Source: http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2016/01/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 22:27:21+00:00

Document:
Charles Osgood introduced the stories for 31 January 2016. The cover story, by Martha Teichner, is on the oil glut, including consequences in West Texas. Serena Alschul on Samantha Bee. Anthony Mason on ColdPlay, who will be at the SuperBowl. Lee Cowan on Bob Odenkirk. "Better Call Saul." Major Garrett on Iowa caucuses. Dean Reynolds on lobbyists. Headlines on 31 Jan 16: Iowa caucuses tomorrow. Orange County, CA escapees captured. David Petraeus not demoted. Weather: Storm in west.
The cover story on Slippery Slope. Midland County Line. Mike Rasco on parking lot for drilling rigs. 1000 people employed per drilling rig. A gallon of water is worth more than a gallon of oil. Loss of 275,000 jobs since mid-2014. Daniel Yergin. The US is exporting US oil production almost doubled. Every day, production of 1.5 million more barrels than needed. Wikipedia notes of Yergin: He wrote that Hubbert peak theory ignores the effects of economics and technological advances. Instead of a peak, Yergin predicts future oil production will be more of a plateau, as increasing prices moderate demand and stimulate production.
Almanac. January 31, 1961 Ham goes into outer space in a Mercury capsule. Died in 1983. Buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Of the name "Ham," wikipedia notes: Ham was known as No. 65 before his flight, and only renamed "Ham" upon his successful return to Earth. This was reportedly because officials did not want the bad press that would come from the death of a "named" chimpanzee if the mission were a failure.
Milepost: Makeover for Barbie. Three additional body types. Seven new skin colors. Sales were declining every year since 2012.
Serena Alschul on "Busy Bee." A woman" in the boy's club of late night tv. "Full frontal." Jason Jones.
Deaths. Buddy Cianci first elected in 1974. Abe Vigoda in The Godfather.
Lee Cowan on Bob Odenkirk.
Moment of nature by B-I: swimming with blue sharks off the coast of Rhode Island.
not infringe two patents asserted by Avid Technology, Inc.
system satisfies this claim element when properly construed.
We thank a large number of our colleagues for helpful comments that have shaped these norms, including both signatories and nonsignatories. Thanks to John Allison, Jim Bessen, Miriam Bitton, Colleen Chien, Ralph Clifford, Wes Cohen, Jorge Contreras, Dennis Crouch, Mark Davison, Rochelle Dreyfuss, James Grimmelman, Ariel Katz, Brian Love, David Opderbeck, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Michael Risch, Josh Sarnoff, Jason Schultz, Dave Schwartz, Ted Sichelman, Matt Spitzer, and Jennifer Urban, among many others, for helpful comments and suggestions.
Finally, we are mindful of the need to protect the role of the academic as a trusted source of reliable information for policymakers and society at large. The issues described above run the risk of creating the impression in the minds of the public that we are lobbyists rather than scholars — with the accompanying loss of trust.
In contrast to medical research, legal research lags well behind, both in terms of the establishment of ethical codes and methods of enforcing those codes. The overwhelming majority of legal journals are not peer-reviewed. Rather, the articles are chosen and edited by law students whose knowledge of methodological flaws and potential biases may be limited. Law journals generally do not request information on conflicts of interest and do not require disclosure of such information. Similarly, the legal field lacks organizations, such as the NIH and NSF, that have either the purse strings or the bully pulpit to impose meaningful ethical rules. Legal authors may occasionally seek federal funds to support research, but that is far from the norm. As a result, it is unsurprising that behavioral norms similar to those in the scientific fields have yet to emerge.
As to inadequate review of law review articles, Mark Lemley, in the Stanford Law Review, proclaimed Gary Boone the inventor of the integrated circuit.
Sen Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) is asking medical schools about their policies on ghostwriting, specifically, the practice in which faculty agree to be named as authors of articles written primarily by health care companies.
In letters sent to 10 prominent universities on November 18, Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, asked questions about their policies for faculty who lend their names as authors of review articles, editorials, and research articles prepared by marketing and/or medical education companies on behalf of drug and device manufacturers.
Mark Lemley and Carl Shapiro in 85 Tex. L. Rev. 1991 (2007) began: We are grateful to Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Intel, Micron Technology, Microsoft, and SAP for funding the research reported in this Article. We emphasize that our conclusions are our own, not theirs. Lemley acknowleges Mallun Yen [chief patent counsel of Cisco].
