Source: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/03/index.html
Timestamp: 2013-05-22 00:42:32
Document Index: 487251746

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 101', '§ 2173', '§5', '§101', '§ 101', '§ 252', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 102', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 103', '§ 101']

Punishing Prometheus: Part IV - Machine or Transformation, We Hardly Knew Thee… Guest Post by Robert R. Sachs of Fenwick & West LLPRead Part I; Part II; and Part III. It seems like only yesterday the Court told us that the “machine or transformation” test was “a useful and important clue, an investigative tool, for determining whether some claimed inventions are processes under § 101.” The Court’s reasoning suggested that while passing MoT was not necessary, it was still a sufficient condition for patent eligibility, and if nothing else indicated that the invention was not an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomena.
The Court also seems to think that inventors arrive at the patent attorney’s door step with their inventions fully formed, fully understood, and fully explained and explainable. In some cases, in some fields, that may be true—say for those funny hats with fans, beer cans, and scrolling LEDs. But for the majority of technologies, the patent attorney is an active and necessary participant in the creation of the patent and its value. Many inventors simply do not know what they have invented, they lack the framework for understanding their inventions, first in the context of the prior art, and second in the context of how the USPTO and the courts analyze inventions under the law. Senior patent attorneys often have significantly more exposure and breadth of experience in their particularly technology areas than the inventors that they advise. They combine their understanding of the patent law, the technology, and the business goals of the inventor to create something that did not previously exist: an intellectual property right. This is no mere scrivener’s recording, from the inventor’s lips to the patent examiner’s ear to the court’s gavel. This is legal counseling and crafting at its best. Posted on Mar 31, 2012 at 08:56 PM | Permalink
"Under the new standard, therefore, an applicant or attorney may knowingly and deliberately withhold from the PTO any reference known to be inconsistent with a position takeny by him or her before the PTO so long as the withholder does not know that the reference itself would lead to a rejection. It would not be enough to prove that the applicant or attorney expected that the concealment would help win an allowance or expected that, if revealed to the examiner, the reference would cause the examiner to merely question patentability. Rather, the applicant or attorney must know - and it must be later proven that he or she knew, that the item, if revealed, would lead to a rejection."
Slip Op. at 3. Posted on Mar 29, 2012 at 10:45 AM | Permalink
Punishing Prometheus: Part III - Conclusions Masquerading as Analysis Guest Post by Robert R. Sachs of Fenwick & West LLP; Read Part I and Part II. Patent attorneys are trained to draft claims using clear and precise language, and in particular to not rely upon relative terminology to define an invention--terms like “about,” “substantially,” “superior,” “better,” “good,” “sufficient” etc. See, Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP), § 2173. After all, claims are definitions and indefiniteness is fatal.
Business methods, being entirely the province of arbitrary human behavior such as advertising, finance and the like, are the one class of inventions clearly not based upon or using laws of nature and natural phenomenon. Yes, all inventions comply with the law of thermodynamics, etc., and perhaps all human behavior could be explained if we truly could model the regularities that govern the behavior of all fundamental particles, and as result we divorced ourselves from a persistent macro-phenomenon as free will and consciousness. If we get that far, then we will have a more difficult problem on our hands, whether we can patent non-obvious applications of those laws. Whether these methods are “abstract ideas” is another matter—but as should be clear from the above, it is my view that a method used in a business is not an abstract idea. If you can sell it, it’s patent-eligible. Posted on Mar 29, 2012 at 06:56 AM | Permalink
Continue reading "Punishing Prometheus: Part II - What is a Claim?" »
Posted on Mar 27, 2012 at 09:11 AM | Permalink
The Supreme Court today vacated the Federal Circuit's decision in AMP v. Myriad Genetics and has ordered the appellate court to reconsider the case in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in Mayo v. Prometheus. To be clear, the Supreme Court's move here is not a ruling on the merits but rather merely a recognition that the validity of Myriad's human gene patents may be impacted by the Mayo decision. I previously wrote that one reasoned result of the Mayo decision is that Myriad's claims directed toward isolated human DNA are now invalid.
Posted on Mar 26, 2012 at 10:54 AM | Permalink
Supreme Court: Solving Claim Construction? by Dennis Crouch Retractable Techs., Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co. (on petition for certiorari 2012) As its company name suggests, Retractable Technologies makes safety syringes that retract after completing a drug injection. Retractable sued BD for patent infringement and won $5 million in damages and permanent injunctive relief. This was the second time that Retractable had filed a lawsuit to enforce its patent. In both cases, the district court interpreted the claim term syringe "body" as encompassing a body "composed of one or multiple pieces." (In the first case, the accused infringer agreed to stop making its product and to pay a $1 million settlement). On appeal here, BD was able to convince a two-member majority of its Federal Circuit panel to modify the claim construction in a way that limits the "body" element to a "one-piece body." (Majority opinion by Judges Lourie and Plager). The appellate panel narrowly construed the term based upon its reading of the patent specification and the notion that the claims should be limited to what "the inventor actually invented." In dissent, Chief Judge Rader argued that the majority had improperly confined claim scope to the specific embodiments of the invention." Chief Judge Rader also argued in favor of giving more weight to the doctrine of claim differentiation. Here, some of the non-asserted claims in the patent included an explicit "one-piece body" limitation – suggesting that the asserted claim without the "one-piece" limitation must be broader. After losing the appeal, Retractable filed a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc. The petition was denied, but Judges Moore and O'Malley each filed dissents. Supreme Court Petition: Retractable has now filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. The petition raises two questions: 1. Whether a court may depart from the plain and ordinary meaning of a term in a patent claim based on language in the patent specification, where the patentee has neither expressly disavowed the plain meaning of the claim term nor expressly defined the term in a way that differs from its plain meaning. 2. Whether claim construction, including underlying factual issues that are integral to claim construction, is a purely legal question subject to de novo review on appeal. First Question Goes Nowhere: In my view, the first question presented is not well stated. Of course a court can use context to provide meaning to claim language. A formalistic and restrictive view of patent doctrine was rejected by the Supreme Court in virtually every recent decision, including Mayo, Bilski, KSR, eBay, and MedImmune. Further, many members of the Supreme Court have identified a problem with vague and over-broad claim limitations, and the majority opinion here provides a simple tool for limiting scope: interpret the claims within the context of what was demonstrably understood by the inventor and the examiner and by what would have been known by a reasonably skilled artisan. Use Specification to Narrow (or Broaden): There are times when the context of the specification is used to broaden the scope of a claim term beyond its ordinary meaning. However, the Federal Circuit judges appear to believe that greater reliance on the specification will usually result in a narrowing of claim scope. Thus, the debate on the role of the specification in claim construction is at least partially a proxy for the debate on whether patents should be given a broad scope or narrow scope. I would again criticize the petition – this time for wholly agreeing that reliance on the specification results in a narrowed scope. Retractable frames the debate on trying to understand "the circumstances in which the language of the specification should narrow the plain meaning of a claim term." The Second Question is more well framed, although I would have tweaked it slightly to ask: "Whether claim construction, including underlying factual issues that are integral to claim construction, is a purely legal question [that is therefore] subject to de novo review on appeal." The tweak here is important because Retractable is not challenging the Supreme Court's Markman decision