Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

Even if the BRI rule made sense in 1932—and it is not clear to me that it ever made sense—the rule no longer makes sense. Dramatic changes in the field of patents have undermined even the alleged reasons for the BRI rule. The solution to the problem of the BRI rule is to replace it with the only rule that is natural and makes sense. After 80 years of inventors suffering under the BRI rule, it is time for Congress or the Supreme Court to say: regardless of whether the patent application has been granted, the claims mean the exact same thing. Always.

AOP, the world’s largest patent research community, has passed another significant milestone. This time the company has passed the $3 million threshold in financial rewards paid to its global research community. Actually, the milestone was reached at the end of August 2012, but AOP only officially made the announcement last week. In fact, as of the writing of this article the reward calculator found prominently on the AOP homepage shows that some $3,371,500 in reward money has been paid to its community of crowdsourcing researchers.

Pierre Favre, an examiner from the European Patent Office who is one of 18 examiners working in the area of solar cell technology, and Tina Heuter, an artist from Berlin, Germany, worked together for many years to create a representation of both the skilled person and the inventor.

A web analytics company has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated federal law by using its web-tracking software that collected personal data without disclosing the extent of the information that it was collecting. The company, Compete Inc., also allegedly failed to honor promises it made to protect the personal data it collected. The proposed settlement will require that Compete obtain consumers’ express consent before collecting any data from Compete software downloaded onto consumers’ computers, that the company delete or anonymize the use of the consumer data it already has collected, and that it provide directions to consumers for uninstalling its software.

Facial recognition technologies have been adopted in a variety of contexts, ranging from online social networks and mobile apps to digital signs, the FTC staff report states.  They have a number of potential uses, such as determining an individual’s age range and gender in order to deliver targeted advertising; assessing viewers’ emotions to see if they are engaged in a video game or a movie; or matching faces and identifying anonymous individuals in images. Facial recognition also has raised a variety of privacy concerns because – for example – it holds the prospect of identifying anonymous individuals in public, and because the data collected may be susceptible to security breaches and hacking.

This month I have been running a series of articles on the United States Supreme Court. Today we switch things up a little and talk patents, focusing on one of the most important decisions the Supreme Court has made over the last generation — i4i v. Microsoft. I recently chatted with Michael Cannata. His is a name you might not know, but he was intimately involved in the i4i case. He is the manager of a fund that put up the capital for i4i to fight the battle. He consequently became a Director for i4i and was involved with co-managing the litigation for i4i.

Any discussion of flaws in the United States patent system inevitably turns to the system’s modern villain: non-practicing entities. They are known more colorfully as patent trolls, although the business model of non-practicing entities has appeared in copyright markets as well as well as in patent markets. In the America Invents Act, Congress directed the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study “on the consequences of patent infringement lawsuits brought by non-practicing entities.” At the GAO’s request, we provided data on non-practicing entities for five years (2007-2011).

Recently I enrolled in a basic photography class and I am loving it! Of course, I didn’t have anywhere to go but up. Still, my photographs are improving and I am looking for a new camera. So it is with this in mind that I thought I would take a moment to write about how to copyright photographs. A photograph is considered a work of visual art, which is encompassed by category #5 — “pictorial, graphic and sculptural works.” Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works include both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of fine, graphic, and applied art.

Yesterday, Kolon Industries Inc. and several of its executives and employees were indicted for allegedly engaging in a multi-year campaign to steal trade secrets related to DuPont’s Kevlar para-aramid fiber and Teijin Limited’s Twaron para-aramid fiber. The conspiracy and theft of trade secrets counts each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss for individual defendants and a fine of $5 million or twice the gross gain or loss for the corporate defendant. The obstruction of justice count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss for individual defendants and a fine of $500,000 or twice the gross gain or loss for the corporate defendant.

A well-known sandwich and a little punctuation mark are at the heart of a lawsuit between a Philadelphia restaurant and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Campo’s Deli in Philadelphia, is suing the director of the Patent and Trademark Office, David Kappos, in response the USPTO’s rejection of their application, which sought to trademark the name “Philadelphia’s Cheesesteak.” The problem? There are already registrations for nearly identical marks — just without the apostrophe.

The Federal Trade Commission is challenging the public to create an innovative solution that will block illegal commercial robocalls on landlines and mobile phones. As part of its ongoing campaign against these illegal, prerecorded telemarketing calls, the agency is launching the FTC Robocall Challenge, and offering a $50,000 cash prize for the best technical solution.

This proposed rule package adopts most ABA provisions wholesale or with minor revisions and codifies many professional responsibility obligations that already apply to the practice of law. Specifically, the proposed rules will streamline practitioners’ professional responsibility obligations, bringing USPTO obligations in line with most practitioners’ state bar requirements. The package also proposes to eliminate the annual practitioner maintenance fee.

In a battle for the superheroes, an federal complaint alleging copyright infringement was filed on October 9, 2012 in the United States Federal District Court for the District of Colorado by a company called Stan Lee Media. The company was started by Stan Lee with his friend Peter Paul, who is now serving time in prison for fraudulent activities regarding this company. Lee wisely pulled out of the company over a decade ago when it failed. According to the complaint, Lee signed over the rights to his famed superheroes to the company Stan Lee Media. Of course, it is more complicated than it looks at first glance.

In 1879 the United States Supreme Court first had the opportunity (and necessity) to address whether Congress had been granted in the Constitution the power to enact legislation to protect trademarks. Since 1879 there have been many cases involved trademark issues that have wound up the top Court in the United States. But a summary start to finish of all Supreme Court trademark cases is even a bit ambitious for us in a single article. Thus, what follows is a summary of those trademarks issues that have reached the Supreme Court over the last generation.

The Federal Trade Commission will require Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Actavis Inc. to sell the rights and assets to 18 drugs to Sandoz International GmbH and Par Pharmaceuticals, Inc, and relinquish the manufacturing and marketing rights to three others, to settle charges that Watson’s proposed $5.9 billion acquisition of Actavis would otherwise be anticompetitive.