Lemley's conclusions are favorable to IT companies such as Microsoft.
As a comment on the 2011 post related to the ezine article, LBE did not think Edison was a troll as to the electric light bulb. The big picture was "the war of the currents" and Edison lost, and got booted by Morgan. The Columbian Exhibition on the Chicago Midway in 1893 used no Edison light bulbs. BUT, Edison and the MPPC is an entirely different story, and illustrates a case wherein (extended) patent rights got trumped by antitrust.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in closely adhering to the paper’s recommendations is around data disclosure. A large amount of relevant data remains confidential, particularly that which relates to out-of-court settlements and licensing agreements. A lack of transparency around the numbers that they used is perhaps the strongest criticism of the paper written by Professors Bessen and Meurer on the cost of NPE disputes to the US economy.
though, any plagiarism is a serious matter.
She said she did not regret taking it, though, noting that other former secretaries of states had given paid speeches and adding that no one could influence her politically.
Is it easier to get a patent in the US, or in Europe, or in China?
In a piece titled New patent subject-matter eligibility test hurts US competitiveness, Robert L. Stoll suggests that the US patent system may be more patent - grant unfriendly than the patent systems of Europe or even China.
But due to a series of poorly considered and frequently misapplied Supreme Court decisions, applicants in key technologies such as biotech and software are now facing more stringent criteria for obtaining and keeping patent protection in the U.S. than they are in China, the European Union and other jurisdictions, which reduces America's global competitiveness.
The Mayo test stands in contrast to the approach in Europe, where claims are analyzed to assure they have a technical character. If they do, they are evaluated as to novelty and inventive step. If the claim is a mixture of technical and nontechnical features and the inventive step is not in a technical field, the claim is not patentable subject matter.
Even in China, patents are granted as long as the claims contain a technical feature distinctive from the prior art. A patent claim in China will overcome the "technical solution" hurdle if it uses a "technical means." This leads to broader patent subject-matter eligibility in China when compared to the U.S.
From the perspective of those creating meaningful innovation like the examples outlined above, the European and the Chinese approaches to patentable subject matter are preferable to the current U.S. doctrine. Continued invalidation of large swaths of discovery and innovation domestically will result in a shift of jobs and economic growth to areas where innovators can take advantage of broader patent protection.
issue rate is closer to 75%. While Quillen and Webster based grant rate on applications "allowed,"
at 98% in 2000, compared with 67% in Europe and 64% in Japan.
China handled more patent applications for inventions than any other country for the fifth year running in 2015. The country had over 1.1 million patent applications last year, up 18.7 percent year on year. About 359,000 invention patents were authorized, 263,000 of which were granted to domestic applicants, 100,000 more than in 2014.
Fox News covered the coming auction of letters of relevance to the aviation invention of the Wright Brothers.
A 1916 patent transfer document for Wright’s invention of the airplane and one in which the inventor defends his reputation will be auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles. Bidding for the patent transfer document and letter will begin at $25,000 and $12,500 respectively.
The first document confirms Orville Wright mortgaged five patents to New York investors led by William Boyce Thompson and that he had been paid – thus ensuring any challenges to the patents were relayed to the new owners. The Wright Company had entered into a loan agreement with the Thompson investors in return for $1 million.
A letter Orville Wright sent in 1928 to Connecticut Senator Hiram Bingham will also go on the block. In that typewritten letter, Wright appeared angry with the Smithsonian Institute for discrediting the Wright Brothers as inventors of the first flying machine.
The Smithsonian recognized ex-Smithsonian Secretary Samuel P. Langley as the inventor of the airplane in their 1914 annual report.
The Wright-Martin Company that bought him [Orville Wright] out, however, was primarily interested in recovering the more than $1,000,000 it had paid for the rights to the patent. In December 1916, the company notified other aircraft manufacturers that they would have to pay a royalty of five percent on each aircraft sold, with a minimum annual royalty of $10,000 per manufacturer. Wright-Martin demanded this royalty on all aircraft, whether they achieved differential lifting by the wing-warping technique of the Wrights or the far more popular ailerons employed by Curtiss.
Under a consent judgment entered in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware Jan. 21, Par agreed that the four Acorda patents at issue were valid and enforceable and that its proposed generic would infringe those patents.
The patents at issue, U.S. Patent Nos. 8,007,826 (the '826 patent), 8,354,437 (the '437 patent), 8,440,703 (the '703 patent), and 8,663,685 (the '685 patent), have expiration dates from Jan. 18, 2025, to May 26, 2027, according to the Food and Drug Administration's Orange Book.