but rather challenging the Federal Circuit's Cybor decision. In Markman, the Supreme Court recognized the reality that claim construction includes a number of factual determinations – calling the process a "mongrel" of fact and law. However, the court ruled that claim construction should be treated as an issue of law to be decided by a judge. In Cybor, the Federal Circuit applied its usual formalistic if-then approach to rule that appellate review must be de novo because claim construction is an issue of law. From the petition: In Markman, this Court held that, for purposes of the Seventh Amendment, the task of construing patent claims falls to trial judges rather than juries. Markman did not decide the standard of review that an appellate court should apply to a district court's claim construction. The Court noted, however, that the process of construing a claim is a "mongrel practice," that "falls somewhere between a pristine legal standard and a simple historical fact." In holding that trial judges are "better suited" for this task than juries, the Court recognized that claim construction requires trial judges to exercise a "trained ability to evaluate the testimony in relation to the overall structure of the patent." Accordingly, the Court held that "there is sufficient reason to treat construction of terms of art like many other responsibilities that we cede to a judge in the normal course of trial, notwithstanding its evidentiary underpinnings." Thus, Markman recognized that claim construction involves underlying factual questions, and said nothing to indicate that the Federal Circuit should displace the district court's resolution of those questions. There are lots of doctrines that receive de novo review that do not have a reversal rate anywhere near that of claim construction. I think that everyone agrees that claim construction is inherently difficult. Claim construction rulings do not provide a yes-no answer like you might find in an obviousness judgment. Rather, a judge is required to identify the best interpretation of all possible interpretations of each contested claim term. And, unlike statutory interpretation, we do not have the benefit of the scope being developed over time through a series of cases. Rather, in most instances, a court's construction is in the first instance. In addition to the inherent difficulty, claim construction is made more difficult because of the open panel dependence of claim construction decisions. For many years the Federal Circuit refused to admit any panel dependence in its decision making, that has changed. Where to Focus Assurances?: District court judges complain about claim construction because of the high likelihood that their decisions will be reversed on appeal. Giving deference to district court judgments would likely mean fewer reversals. This approach gives us certainty earlier in the process, but only once the district court issues a final claim construction. That date still seems very late. The scope of patent claims is of critical importance to almost all patent monetization transactions. However, very few of those transactions take place in conjunction with a district court claim construction decision. We need a process for substantially understanding claim scope at a much earlier stage and without relying on a federal court. One answer for an early understanding of claim scope: Define terms during prosecution. If applicants fail to define terms, examiners should provide their own definitions as part of the office action. In the short-term, the focus should be on terms that are (1) frequently debated in court (such as "server" or "coupled to"; (2) used in the specification in a way that is in tension with the ordinary meaning of a term; or (3) inherently imprecise (such as "about").
Notes: Download the Retractable Cert Petition.
Amicus briefs in support will be due at the Supreme Court by April 23. Posted on Mar 26, 2012 at 10:31 AM | Permalink
Guest Post by Robert R. Sachs of Fenwick & West LLP
“Not even wrong.” So said Wolfgang Pauli about a proposed analysis by a young physicist, meaning that the arguments were not subject to falsification, the basic tool of scientific analysis. So too it can be said about the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo v. Prometheus. The Court’s analysis creates a framework for patent eligibility in which almost any method claim can be invalidated. Like so many pseudo-sciences in which every phenomenon can be rationalized and in which there is no test that can show the theory to be incorrect, under Prometheus seemingly anything can be “explained” as being unpatentable subject matter.
Let me say at the outset that I’ve been a student of patent law, and patent eligibility in particular, since 1993. My clients have frequently been those whose inventions bumped up against the boundaries of patentable subject matter—in software, e-commerce, finance, business operations, user interfaces, and bio-informatics to name a few—so I have become intimately acquainted with both the legal and practical implications of this question. As such my personal reaction to this decision is very strong, and I will be quite blunt in what follows.
Over the next several days I will address just some of the logical and legal errors in the Court’s decision.
The first critical mistake is the Court’s assumption that Prometheus’ claims recited a “law of nature:” “The claims purport to apply natural laws describing the relationships between the concentration in the blood of certain thiopurine metabolites and the likelihood that the drug dosage will be ineffective or induce harmful side-effects.” The facile assumption that this relationship is a “law of nature” is incorrect, and potentially the most damaging misstep by the Court.
First, let us assume for the moment that there are in fact such things as “laws of nature.” What would their characteristics be? A first approximation would suggest that a law of nature is immutable and universal, that it is not subject to change, and it applies in all circumstances. See, Evidence Based Science. Thus, gravity and the speed light apply to you and me equally, and under all conditions. (I’m purposely using these two examples, for reasons that will become clear.) However, this is not the case with the toxicity of any drug, including thiopurines, as acknowledged by the Court: the amount of a toxic dose varies between individuals for two reasons. First, different people metabolize at different rates, thereby producing different metabolite levels for a given dose. Second, individuals have differential responses to a given amount of the metabolites; a given level of the metabolites may be toxic in one person and not toxic in another. Thus, while the patent sets forth metabolite levels for toxicity and effectiveness, these levels are necessarily probabilistic, as some patients could experience toxicity at levels below or above those specified in the patent claims. This is inherent in the way toxicity is determined using a median lethal dose, LD50. This is exactly the same reason that one person can be drop dead drunk after five drinks and another can be stone cold sober at the same level. Indeed, Mayo’s test used a higher threshold for toxicity—evidence that there is no “law of nature” as to what is a toxic dose of thiopurine in all humans.
The “natural relation” that Prometheus claims is, itself, not immutable in an even deeper sense. This relationship is a byproduct of human (or perhaps more generally mammalian) biology, which from a logical point of view is a contingent relationship that could have been otherwise: we could have evolved in such a way that the toxicity range was higher or lower, or the drug was entirely ineffective. That is, it’s an arbitrary and contingent fact that humans evolved so that thiopurine drugs were effective at all for treating immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorders, or that we metabolize them in a manner that makes them toxic at specific dosing ranges. Indeed, given that humans are not exposed to thiopurine in nature, it is hard to understand how it can even be argued that it is a “natural law” that these drugs have a specific range of toxic or effective dosages at all. That these drugs are effective (or toxic) is a classic discovery in the truest sense of the term.
At best, the relationship between the dosage and toxicity level may be a “natural phenomenon.” Let us assume that is the case. Natural phenomena are a different class of things than laws of nature. Lightning, mirages, tornadoes, superconductivity, rainbows, these are natural phenomena: events that take place in nature (or in the lab) under specific and contingent conditions. While these events are of course dependent on the laws of nature, they are different from them in kind. The prohibition of patent claims in this regard is for claims on the phenomenon itself, not on the specific application of a phenomenon. Indeed, most patents in the chemical, biological, and electrical arts are based precisely on this distinction, being able to induce, apply, or control a natural phenomenon for a particular purpose. For example, there are thousands of patents that expressly claim a particular use of the Hall effect, natural phenomena discovered in 1879. The Court’s failure to appreciate this distinction puts many patents that harness natural phenomena at risk.
