’s most important life sciences venue, there is no doubt that decisions reached by judges in the jurisdiction are currently looked at very closely by their peers elsewhere. Whether this will continue post-Brexit remains to be seen.
As for the UPC, there was widespread scepticism about it seeing the light of day pre-Brexit and around the UK’s participation in the system at any time. However, some at least are continuing to make preparations on the off chance that the UK does ratify the UPC Agreement and the case currently before the German constitutional court on the legality of Germany’s ratification goes nowhere quickly. One interesting point raised was whether the opting in and opting out regime might give rise to generic companies making accusations of patent owners gaming the system, with all the consequences that might have as they seek to enforce their rights. Like the UPC itself, it was an issue left hanging in the air. Perhaps one day, though, we might find out whether it has some legs.
Several days ago IAM responded to misinformation from Bristows, correctly noting (in a blog comment) that the most important item is in Germany, not the UK. Joff Wild left that comment.
ABOUT a month ago we wrote about Bejin Bieneman planning to give a platform to the man who is responsible — via the courts system — for a lot of patent trolls and out-of-control patent scope at the USPTO. He was pretty much forced to quit after he had been caught making a mockery of the court he headed (as Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit).
“Sadly, as we noted some days ago, the “revolving doors” culture is alive and well at the USPTO and US patent courts.”So Mr. Rader is not so ‘retired’ after all, he’s just ‘hibernating’ whilst lobbying. He’s looking for ways to get back into the system, even as Director of the USPTO.
Sadly, as we noted some days ago, the “revolving doors” culture is alive and well at the USPTO and US patent courts. We already mentioned David Kappos and Paul Michel four days ago.

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