Kyle Bass had petitioned for IPR review of the ‘685 patent and the ‘437 patents.
[that U.S. patent law is] "deterring research and penalizing innovation," [and that the patent system is] "fast becoming a detriment to U.S. competitiveness, not to mention basic fairness."
Ten years have gone by, and the Wall Street journal is saying much the same thing. Separately, the California taxpayers spent a lot of money on CIRM, with no cure for anything produced.
"production" issue (eg, there were no US-built fighter planes in World War I). If California taxpayers really want tangible, functioning therapies PRODUCED, there must be incentives. Otherwise, the "product" will be academic papers.
Consumer Watchdog brought us the interesting CAFC case on lack of standing of third party non-competitors to appeal the loss of a re-examination proceeding.
**As to the 2006 article, the economic significance of patents on embryonic stem cells has more or less passed by, with the current hot item in biotech the CRISPR patent wars. Some issues from the past re-exams (e.g., enablement of prior art) are likely to reappear in the Doudna fight.
**Returning to Simpson's idea that a "patent pool" is a good thing, one might contemplate Edison's activities in the motion picture arena, specifically related to the formation of The Motion Picture Patents Company [the MPPC].
In late December 1908, after months of negotiation, the Edison and Biograph groups formed the Motion Picture Patents Company. This corporation licensed nine producers and one importer: Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig, Pathé, Essanay, Kalem, Méliès, and the Kleine Optical Company. For a few months a monopoly seemed possible, then new commercial opposition arose outside the "trust."
Motion pictures, unlike the aviation industry right after World War I, were booming, and in 1909, the Independent Motion Picture Company formed from those left outside of the MPPC patent pool, known by some as the "Edison Trust."
** Thomas Edison has been labelled a "patent troll" in some articles.
Even after he became widely successful and famous—known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park”—Edison still participated in the secondary market, such as selling his patented innovation in incandescent light bulbs to the General Electric Co. (as discussed in a recent biography).
IPBiz notes General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, said merger done by J. P. Morgan. Unhappy with the result of the "war of the currents," J.P. Morgan forced Edison (not his patents) out of the company. The light bulbs used at the Columbian Exhibition at Chicago in 1893 were all Westinghouse bulbs and the electric power was the AC of Westinghouse and Tesla.
Adam Mossoff's statement in Slate is silly.
The CAFC affirmed the finding of exceptional case but remanded as to attorney fee calculation in Lumen View Technology.
The CAFC affirmed ED Va and noted general issues with 35 U.S.C. § 154(b)(1).
in issuance of the patent.
Does the GM/Sidecar deal threaten Uber with patent infringement?
Maybe. Sidecar’s patent predates those filed by Uber and Lyft by several years, and it’s pretty specific. “It’s not just the general idea of sending a ride request and getting a pickup,” says Maulin Shah, managing attorney at Envision IP, a firm that focuses on patent research and litigation. Sidecar “tried to protect the infrastructure that allows that to happen.” It’s been referenced by 148 other patents, some filed by companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and yes, Uber. As with academic papers, having your work cited by others is an indication of validity, Shah says.
It’s far from clear that Sidecar’s patent could be used as enforcement against others, however. First off, GM could use the patent to sue a competitor only if it is the exclusive licensee of the patent—GM and Sidecar haven’t released details of their agreement. Secondly, you could argue the patent addresses a business method, not a technical solution. In May 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled you can’t patent an idea. (The case, Alice Corporation vs. CLS Bank, was also a major blow to patent trolls.) “It’s a fine line between a software patent versus a true business methods patent,” Shah says, though he thinks the Sidecar patent falls more to the software side. Plus, Uber’s success is built on more than the basic ability to call a car with your phone. It has spent years working on its sophisticated algorithms to make the ride sharing experience as easy and convenient as possible.
The third potential hiccup, Shah says, is that because it’s never been challenged in court or at the US Patent Office, “we really don’t know how strong the patent is.” No one’s ever had to defend it, and no one’s tried to attack it by looking for evidence that it’s not as seminal as it may seem. Basically, it hasn’t been vetted.
The text -As with academic papers, having your work cited by others is an indication of validity, - is questionable.
As to academics, contemplate the highly cited work of Jan-Hendrik Schon. That lemmings follow does not prove validity.