In short, the relationship of thiopurine dosage to toxicity is a contingent, empirical fact and subject to discovery. Like other empirical facts, it is precisely the type of subject matter that has been patented in this country since the very first patent issued by the USPTO: Samuel Hopkins’ patent on an improved method for making potash, based on the discovery that burning the raw ashes a second time increased their carbonate production. Hopkins’ discovery is no different in kind from Prometheus’ discovery: in both cases empirical “scientific” facts about the world.
But let us return to the core assumption: that there are laws of nature in the first instance. The Court makes the obvious reference to Einstein’s E=mc2 equation as an example. But the great scientist would have readily dismissed this appellation, knowing full well that what he set forth was a theory, a model, a description that was subject to falsification. Indeed, Einstein’s work has been criticized as being incomplete, or valid only in limited circumstances.
The view that there are laws of nature reflects an 18th century view of the world, based no doubt upon the classical, Newtonian view of a reality of absolute space and time governed by the three “laws of motion”—laws that were thought to be immutable and universal—and which Einstein among others showed not to be “laws” at all.
Most modern scientists do not view reality as defined by “laws”—indeed, the very idea that we could “know” what the “laws” are itself begs the very questions that philosophers since Plato have struggled with, the questions of epistemology (what is knowledge, what can we know) and ontology (what exists).
In several places, the Court lumps laws of nature together with “abstract ideas,” for example by leaning on the analysis in Bilski and Benson. But again, this is a category error: abstract ideas are very different from laws of nature, and must be treated separately. “Ideas,” classically speaking, are the “impressions in your head” when you think about something—the thing you think about is a “concept.” When you think about concepts that have instances in the world—cats, dogs, and thiopurine—you are thinking of “concrete” concepts, and your ideas are “concrete.” Even when you think of a unicorn or a flying purple people eater, you are thinking of a concrete concept because it could have an instance in the world. However, when you think about concepts that do not (or could not) have instances in the world—justice, eternity, infinitesimal, invisible green four sided triangles—or metaphors—All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players—the “idea” in your head is “abstract.” (Of course, I know that this is (1) a gloss, and (2) subject to debate as much as anything else in philosophy. Arguably, there are no “abstract” concepts at all. I’ll leave that debate for another day).
To wit: the abstract idea of say, immortality, is clearly not a “law of nature,” describing something that by definition cannot have examples in the world, since nothing can be immortal (there could be unicorns however, thus the concept of “unicorn” is concrete). Conversely, Ohm’s Law—that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points—describes something inherently and entirely physical and real. Ohm’s Law is a description of the world (and it turns out, not always correct). That the Court attempts to put these two square pegs in the same round hole reveals just how little the Court understands the nuances of science, philosophy and language—let alone the patent law itself.
Tomorrow: What’s a Claim? and Patent-Eligibility vs. Patentability
Posted on Mar 26, 2012 at 08:10 AM | Permalink
USPTO Is Hiring The USPTO is on a new hiring initiative. The office is looking for engineers, scientists, and intellectual property attorneys for its DC area office and for its soon-to-open Detroit office. www.usptocareers.gov
Kappos Blog Post Watch this video for more info on what the USPTO does: https://uspto.connectsolutions.com/patentexaminfosession/
Posted on Mar 24, 2012 at 12:23 PM | Permalink
Video Reaction to Mayo v. Prometheus
Posted on Mar 24, 2012 at 01:06 AM | Permalink
This week the USPTO issued a record number 4,976 utility patent — setting an all time single-week high. As it turns out, the top-ten single week issuance numbers all come from fiscal year 2012. (The top seven come from calendar year 2012 even though we are only 13-weeks into the year). As the PTO continues to ramp-up examination throughput, we can expect these numbers to continue to rise. The PTO does not regularly release information regarding the number of abandoned cases and so I have been unable to confirm whether those numbers have risen in parallel.
Top Grant Dates Count
Posted on Mar 22, 2012 at 03:16 PM | Permalink
The following four question survey should take less than 1 minute to complete. Thanks! Dennis Crouch, dcrouch@gmail.com
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 at 01:29 PM | Permalink
C. Bohannan & H. Hovenkamp, Creation without Restraint: Promoting Liberty and Rivalry in Innovation 112 (2012) ("One problem with [process] patents is that the more abstractly their claims are stated, the more difficult it is to determine precisely what they cover. They risk being applied to a wide range of situations that were not anticipated by the patentee"). W. Landes & R. Posner, The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law 305–306 (2003) (The exclusion from patent law of basic truths reflects "both . . .the enormous potential for rent seeking that would be created if property rights could be obtained in them and. . . the enormous transaction costs that would be imposed on would-be users [of those truths]"). Eisenberg, Wisdom of the Ages or Dead-Hand Control? Patentable Subject Matter for Diagnostic Methods After In re Bilski, 3 Case W. Res. J. L. Tech. & Internet 1, ___ (forthcoming, 2012) (manuscript, at 85–86, online at http://www.patentlyo.com/files/eisenberg.wisdomordeadhand.patentlyo.pdf). 2 D. Chisum, Patents §5.03[3] (2005). Lemley, Risch, Sichelman, & Wagner, Life After Bilski, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 1315 (2011)(arguing that patents on laws of nature would inhibit future innovations premised upon the law).
Risch, Everything is Patentable, 75 Tenn. L. Rev. 591 (2008) (defending a minimalist approach to §101) (the Court found that by 2011, Risch had changed his viewpoint as evidenced by the Lemley article). Posted on Mar 21, 2012 at 08:21 AM | Permalink
Mayo v. Prometheus: Natural Process + Known Elements = Normally No Patent by Dennis Crouch
A unanimous (9–0) Supreme Court has held that the personalized medicine dosing process invented by Prometheus is not eligible for patent protection because the process is effectively an unpatentable law of nature. This decision reverses the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's holding that the claims were patentable because they included substantial physical limitations. The Prometheus invention identifies a “relationships between concentrations of certain metabolites in the blood and the likelihood that a dosage of a thiopurine drug will prove [either] ineffective or cause harm. Claim 1, for example, states that if the levels of 6–TG in the blood (of a patient who has taken a dose of a thiopurine drug) exceed about 400 pmol per 8x10(8) red blood cells, then the administered dose is likely to produce toxic side effects.” In addition to claiming the boundaries between over and under dosage of thiopurine based upon measuring 6–TG in the blood, some of the Prometheus claims include additional limitations such as (1) administering thiopurine to a patient and (2) determining the blood level of 6–TG. Law of Nature: In its decision, the Supreme Court first identified the correlation between 6–TG blood levels and over/under thiopurine dosage as an unpatentable law of nature. The relation is a consequence of the ways in which thiopurine compounds are metabolized by the body—entirely natural processes. And so a patent that simply describes that relation sets forth a natural law.