The "exclusive license" business may not be relevant here, given that Sidecar is gone. Somebody controls the IP, likely GM.
CAFC: a § 101 analysis may sometimes be undertaken without resolving fact issues.
final invalidity contentions. See Mortgage Grader, Inc. v.
Costco Wholesale Corp., 2014 WL 10763261, at *6 (C.D.
claims are patent-ineligible. See Mortgage Grader, Inc. v.
Costco Wholesale Corp., 89 F. Supp. 3d 1055, 1065 (C.D.
35 U.S.C. § 101 (“§ 101”).
One issue pertained to the use of "standing patent rules."
power to manage their own docket, see, e.g., Ryan v.
Gonzales, 133 S. Ct. 696, 708 (2013); Ethicon, Inc. v.
all matters before them. Fed. R. Civ. P. 16; see also Fed.
S.P.R.s fall squarely within this broad authority.
for finding good cause to amend invalidity contentions.
We find no abuse of discretion in the court’s ruling.
Mortgage Grader’s arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive.
satisfying the “good cause” standard imposed by S.P.R.
court abuse the broad discretion afforded it.
v. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336, 1344 (Fed.
561 U.S. 593, 601 (2010).
An article by Eric Lander in Cell about the identity of the heroes of CRISPR has drawn significant criticism.
In a perspective piece published in Cell this week (January 14), Eric Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, outlined the history of achievements behind the precision gene-editing technique known as CRISPR. The problem is, the Broad is a copatentee embroiled in an intellectual property battle being investigated by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). And Lander’s Cell paper does not disclose the potential conflict of interest.
Did Baum, the author of Ozma of Oz, think patents were humbug?
In "Ozma of Oz," a sequel to the famed "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy comes across a remarkable copper clockwork man, a mechanical robot running on clockwork springs. Dismissing the invention, Dorothy's companion says that a clockwork man might be a "wonderful machine," but that "it is all humbug, like so many other patented articles."
"Well, I declare!" gasped the [talking] yellow hen [Billina], in amazement; "if the copper man can do half of these things he is a very wonderful machine. But I suppose it is all humbug, like so many other patented articles."
Billina, the talking hen, is a cynical, but practical, character in the book. Her initial skepticism of the mechanical man is shown unwarranted.
The book Ozma was published in 1907, one year after the Wright Brothers patent issued, which patent did describe a flight control system which worked and was not humbug.
was expressing criticism of the patent system.
Carl Straumsheim of Inside Higher Ed discusses a patent application by Khan Academy.
In order to actively sue another company for patent infringement unprovoked, Khan Academy would have to violate what is known as an innovator’s patent agreement. Introduced by Twitter in 2012 in an effort to make patents more palatable to developers, the agreement is a contract that ensures a company that holds a patent is unable to use it for “offensive” purposes -- suing a company, for example -- unless it gets permission from the employee who came up with the idea or invention.
In this case, Khan Academy entered into an innovator's agreement with Matt Faus, a developer. Khan Academy did not respond to a request from comment.
The application is US 20150310753, and the application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/975,685, filed Apr. 4, 2014. WILSON, SONSINI, GOODRICH & ROSATI is prosecuting the case.
Charles Osgood introduced the stories for January 17, 2016. Barry Petersen does the cover story on genetically modified food. Second, Lee Cowan on Stan Lee of Marvel Comics. Third, Martha Teichner on cake decoraters. Jane Pauley on Leslie Caron. Bill Geist on Jennifer Lawrence and miracle mop portrayed in movie Joy. Alan Pizzi in Italy. Steve Hartman.
Headlines. Five Americans released in Iran. Deaths in Burkina Fasso. Federal aid for water supply in Flint, Michigan. Weather: arctic air coming.
Prisoner swap covered by Charlie Daggeda and Elizabeth Palmer. Initially, clip from John Kerry. Iran can now sell oil on open market. A golden page in Iran's history. Snap back mechanism. Landstuhl Hospital in Germany.
Almanac. January 17, 1880, the birthday of Mack Sennett of silent films. Founder of Keystone Kops. Charlie Chaplin. Fatty Arbuckle. Broke by 1930s. In 1938, awarded a special Oscar. Died in 1960. The original main building of Keystone Studios, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed, is still there and is now CBS Studio Center. Of IP interest, Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark in 1917, which was retained by his former bosses, who did not maintain the quality. Sennett's main competitor was Hal Roach. Arguably, his comedic depictions of the 1920s tall, British-style hats for policemen led to their demise, a change in the way we live, and thus an innovation.
Osgood. 80% of foods contain at least one GMO. Papaya farm in Hawaii. Most papayas on Big Island are GMOs. 60 million pounds of papaya. Then ring spot disease. Dennis Gonsalves. Virus resistant papaya. DNA "vaccine". Daylon Perry's farm. Today, 10 different GMO crops. Soda, cereal, chips, cheese, salmon. Future: peanuts, cassava, bananas. BUT, Pesticide Action Network. Opposition to Monsanto. Issue have to buy Monsanto herbicide. Agreement to use seeds only for one cycle. Seeds patented by Monsanto. Hugh Grant is CEO of Monsanto. Chipotle, Hersey, Whole Foods will require labeling of GMOs. Adverse health effects? 57% of Americans think GMOs are unsafe to eat. Science organizations say safe. Modern sweet corn is example of human intervention. Vitamin enriched golden rice (vitamin A).
Allan Pizzi. St. Benedict in Norcia. An American monk, Father Cassian Folsom, is featured in the story. Monks pray eight times a day. Basil Nixon. Chanting Monks album hits billboard chart. The monks’ CD, is called Benedicta. CBS quotes from The Monks of Norcia. We didn't come here to be successful; we came here to seek God. ReligionNews quoted Father Cassian: “We sing the praises of God nine times a day. So if you add all that up, it’s probably five hours every day, rain or shine, 365 days a year, CBS Sunday Morning did not mention other aspects of Norcia. From Wikipedia: The Monks of Norcia made headlines by supplying Birra Nursia to all the cardinals of the papal conclave that elected Pope Francis.
"Birra Nursia even participated in the election of Pope Francis. Several cases of beer were given to the cardinals before the start of the conclave. The fact that the Pope chose “Francis” as a name, and our master brewer is our own Br. Francis Davoren (from Texas!) does not seem to us a coincidence! Perhaps those initial smiles from the Loggia of St. Peter’s were the fruit not just of the Holy Spirit, but of our very own motto, Ut Laetificet Cor!"
Stan Lee wanted to be Errol Flynn. Stan Lee is now 93 years. Spider Man, Iron Man. The god of the Marvel universe. Jack Kirby. Stanley Martin Lieber. Timely Comics. Destroyer, Jack Frost. After Pearl Harbor, joined Army. A poster: VD, not me. Timely Comics became Marvel Comics. Fantastic Four. Most famous character: Spider Man. Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. Marvel owns the characters. Stan largely cut out of the profits. It was my job to create them. No point in saying I should have done that. Sued Marvel in 2002; he settled. Got title: chairman emeritus. POW Entertainment. I am doing what I want to do, so why would I want to retire. I was born to be Errol Flynn, but I never quite made it.
Martha Teichner on cake walk. Australian Cake Decorating Network on a cake crawl. Everybody wants bling on their cakes. Ron Ben-Israel of Food Network. My Cupcake Addiction.
Steve Hartman on Officer Ryan Davis. Fisher Foods in Canton, Ohio. Police dog Jethro. Unconditionally loyal, supporting.
Joy Mangano is the inventor of Miracle Mop. Another invention is Huggable Hangers .
Death of David Bowie. Bill Flanagan. Bowie did not value authenticity. Changing. Jan. 8, 2013: where are we now? Lazarus.
Next week on Sunday Morning: Charlotte Rampling.
CBS did not identify the specific location, but it could have been the Tambopata Research Center in southern Peru at which point hundreds of macaws (and other parrots) congregate around a 50 meter high clay bank.
In a post titled CRISPR Patent War: Billions at Stake for UC Berkeley, KQED had some interesting comments on the CRISPR patent interference.
The victor won’t be announced in 2016. Sherkow says the trial will take years. It could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but he says that’s not likely.
“The chances of it going to the Supreme Court are only slightly better than the Powerball we had [this week],” he says.
IPBiz does not know how this probability was estimated, but suspects it is too low, likely lower than that of any appealed case getting cert.
What are your chances of winning? A quick look at the Powerball website tells you the probability of winning the jackpot is 1 in 175,223,510. To see where that number comes from, imagine purchasing every number combination. In Powerball, a player first picks five different whole numbers between 1 and 59. One could make a list of all the possibilities, starting with (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), (1, 2, 3, 4, 6), and so on all the way through (55, 56, 57, 58, 59). But it would take a long time to make that list, because it has more than five million entries! Indeed, mathematics tells us the number of ways to choose five distinct numbers from 1 to 59 is 5,006,386.