Additional Elements: The Supreme Court then considered the additional limitations and held them insufficient to transform the identified natural law into a patentable process. The opinion repeatedly and favorably cites Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978) in finding that the physical and transformative elements of the invention were not “genuine applications of those laws[, but] rather .. drafting efforts designed to monopolize the correlations.” As to the claimed application of the law of nature, court here found it relevant and important that the additional steps were already known in the art. Because methods for making such determinations were well known in the art, this step simply tells doctors to engage in well-understood, routine, conventional activity previously engaged in by scientists in the field. Such activity is normally not sufficient to transform an unpatentable law of nature into a patent-eligible application of such a law. The conclusion here is that (1) a newly discovered law of nature is itself unpatentable and (2) the application of that newly discovered law is also normally unpatentable if the application merely relies upon elements already known in the art. To be clear, the court still maintains the law of Diehr that “an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula to a known structure or process may well be deserving of patent protection.” On the other hand, the “application” must be “significant,” not “too broadly preempt” use of the law, and include other elements that constitute an “inventive concept” that is significant and separate from the natural law itself. Of note, it is likely important that in this decision the court unfavorably cites the limitation of Flook found in Diehr that eligibility under § 101 “must be” based on claims “considered as a whole.”
Process and Presumption: In addition to the legal elements, the decision can be read to create a process for determining patent eligibility for patent claims that include a law of nature. The court wrote that the “additional features” that show an application of the law must “provide practical assurance that the [claimed] process is more than a drafting effort.” This language suggests that the burden will be on the patentee to prove that its limitations are more than patent attorney tricks. Whither Myriad: Although no action has been taken yet, I presume that the Supreme Court will now vacate and remand the pending Myriad case with instructions to the Federal Circuit to reconsider its holding that isolated human DNA is patentable. Following Mayo, the court could logically find that the information in the DNA represents a law of nature, that the DNA itself is a natural phenomenon, that the isolation of the DNA simply employs an isolation process already well known and expected at the time of the invention, and ultimately that the isolated DNA is unpatentable because it effectively claims a law of nature or natural phenomenon. One distinguishing point is that Prometheus claimed a process while Myriad claims a composition of matter. As we have seen in recent cases, the Federal Circuit already largely rejects formalistic distinctions between process and composition claims. Here, that distinction is further minimized by the reality that the claimed DNA is functionally characterized by the already well known process of isolating human DNA. Read the opinion by Justice Breyer here: LINK.
The following is the text of the now invalidated Claim 1 of the Prometheus U.S. Patent No. 6,355,623. A method of optimizing therapeutic efficacy for treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder, comprising:
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 at 10:19 AM | Permalink
AIA Changes The Role of the Eastern District of Texas Jim Pistorino has updated his annual BNA report on patent lawsuit case filings. His biggest finding is that the new joinder provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) appear to have had a major impact on the distribution of new lawsuit filings.
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 at 06:00 AM | Permalink
Because of the availability of settlement, percentage win-rate is often given little policy consideration. Ex parte appeals are no different. Before reaching a BPAI decision, examiners can "settle" by withdrawing their pending rejection and then either allowing the patent to issue or else prepare a new and different rejection of the pending application. Patent applicants can also settle cases by abandoning the case or else by filing an amendment and a request for continued examination (RCE). The chart above shows percentage win-rate for BPAI appeals in ex parte cases. In an earlier study, I showed that the vast majority of these decisions are on obviousness grounds. Note – I only considered appeals decided on the merits and excluded those remanded or dismissed on other grounds. Posted on Mar 19, 2012 at 11:15 AM | Permalink
Old/Old Patent Applications I received a note from a patent examiner regarding my estimate that there are now around 400 pre-URAA applications still pending at the USPTO. According to the examiner, the actual number of still-pending applications is 216 (excluding applications being held under a secrecy order). All of these applications have been pending since 1995 and, upon issue, will still have 17–years of patent term remaining. This is now a miniscule number compared with the 1.2 million applications pending at the USPTO. On the other hand, all of these applications are likely quite valuable. See “New/Old Patents”
Posted on Mar 19, 2012 at 10:30 AM | Permalink
Most coherent discussions of patent statistics need to consider patent families rather than only individual patents. In an earlier posts, I wrote about the reality that most US patents claim priority to a previously filed patent document — e.g., a prior US patent application, a prior provisional patent application, a foreign patent application filing, or a PCT application filing. One way to consider these layers of filings is to look at the “total pendency” of an application. Here, I calculate total pendency as the time period beginning with the earliest priority date claimed and ending with issuance. The histogram below shows the total pendency for patents issued in 2011 and through March 14, 2012. The average and median total pendency is just under five years. I.e., the average recently issued patents is based upon a patent application filed about five years ago. If we look at application-by-application pendency without considering priority claims then the average is about 3.4 years. The USPTO reports an average pendency of 2.8 years by (1) ignoring priority claims and (2) counting the RCEs as new application filings.
An important caveat here is that a significant portion of the average five-year delay is due to delays by the patent applicant rather than the USPTO. Applicants have a significant amount of control in determining where their particular patent falls within the histogram. Posted on Mar 18, 2012 at 09:43 AM | Permalink
Prosecution Timing After a number of years on the rise, the average pre-issuance patent application pendency began to drop in 2010. The PTO hopes that its renewed effort on hiring examiners and addressing prosecution bottlenecks can force this pendency even lower. For the chart below, I built a database of all utility patents issued since January 2005 and calculated the average number of days in prosecution for each US patent, grouped by patent issue date. Thus, the chart includes patents issuing from original applications and continuation filings as well as US national-stage filings based upon foreign and PCT priority. For my calculations, I did not consider provisional application filings and I did not use the filing of an RCE to cut-short the application pendency. Some applicants like to see the odds that a patent will issue within a given timeline. The chart below groups patents by issue date and then reports the percent of patents that issued within a given period relative to the application date. In particular, the chart shows the percent of patents that issue within two years, three years, four years, and five years from application. Looking at chart – the lowest series shows the percent of the issued patents that issued within two years of the application. Back in 2005, about one-third issued within two years, that percentage dropped steadily until 2010 when the USPTO began increasing the speed of throughput. In 2010, the two-year series began to drop again — likely because the USPTO began its initiative of Clearing the Oldest Patent Applications (COPA). Posted on Mar 15, 2012 at 10:27 PM | Permalink
In a fractured en banc decision, the Federal Circuit has held that statutory the intervening rights defense only arises when the text of claims are amended or new claims added during a post grant proceeding. In this case, the claim scope had been arguably changed under Phillips v. AWH based upon arguments made during a reexamination, but the text of the claims had not been amended. Following this decision, the accused infringers cannot claim intervening rights in this situation. [T]he plain directive of the governing statute before us does not permit HemCon to invoke intervening rights against claims that the PTO confirmed on reexamination to be patentable as originally issued. To be sure, patent applicants' actions and arguments during prosecution, including prosecution in a reexamination proceeding, can affect the proper interpretation and effective scope of their claims. But in rejecting HemCon's request for intervening rights, we are not here interpreting claims. Rather, we are interpreting a statute that provides for intervening rights following reexamination only as to "amended or new" claims. The asserted claims of the '245 patent are neither.