After choosing the five numbers between 1 and 59, the player then picks another number between 1 and 35 that is called the Powerball. So, we multiply the 5,006,386 by 35 and see that there are 175,223,510 possible Powerball combinations. For simplicity, let's be generous and round off to an even 175,000,000.
In recent years, the Court has received between 7500 and 8000 cert. petitions per year: from July 2011 to July 2012, for example, 7712 new petitions were filed. There were 7857 in the same period from July 2010 to July 2011 and 8159 the year before that. One notes that 100/8000 is 1 in 80 (0.0125), a lot bigger than 1 in 175 million.
wherein the competitors cut a deal.
with the subject matter related to a drug for multiple sclerosis.
The '665 application and the '451 patent relate to a modular handguard rail for a firearm. During the interference, Troy was declared the "junior party." The Board also determined that Samson's earliest constructive-reduction-to-practice date was January 18, 2005 ("the Critical Date").
Troy bore the burden of establishing priority of invention in the District Court by showing an actual reduction to practice of the invention prior to Samson's Critical Date. In order to establish an actual reduction to practice, Troy needed to demonstrate that (1) he constructed an embodiment or performed a process to meet every element of the claim and (2) the embodiment or process operated for its intended purpose.
IPBiz has already written about Noyce v. Kilby, 416 F.2d 1391, 163 U.S.P.Q. 550 (CCPA 1969) concerning who would be granted priority for the discovery of the integrated circuit.
The parties to Patent Interference No. 102,598 are Gilbert P. Hyatt, inventor of United States Patent No. 4,942,516 entitled "Single Chip Integrated Circuit Computer Architecture" (the '516 patent), and Gary W. Boone, inventor of patent application Serial No. 07/473,541 entitled "Variable Function Programmed Systems" (the '541 application).
Chiron v. Abbott - 1995 [ The mere idea of a recombinant immunoassay based on env region polypeptides, without knowledge and analysis of the nucleotide sequence of specific env DNA fragments, is, as the court in Amgen put it, "simply a wish to know the identity of any material" that would be immunoreactive with HIV, not a "definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention."
apply the BRI standard in assessing claim validity.
was incommensurate with the unwillingness of PTAB to allow amendments.
There were no comments on PatentlyO denying that there have been few amendments allowed in IPR proceedings.
En banc rehearing of Cuozzo was denied.
allowing PTAB to decide petitions in IPRs AND rule on validity of claims in IPRs.
Although several top 50 companies dropped considerably lower in the patent ranking, fewer patents isn't the only reason. Rather, companies such as Microsoft and Panasonic have spread their portfolios across multiple entities and assigned patents to newly formed holding companies.
While a company may put patents into a separate company and move that company offshore to avoid corporate taxes, Cady believes the reorganizations are to make licensing easier. Having patents in different divisions and negotiating with all those divisions separately is difficult, he noted, and working with one entity in charge of licensing would streamline the process.
This year saw 2,862 fewer patents awarded for business methods, largely due to the 2014 Supreme Court decision that tightened the rules on patentable software. IBM received the most patents in this category with 549 awards.
been obvious over the prior art. Accordingly, we affirm.
proceedings” in promulgating regulations. 35 U.S.C.
the institution decision to the Board at all.
success of Covidien’s allegedly infringing product.
463 F.3d 1299, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
disclosed in the patent in suit which was not readily available in the prior art").
combination (all elements taken as a whole).
contrary to the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, Pub. L.
alternatives to litigation.” H.R. Rep. No. 112–98, pt.
Director, and the second decision made by the Board.
the structure of these post-grant proceedings.
F.3d 1361, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (internal citations omitted).
the America Invents Act, with scant additional burden.
Among several news sources, the journal NATURE has noted that an interference has been declared in the CRISPR gene editing area.
See Bitter fight over CRISPR patent heats up. Unusual battle among academic institutions holds key to gene-editing tool’s future use.
Arti Rai, a legal scholar at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that it is unusual for academic research institutions to battle so intensely over a patent. Instead, such institutions usually come to an agreement to share rights to the invention. “This seems more bitter than disputes I’ve heard of in the past,” she adds.
These folks must have been asleep during the WARF embryonic stem cell re-exams!
The Dec. 1 response by Zhang showed that the examiner had considered Doudna's PCT '6772, so the examiner was not unaware of Doudna's work.
In June, the Federal Circuit decided Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., affirming the District Court's decision granting Ariosa's summary judgment motion for invalidity on the grounds that the claims of of U.S. Patent No. 6,258,540 were patent ineligible. Although the Federal Circuit appreciated that the inventors had found cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in maternal plasma or serum "that other researchers had previously discarded as medical waste," the panel stated that "[a]pplying a combination of known laboratory techniques to their discovery," the inventors "implemented a method for detecting the small fraction of paternally inherited cffDNA in maternal plasma or serum to determine fetal characteristics, such as gender." In affirming the District Court decision, the opinion concluded that "[t]he method . . . begins and ends with a natural phenomenon," and "[t]hus, the claims are directed to matter that is naturally occurring."
"paternally inherited nucleic acid of fetal origin " was in the maternal [blood] serum or plasma.
**For reference to the discussion below, the Supreme Court case of Diamond v. Diehr related to a patent method claim applying the [prior art] Arrhenius equation to operation of a rubber molding press.
In Diehr, by contrast [with Flook], we held that a computer-implemented process for curing rubber was patent eligible, but not because it involved a computer. The claim employed a "well-known" mathematical equation, but it used that equation in a process designed to solve a technological problem in "conventional industry practice." The invention in Diehr used a "thermocouple" to record constant temperature measurements inside the rubber mold — something "the industry ha[d] not been able to obtain." The temperature measurements were then fed into a computer, which repeatedly recalculated the remaining cure time by using the mathematical equation. These additional steps, we recently explained, "transformed the process into an inventive application of the formula." Mayo, supra, at ___, 132 S.Ct., at 1299. In other words, the claims in Diehr were patent eligible because they improved an existing technological process, not because they were implemented on a computer.
One observes that the Alice interpretation of Diehr, emphasizing the use of a thermocouple in a previously undisclosed manner, is a bit different than what one has in Ariosa, wherein the method steps of detecting and amplifying are not new. The novelty is in determining that paternal DNA is in the serum or plasma. That recognized, one has a useful test employing standard methodology.
As we will discuss in a parallel post, the brief of Professors Lefstin and Menell provide their reading of recent Supreme Court cases of Mayo and Alice — arguing that (1) a close reading shows that inventive application of a law of nature is not required but instead a non-preemptive or non-generic application; and (2) the Flook-type claim dissection is prohibited. Read Ariosa.Leftsin. This analyze-it-as-a-whole sentiment was repeated by the IPO Brief field by Tiege Sheehan as well as the brief from Amarantus filed by Gideon Schor. Read Ariosa.IPO and Ariosa.Amarantus.
My Fellow Missouri Professor Chris Holman filed a brief on behalf of the major industry organizations BIO and PhRMA making the credible argument that all this is a very big deal in the diagnostic space and that the resulting uncertainty is having a negative impact on research. Read Ariosa.BIO.
Myriad‘s counsel Benjamin Jackson filed a brief on behalf of the industry organization21st Century Medicine that challenges the “gist” method of determining whether a claim encompasses excluded subject matter and suggests that the claim here is simply a technological improvement over the prior art.
Sequenom’s patent teaches it was known in the art that fetal cells can pass into the mother’s blood. Diagnostic techniques had been devised to isolate these cells and analyze fetal DNA extracted from them, but these techniques were expensive and time consuming. The phrase “cell-free fetal DNA” was therefore not an attempt to claim a natural phenomenon but instead a key claim limitation to distinguish over the art. Fifteen years ago, back when patent claiming and examination focused on prior art rather than ill-defined “natural phenomena,” Sequenom appropriately emphasized that its methods used cell-free fetal DNA rather than the cell-derived fetal DNA known in the art.
Thus, the claimed invention is a significant technical improvement in the laboratory process for prenatal diagnosis, allowing laboratories to eliminate the costly and labor-intensive step of isolating fetal cells and then fetal DNA. Such an inventive improvement to the technical performance of an existing technological process is precisely what patents are for.
Wikipedia notes of blood serum: In blood, the serum is the component that is neither a blood cell (serum does not contain white or red blood cells) nor a clotting factor; it is the blood plasma not including the fibrinogens. Serum includes all proteins not used in blood clotting (coagulation) and all the electrolytes, antibodies, antigens, hormones, and any exogenous substances (e.g., drugs and microorganisms).

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