As part of its ruling, the court noted its perspective that the PTO on reexamination is unlikely to consider a patent claim to be narrowed simply based arguments made by the patentee: If, in reexamination, an examiner determines that particular claims are invalid and need amendment to be allowable, one would expect an examiner to require amendment rather than accept argument alone.
The doctrine of intervening rights is derived from the Patent Act, which indicates that, following a reexamination, a patentee cannot claim damages for pre-reexamination infringement if the resulting claims were in "amended form" and not "substantially identical" to the original claims. 35 U.S.C. §§ 252 and 307(b). The dissent argued that any change to the scope of a claim during prosecution should be interpreted as an amendment and that, therefore, arguments and statements by the patentee that would result in a modified claim construction Split Decision: Only ten of the Federal Circuit judges participated in the decision. Thus, a majority needed at least six votes. As it turns out, only a portion of the majority opinion received six votes. The entire majority opinion was written by Judge Lourie and joined by four other judges: Chief Judge Rader and Judges Newman, Bryson, and Prost. The first half of the majority opinion discussed claim construction issues and the second part discussed the intervening rights defense. Judge Linn brought the final vote for the majority, but Judge Linn only agreed to the portion of the opinion focusing on intervening rights. Judge Dyk wrote in dissent and the entire opinion was joined by Judges Gajarsa, Reyna, and Wallach. In parallel fashion, the dissent first discussed claim construction and then discussed intervening rights. Judge Linn joined the claim construction portion of the dissent but not the intervening rights portion. Thus, in the final tally, claim construction was split 5-5 and intervening rights issues was divided 6-4. Notes:
Posted on Mar 15, 2012 at 02:31 PM | Permalink
So far this year, the USPTO has issued only nine patents with filing dates of before June 8, 1995. That date represents an important turning point in patent law. Patents filed before that date have a term of 17–years from the issuance date. Later filed patents have a term of 20–years from the filing date. Of the seven recent patents based upon old applications. Barring a terminal disclaimer or failure to pay a maintenance fee, all of these will be in force until 2029 and all are based on a filing date of 1995 or before. More info: Secrecy Orders: Pat. Nos. 8,119,959 (Flight control of missiles); 8,132,494 (Ballistic resistant composite article having improved matrix system); 8,111,581 (Monitoring system for a ship's radiated noise) and 8,111,584 (method of detecting a submerged vessel in or near the wake of a ship). Delay in considering whether to institute an interference: Pat. Nos. 8,102,419 (film-to-digital scanning algorithm) and 8,099,154 (therapeutic acoustic pressure wave generator).
Eight rejections + claim amendments: Pat. No. 8,101,149 (Claim 1 in full: “Purified cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms.” Owned by Mitsubishi). Note – I updated this on 3/15/2012 to correct for an error in my database that was identified by a US Patent Examiner. Apart from those held under secrecy order, I suspect that there are now around 400 pre-URAA applications still pending at the USPTO. Posted on Mar 14, 2012 at 09:35 PM | Permalink
Posted on Mar 13, 2012 at 03:12 PM | Permalink
Posted on Mar 12, 2012 at 08:07 PM | Permalink
Cascades Computer Innovation v. RPX, HTC, LG, Motorola, Dell, Samsung (N.D. Cal. 2012)
In a bold move, non-practicing patent holder CCI has sued a group of tech companies and the patent aggregator RPX for price fixing and conspiring to restrain trade in violation of the Clayton and Sherman Acts as well as under California state antitrust law. The allegation is that RPX and its members decided as a group to boycott negotiations with Cascades except through their aggregator RPX. Defendants HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Dell sell more than 95 percent of all mobile phones and tablets that use the Android operating systems in the United States and are an important part of the Android market, and related, relevant sub-markets (including products that require a license from Cascades under its patented technology). The manufacturing defendants constitute nearly the total demand for the licensing of Cascades' patented technology and collectively enjoy substantial market power in that market and, together with others in the industry, have exercised their power to control the acceptance and terms and conditions of licenses from Cascades. The power is augmented by the willingness and agreement of the manufacturing defendants to infringe Cascades' patents until such time as Cascades capitulates by either going out of business, declining to enforce the patents or offering defendants patent license terms below fair market value."
The complaint is well written and worth a read. Nick McCain at Courthouse News has more: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/09/44560.htm. Posted on Mar 12, 2012 at 03:23 PM | Permalink
The expected number of grants for 2012 is based upon a straight extrapolation from the number of patents granted thus far in 2012. Posted on Mar 11, 2012 at 07:50 AM | Permalink
What Judges Think of IP Litigators
In an article published last year, Judge Richard Posner and Professor Albert Yoon surveyed about 200 federal district court judges on various issues, including the judges overall impression of the quality of legal representation, by civil practice area. The study specifically compared lawyers in cases involving civil rights, commercial litigation, family law, immigration, intellectual property, personal injury/malpractice, and tax/trusts & estates. Amongst these groups, the judges identified intellectual property litigators as the giving the highest impression of quality. In addition, the judges noted their impression that there is not typically any significant disparity in the quality of representation between the intellectual property litigators on any given case. Read it here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1668783
Posted on Mar 09, 2012 at 05:45 AM | Permalink
While I agree that the USPTO should focus attention on the backlog, I don't believe that the backlog should be the most pressing concern of the Office. This is especially true since the passage of the AIA and the resulting creation of a fee-based prioritized examination program. For a $4,800 fee (reduced for small entities), the USPTO will place an application on a fast track examination schedule. The new reality is that any applicant who cares about fast prosecution can get fast prosecution for a relatively small fee. focusing on the backlog Posted on Mar 08, 2012 at 01:13 PM | Permalink
Guest Post by Andrew McRobert and Kate Mullarkey of Norton Rose Australia
The PPSA brings significant reform to the law in relation to security interests in personal property - which includes registered and unregistered intellectual property. One of the most important aspects of the PPSA is the implementation of a new public-access PPS register which has been promoted as a simple and inexpensive single repository for the registration of security interests. That register went live on 30 January 2012. The PPS register can be viewed at http://www.ppsr.gov.au.
Posted on Mar 08, 2012 at 10:39 AM | Permalink
by Dennis Crouch Myspace, Inc. v. GraphOn Corp. (Fed. Cir. 2012) In yet another case, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has identified the wide chasm separating members of the court on issues involving patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The majority opinion here - penned by Judge Plager and joined by Judge Newman - argues that courts should avoid the metaphysical question of whether an invention is unpatentably abstract whenever possible and instead focus on the conditions of patentability found in §§ 102, 103, and 112 of the patent act. Judge Plager writes: [C]ourts could avoid the swamp of verbiage that is § 101 by exercising their inherent power to control the processes of litigation, Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 43 (1991), and insist that litigants initially address patent invalidity issues in terms of the conditions of patentability defenses as the statute provides, specifically §§ 102, 103, and 112. If that were done in the typical patent case, litigation over the question of validity of the patent would be concluded under these provisions, and it would be unnecessary to enter the murky morass that is § 101 jurisprudence. This would make patent litigation more efficient, conserve judicial resources, and bring a degree of certainty to the interests of both patentees and their competitors in the marketplace. Judge Plager goes on to adopt the analogy to the Constitutional Avoidance Doctrine that Rob Merges and I suggested in our 2010 article titled Operating Efficiently Post-Bilski by Ordering Patent Doctrine Decision-Making. In a sense, § 101 of the Patent Act can be thought of as the patent law analogy to the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. The latter sets in the broadest terms ("due process," "equal protection") the fundamental parameters of the citizenry's legal right. In the context of patent law, § 101 similarly describes in the broadest terms the legally-protected subject matter an inventor can seek to patent: a "process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter . . . ." The Supreme Court has wisely adopted a policy of not deciding cases on broad constitutional grounds when they can be decided on narrower, typically statutorily limited, grounds. Following the Supreme Court's lead, courts should avoid reaching for interpretations of broad provisions, such as § 101, when more specific statutes, such as §§ 102, 103, and 112, can decide the case. On the merits of the decision, the majority affirmed a lower court summary judgment holding that the asserted claims are invalid as anticipated and obvious under §§ 102 and 103(a) respectively. In this case, the lower court never ruled on the question of patentable subject matter and none of the party briefs refer to Section 101, unpatentable abstract ideas, or Bilski v. Kappos. However, the majority felt compelled to discuss Section 101 based upon the dissenting opinion by Judge Mayer who opined that the patent intrinsically raises a threshold question of patentable subject matter that must be addressed. Judge Mayer writes in dissent: The issue of whether a claimed method meets the subject matter eligibility requirements contained in 35 U.S.C. § 101 is an "antecedent question" that must be addressed before this court can consider whether particular claims are invalid as obvious or anticipated. In re Comiskey, 554 F.3d 967, 975 n.7 (Fed. Cir. 2009). GraphOn Corporation ("GraphOn") owns four patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 6,324,538 (the "'538 patent"), 6,850,940, 7,028,034, and 7,269,591, which contain exceedingly broad claims to a system that allows users to exert control over the content of their online communications. This court must first resolve the issue of whether the GraphOn patents are directed to an unpatentable "abstract idea" before proceeding to consider subordinate issues related to obviousness and anticipation. See Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218, 3225 (2010) (noting that whether claims are directed to statutory subject matter is a "threshold test"); Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 593 (1978) ("Flook") (emphasizing that "[t]he obligation to determine what type of discovery is sought to be patented" so as to determine whether it falls within the ambit of section 101 "must precede the determination of whether that discovery is, in fact, new or obvious"); Comiskey, 554 F.3d at 973 ("Only if the requirements of § 101 are satisfied is the inventor allowed to pass through to the other requirements for patentability, such as novelty under § 102 and . . . non-obviousness under § 103." (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). I therefore respectfully dissent from the court's judgment. The dissent agrees with the majority (and our) suggestion that § 101 be treated as analogous to the US Constitution – but argues that the statute "is the standard expressed in the Constitution and it may not be ignored." Rather, the dissent writes "a robust application of section 101 is required to ensure that the patent laws comport with their constitutionally-defined objective." Below, I have excerpted claim 1 of the patentee’s U.S. Patent No. 6,324,538 with a 1995 priority filing date: 1. A method of publishing information on a computer network comprising the steps of: creating a database entry containing information recieved from a user of the computer network, wherein the information includes data representing text, a universal resource locator, an image, and a user-selected category; generating a transaction ID corresponding to the database entry; password protecting the entries; displaying the entries in accordance with the user-selected category; presenting the information to a user in hyper text markup language in response to a user's request.
The dissent is correct that the invention as claimed is incredibly broad. However, this is the exact type of case that is just as easily eliminated on grounds of anticipation or obviousness. Note for a later post — the majority opinion is also important for its statement on the theory and practice of claim construction. Posted on Mar 06, 2012 at 12:49 PM | Permalink
Guest Post by Professor Jorge L. Contreras. For those of us who have been following the telecom patent battles, something remarkable happened a couple of weeks ago. On February 7, the Wall St. Journal reported that, back in November, Apple sent a letter[1] to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) setting forth Apple’s position regarding its commitment to license patents essential to ETSI standards. In particular, Apple’s letter clarified its interpretation of the so-called “FRAND” (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing terms that ETSI participants are required to use when licensing standards-essential patents. As one might imagine, the actual scope and contours of FRAND licenses have puzzled lawyers, regulators and courts for years, and past efforts at clarification have never been very successful. The next day, on February 8, Google released a letter[2] that it sent to the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), ETSI and several other standards organizations. Like Apple, Google sought to clarify its position on FRAND licensing. And just hours after Google’s announcement, Microsoft posted a statement of “Support for Industry Standards”[3] on its web site, laying out its own gloss on FRAND licensing. For those who were left wondering what instigated this flurry of corporate “clarification”, the answer arrived a few days later when, on February 13, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released its decision[4] to close the investigation of three significant patent-based transactions: the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google, the acquisition of a large patent portfolio formerly held by Nortel Networks by “Rockstar Bidco” (a group including Microsoft, Apple, RIM and others), and the acquisition by Apple of certain Linux-related patents formerly held by Novell. In its decision, the DOJ noted with approval the public statements by Apple and Microsoft, while expressing some concern with Google’s FRAND approach. The European Commission approved Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility on the same day.
To understand the significance of the Apple, Microsoft and Google FRAND statements, some background is in order. The technical standards that enable our computers, mobile phones and home entertainment gear to communicate and interoperate are developed by corps of “volunteers” who get together in person and virtually under the auspices of standards-development organizations (SDOs). These SDOs include large, international bodies such as ETSI and IEEE, as well as smaller consortia and interest groups. The engineers who do the bulk of the work, however, are not employees of the SDOs (which are usually thinly-staffed non-profits), but of the companies who plan to sell products that implement the standards: the Apples, Googles, Motorolas and Microsofts of the world. Should such a company obtain a patent covering the implementation of a standard, it would be able to exert significant leverage over the market for products that implemented the standard. In particular, if a patent holder were to obtain, or even threaten to obtain, an injunction against manufacturers of competing standards-compliant products, either the standard would become far less useful, or the market would experience significant unanticipated costs. This phenomenon is what commentators have come to call “patent hold-up”. Due to the possibility of hold-up, most SDOs today require that participants in the standards-development process disclose their patents that are necessary to implement the standard and/or commit to license those patents on FRAND terms. On its face, it is easy to see why a FRAND commitment might reassure implementers of a standard. If a patent is essential to the standard, the patent holder must license the patent on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory. Unfortunately, the devil has proven to be in the details of FRAND, and no two companies seem to have the same view of what constitutes fair, reasonable or non-discriminatory licensing terms. This lack of agreement has troubled regulators for some time and has led to an increasing number of litigation claims alleging that one party or another to a standards effort has failed to comply with its FRAND obligations. The February FRAND statements by Apple, Microsoft and Google are thus informative and potentially of great importance. To understand the statements, and why the DOJ viewed them differently, it is helpful to compare them side-by-side. The following table summarizes what Apple, Microsoft and Google said FRAND means to them.
Despite their differences, the three FRAND statements exhibit some important similarities. All three, for example, support the notion that FRAND commitments should “travel with the patent”. This is an important acknowledgement, as such commitments typically lack the necessary elements of a bilateral contractual arrangement, and have been questioned in both corporate acquisitions and bankruptcy proceedings (see In re Nortel Networks Inc., Order - Case No. 09-10138(KG) (Bankruptcy Ct. D.Del., Jul. 11, 2011)).
The three statements also address the question of injunctive relief. Numerous commentators have questioned whether injunctive relief is an appropriate remedy for holders of standards-essential patents, particularly in view of the Supreme Court’s four-part analysis under eBay v. MercExchange LLC, 547 U.S. 388 (2006). In 2011, the Federal Trade Commission suggested that injunctive relief might not be justified in the standards context, writing that “[a] prior [F]RAND commitment can provide strong evidence that denial of the injunction and ongoing royalties will not irreparably harm the patentee.” Federal Trade Comm’n, The Evolving IP Marketplace – Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition 235 (2011). In their February FRAND statements, Apple and Microsoft each commit not to seek injunctions on the basis of their standards-essential patents. Google makes a similar commitment, but qualifies it in typically lawyerly fashion (Google’s letter is more than 3 single-spaced pages in length, while Microsoft’s simple statement occupies about a quarter of a page). In this case, Google’s careful qualifications (injunctive relief might be possible if the potential licensee does not itself agree to refrain from seeking an injunction, if licensing negotiations extended beyond a reasonable period, and the like) worked against it. While the DOJ applauds Apple’s and Microsoft’s statements “that they will not seek to prevent or exclude rivals’ products form the market”, it views Google’s commitments as “less clear”. The DOJ thus “continues to have concerns about the potential inappropriate use of [standards-essential patents] to disrupt competition”. It is not clear whether the DOJ’s criticism of Google’s stance on injunctive relief, or its endorsement of Apple’s and Microsoft’s positions, is warranted. After all, none of the February FRAND statements was made directly to the DOJ, formed part of a consent order, or even rose to the level of a contractual commitment. But whatever their actual legal effect, it is certainly preferable to have such statements than not, and perhaps this recent wave of “clarifications” will help courts to interpret the array of FRAND-based claims that will inevitably be brought over the next several years.
Mr. Contreras is a Visiting Associate Professor at American University - Washington College of Law and will join the faculty as an Associate Professor this summer. His research focuses on the impact of intellectual property rules on scientific and technological development, including in the area of technical standard-setting. He is the editor of the ABA's Standards Development Patent Policy Manual and has written numerous articles and book chapters relating to intellectual property and standards.
Posted on Mar 06, 2012 at 09:45 AM | Permalink
by Susan G. L. Glovsky of Hamilton Brooks Smith Reynolds Patents are far more valuable than they ever have been. Yet, unlike real property, it can be difficult to determine patent ownership or accurately identify encumbrances even though patent value can exceed the value of a home or even an office building. Rights in real property are determined by legislation in each state, which provides for recordation of written transfers and security interests in real property. Legislation related to real property recordation provides a level of certainty in determining the true owner, provides protection for bona fide purchasers, and permits recordation of liens to satisfy debts owed by real estate owners.
Posted on Mar 06, 2012 at 12:03 AM | Permalink
Google Buys More Patents: Last fall, MOSAID sold a set of 18 patents and patent applications to Google for a reported $11 million. Recently, the pair recorded a new transaction of about 200 patents and applications from MOSAID to Google. Those patents were previously owned by the Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli and a spinoff company PGT-Photonics. Google also recently purchased one eCommerce patent from the tiny firm Alpine-in-Motion. Posted on Mar 05, 2012 at 03:16 AM | Permalink
The Hoboken publishing company (John Wiley) and the non-profit American Institute of Physics have continued their quest to pursue copyright infringement charges against US patent attorneys who submit copies of journal articles to the US Patent Office during the patent application process. The submission of those documents is required by law and attorneys who fail to submit known and relevant prior art can be subject to ethics charges and the associated patents held unenforceable. Earlier this year, the US Patent Office issued a memo indicating its belief that copying and submitting copyrighted documents should be considered a non-actionable fair use. Firms already pay for access to the articles and the USPTO also has its own access to most of the articles. The issue is whether the patent applicants must pay an additional fee for making a copy for the USPTO and an additional copy for the in-house file. The first two law suits were filed yesterday. The first against my former law firm MBHB LLP in Chicago and the second against the Schwegman firm in Minnesota. These two firms are known for the high level of scientific and technical expertise of their attorneys. (Full Disclosure – MBHB is the primary advertiser on Patently-O)
The complaints allege two particular infringing acts: 14. In connection with researching, filing and prosecuting certain patent applications, McDonnell made and/or distributed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"), and perhaps others, unauthorized copies of copyrighted articles from plaintiffs' journals … Such unauthorized copies were used for the commercial benefit of defendants and their clients.
15. Upon information and belief, defendants made (a) additional copies of the copyrighted works that defendants included or cited in their patent applications to the PTO, including those identified on Schedule A, and (b) copies of plaintiffs' copyrighted works that defendants considered in connection with those applications, but did not ultimately cite or provide to the PTO. Plaintiffs cannot know the full extent of defendants' copying without discovery. Apart from the copying of plaintiffs' works accompanying the patent filings described above, this internal copying infringes plaintiffs' copyrights.
In his article for PaidContent, Jeff Roberts sees these two as "a test-run. . . . If the firms fold their cards and settle, John Wiley and the physicists may be emboldened." (See also Zach Winnick at Law360). In the complaint, Wiley identifies two articles that MBHB allegedly submitted to the USPTO: Raznikov, V., et al., "A new approach to data reduction and evaluation in highresolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry using a time-to-digital convertor datarecording system," Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, vol. 15, No. 8, pp. 570-578 (2001); and Erchak, A., et al., "Enhanced coupling to vertical radiation using a twodimensional photonic crystal in a semiconductor light-emitting diode," Applied Physics Letters, vol. 78, No. 5, pp. 563-565 (2001). The complaint in the Schwegman case are based upon these two articles: McDonald S., et al., "Photoconductivity from PbS- nanocrystal/ semiconducting polymer composites for solution-processible, quantum-size tunable infrared photodetectors," Applied Physics Letters, vol. 85, No. 11, XP012062554, ISSN: 0003-6951, pp. 2089-2091, (Sep. 13, 2004); and Greenwald, et al., "Polymer-Polymer Rectifying Heterojunction Based on Poly(3,4-dicyanothiophene) and MEH-PPV," J. Polym. Sci. A: Polym. Chem., vol. 36:17, pp. 3115-3120, (1998). I have contacted the authors of each of these articles, but have not yet received any response. MBHB's managing partner Marcus Thymian released a statement referring to the USPTO's position on fair use. "We note that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has released its position -- that it is a fair use for a patent applicant to submit a copy of non-patent art to the patent office to fulfill the disclosure requirement imposed by the patent regulations." It will also be easy for the law firms to obtain an opinion that internal copying also qualifies as a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. In a statement to Law360, the plaintiffs attorney Bill Dunnegan appears ready to admit - despite language in the complaint – that submissions to the USPTO are not actionable. He is quoted as saying "The crux of what our case deals with is the internal copying by the law firms after they have one copy in their hand. . . . Those copies are not licensed, and the patent office didn't take a position on whether or not fair use would apply to those copies." The copy-for-file issue seems to fall in line with the Supreme Court's analysis in Sony v. Universal (1984). In that case, the court held that it was a fair use for home consumers to record television broadcasts so the consumers could view the shows at a later time. Notes: Submitting Citations: Several years ago, the USPTO realized that it already had copies of all issued US patents within its in house databases and asked patent practitioners to stop sending-in copies of patents. Rather, the patent attorneys were asked to simply submit a list of US patent documents that materially related to the patent being examined. To the extent that the USPTO already has access to many of the publications in question here, a similar solution could work that allows patent practitioners to simply submit the citation to articles within the USPTO databases. Open Access: Depending upon pricing structure, access to a journal such as the Journal of Applied Physics costs as much as $15k per year. Academic authors generally receive no compensation for publication and there is a growing movement amongst academia toward open access journals. Almost all law reviews make their works freely available online. This enforcement project may push the sciences in that direction as well. Posted on Mar 02, 2012 at 07:05 AM | Permalink
USITC Domestic industry jurisprudence is a mess. Here, the basic question boiled down to whether there is at least one claim - GE's wind turbines are would infringe the claims in its asserted patents. That decision obviously turned on claim construction and particularly whether GE's domestic turbines included a "converter controller coupled with the inverter … to shunt current from the inverter." The problem with GE's domestic turbines is that its controller is within the inverter and the Commission held that it could not therefore be "coupled to" or shunt current "from" the inverter. On appeal, the court rejected that analysis and instead held that the claim does not require that the controller be separate from the inverter.
GE filed a parallel lawsuit requesting damages and injunctive relief against Mitsubishi in the Southern District of Texas That case has been stayed pending the outcome of the ITC action. In a separate case, GE is fighting with one of its former employees -- Thomas Wilkins who is claiming joint inventorship rights to the patents. Wilkins has apparently assigned his rights to Mistubishi. Posted on Mar 02, 2012 at 03:27 AM | Permalink
In his blog, Bill Vobach reports on the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Federal Circuit nominee Richard Taranto. Vobach reports: It appeared that the hearing was only attended by three senators — Senator Franken (Minnesota), Senator Grassley (Iowa), and Senator Lee (Utah). Questions were asked by all three senators. Senator Franken asked Mr. Taranto about his clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Senator Grassley asked Mr. Taranto about the Defense of Marriage Act. Senator Lee questioned Mr. Taranto about judicial philosophy. No material, if any, questions were asked about patent law.
There do not appear to be any roadblocks in the way of Mr. Taranto's confirmation and we can expect that he will be joining Chief Judge Rader and his colleagues in short order. Mr. Taranto is an appellate and Supreme Court litigator at the small but well established DC firm of Farr & Taranto. He has participated in dozens of Federal Circuit patent appeals, including several Rambus cases, Verizon v. Cox, Lucent v. Gateway, Syngenta v. Monsanto, and others. Mr. Taranto has argued three IP cases before the U.S. Supreme Court: MGM v. Grokster (contributory copyright infringement), Warner Jenkinson v. Hilton Davis (patent law doctrine of equivalents), and Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana (trade dress infringement). He has taught a variety of classes as an adjunct professor, including patent law at Harvard in 2002. Taranto graduated from Yale Law School in 1981. He clerked for Judge Abraham Sofaer on the Southern District of New York; Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit; and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. During his discussion Mr. Taranto noted that both of his grandmothers are 100-years-old and still living. I suspect that actuaries would agree that this gives Mr. Taranto a good chance of living a long time as well. He is current 54 years old.
Taranto's favorite non-living Supreme Court justice: Justice Harlan. Taranto was nominated in November 2011. * * * * * The appellate court now consists of eleven circuit judges: Chief Judge Rader along with Judges Newman, Lourie, Bryson, Linn, Dyk, Prost, Moore, O'Malley, Reyna, and Wallach. Mr. Taranto will fill the bench as number twelve. Judges Mayer, Plager, Clevenger, Gajarsa and Schall all sit on the bench with senior status. Judges Newman, Lourie, Bryson, and Dyk are all eligible to elect senior status and Judge Linn will be eligible in April of this year. It is likely that at least two positions will open-up during the next year. Posted on Mar 01, 2012 at 03:09 PM | Permalink
It is well known that IBM receives more US patents than any other company. The company also abandons more patents than any other company. Once a patent issues, the patent holder must pay maintenance fees in order to avoid abandonment. Fees are due at 3½, 7½, and 11½ years after issuance and each subsequent fee is substantially higher. Thus, under the current schedule, the first fee is $1,130, the second fee is $2,850, and the third fee is $4,730. In recent years, IBM has abandoned thousands of patents for failure to pay the fee due at 3½ years from issuance. IBM’s rate of abandonment is more than double that of other major patent holders. The chart below shows the percent of IBM-assigned patents that that were abandoned withn 4–years of issuance for failiure to pay the maintenance fee due. The most recent available annual information is for patents issued in 2007. (Maintenance fees for patents issued in 2008 are due in the upcoming months). A company like Apple is on the other extreme regarding payment of these renewal fees. Based on my records, Apple has not abandoned a single application issued in the past ten years based upon failure to pay the first fee. Canon rivals IBM in terms of sheer number of patents but typically abandons fewer than 1% of its issued patents at the four-year mark. What’s going on here? Apple and Canon are certainly paying maintenance fees on patents that would be found invalid on reexamination and not-infringed in court. On the other side, IBM could have predicted at the time of issuance that it wouldn’t pay the maintenance fee — so why did it pay the $1,000 issue fee? Posted on Mar 01, 2012 at 06:39 AM | Permalink
By Dennis Crouch Tropp v. Conair Corporation (E.D.N.Y. February 28, 2012) Download TroppConair
Muniauction did not indisputably hold that vicarious liability is the only way to satisfy the control or direction standard. It only made clear that (I) mere "arms-length cooperation" is not sufficient; and (2) vicarious liability, if established, is sufficient. Muniauction, 532 F.3d at 1329-30. At the least, such a reading of BMC and Muniauction is not objectively baseless. See Global Patent Holdings, LLC v. Panthers BRHC LLC, 586 F. Supp.2d 133 I, I 334-35 (S.D. Fla. 2008) (finding it "appears that" vicarious liability is required to satisfy the direction or control test, while also acknowledging that the "Federal Circuit did not explain with any specificity what it meant by 'direction or control'"); Dennis Crouch, MUNIAUCTION: Joint Infringement Requires Mastermind, Patently-O (July 15, 2008) http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/07 /muniauction-joi.html (opining that Muniauction "left some wiggle room," open space to be further developed by ligation, such that a "later case could still hold that it is not necessary to show facts sufficient to support traditional vicarious liability"). Accordingly, this argument in particular, and defendants' motion in general, depends on an exaggerated view of the certainty and static determinism of the law of divided infringement.
Posted on Mar 01, 2012 at 04:13 AM | Permalink