Posts in Guest Contributors

When measuring the overall success and efficiency of a law firm’s patent prosecution practice, there are several metrics available, including overall allowance rate, time to disposition, and average number of office actions. Allowance rate is one of the most common metrics, but allowance rate merely tells us how many applications received NOAs, and nothing of the quality of those applications. Besides merely getting an application allowed, clients are also concerned about the quality and scope of their claims. One way to determine this is by measuring how well a law firm preserves claims through prosecution. This article shows a ranking of the top 10 firms that lose the fewest independent claims in prosecution among IP Today’s top patent firms for 2015.

Employers often assume that they have the same weapons in their arsenal to prevent theft of virtual trade secrets as they have against other types of loss. As the prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov in Federal and New York courts showed, however, that simply isn’t true. Even though juries in both courts found him guilty of downloading confidential computer code from his employer, judges ultimately found that the laws under which he was prosecuted did not cover the acts he committed. A careful employer should therefore make sure it puts precautions in place that prevent theft of computer code, rather than relying on the threat of criminal prosecution.

Aleynikov was a computer programmer employed by Goldman Sachs to write high-frequency trading code. In 2009, he accepted a job offer to join a potential competitor, where he would create a new high-frequency trading platform from the ground up. Before he left Goldman, however, he sent portions of Goldman’s high frequency trading code to a German server for his own future use. After Goldman found out, it went to the FBI; Aleynikov was then arrested on a flight home from a visit to Chicago. With that arrest began his circuitous journey through the U.S. legal system, governed by two different sovereigns and under two different legal regimes.

Covenant Not to Challenge clauses are common in patent licenses, including licenses that are part of post-litigation settlements. clause is seen as a benefit bargained for under a license agreement and constitutes part of the consideration obtained by the licensor for the license. The intended effect of such a clause is to allow the licensor to make an estoppel argument in the event that licensee does challenge the patent, in spite of its agreement not to do so. However, the PTAB thus concluded that without an express grant from Congress, it did not have the authority to recognize contractual estoppel as a bar to an inter partes review.

The Court expressly held that concrete and particularized reputational injury alone can give rise to Article III standing to correct inventorship under § 256. Recognition as an inventor of an important patent is as significant to an inventor’s career as is authoring a scientific paper. Further, pecuniary consequences may flow from being designated an inventor, particularly for professionals employed as inventors. Here, Dr. Shukh presented numerous questions of material fact concerning whether his omission from the contested patents caused him a reputational injury.

The issue on appeal was whether a mixture comprising at least 92% of the (6S) isomer of leucovorin would have been obvious when both the 50/50 mixture of isomers and the pure (6S) isomer were known in the art. Affirming the district court, the Federal Circuit agreed that “one of skill would have been motivated to modify the prior art 50/50 mixture to make the claimed mixture,” especially when it was known that the desired activity lies with the (6S) isomer. The Court found no evidence indicating that the claimed mixture “possess[ed] unexpected advantages over the prior art pure material” so as to overcome obviousness.

Critics argue that intellectual property is bad for innovation in part because it allows for “monopolies” that prevent the public from using certain creations without permission for a period of time. As a preliminary matter, the use of the misleading scare-term “monopolies” to describe property rights in inventive and creative labor is clearly an attempt to skew the debate from the outset. After all, you wouldn’t call property rights in hard-copy creations, like the crops a farmer harvested, “monopolies” in those creations. Furthermore, if public access is the concern, a system that fails to provide inventors and creators the economic freedom to create things to market to the public in the first place will be far more harmful than a system that secures justly-earned property rights in inventors’ and artists’ productive labors.

An October 5, 2015 version of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property (IP) Chapter is now available on WikiLeaks. This article includes the entire text of the WikiLeaks-referenced TPP Section C: Trademarks. This article offers accompanying commentary together on the TPP’s trademark provisions together with thoughts on portions of the TPP text regarding Geographical Indications (GIs).

The ownership of ideas and creations are among the most valuable assets to any company. Businesses invest in these ideas and rights and use the value they create to help promote and grow business for years to come. Printer manufacturers, for example, invest heavily in new ink and toner technologies and realize a return over the life of the device through the sale of supplies and consumables. When third-party supplies manufacturers, particularly manufacturers of new build ‘cloned products’, violate IP rights and take products to market, they are effectively stealing from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – reducing the ability of the OEM to realize the full potential of their investment and, through their sale, securing financial benefit from the OEM who receives no compensation for this lost revenue. These organizations effectively take a ‘free ride’.

The USPTO has released its ‘Report on Confirmatory Genetic Diagnostic Testing,’ which was prepared to fulfill the requirements of §27 of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The USPTO did make an interesting observation that has been reflected in its patent examining guidelines. The USPTO Report concludes that ‘it is unlikely that exclusive provision of a diagnostic test, whether for an original diagnosis or to confirm the original result, will be possible based on patenting and licensing behavior.’ This statement reinforces the USPTO’s prior broad interpretations of the Court’s findings in Mayo and Myriad. Of note is that in the USPTO Report, the USPTO adopts the Supreme Court’s factually and scientifically unsupported distinction between genomic DNA and cDNA.

The issue on appeal was whether Applicants antedated the ‘560 reference in accordance with Rule 131. A patent applicant bears the burden of establishing “reduction to practice prior to the effective date of the reference, or conception of the invention prior to the effective date of the reference coupled with due diligence from prior to said date to a subsequent reduction to practice or to the filing of the application.” 37 C.F.R. 1.131(b). The Court concluded that substantial evidence supported a finding that Applicants failed to establish conception and continuing diligence, or actual reduction to practice, before the effective date of the ‘560 reference.

Damages for infringement of a design patent can be recovered for the greater of: (1) total profits from the infringer’s sales under 35 U.S.C. § 289, (2) damages in the form of the patentee’s lost profits or a reasonable royalty under § 284, or (3) $250 in statutory damages under § 289. Here, the Court held that the district court incorrectly instructed the jury to choose between awarding damages under § 284 or § 289. According to the Court, “[o]nly where § 289 damages are not sought, or are less than would be recoverable under § 284, is an award of § 284 damages appropriate.”

A couple months ago I commented on Ex parte Khvorova, expressing disappointment in its analysis and concern over what this might mean since it is “the first PTAB decision in molecular biology since patenting in that field got turned upside down.” To follow up on these notions, and to give credit where credit is due, I wanted to briefly comment on Ex parte Boyden, which the PTAB issued September 2, 2015.

The Consultation is part of the Commission’s assessment of the role of online platforms, promised in its Communication on a Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe (DSM) dated 6 May 2015. The Consultation covers a range of topics, including several controversial issues concerning transparency of online platforms and the proper extent of the hosting defence under the E-Commerce Directive. Interested parties have until around the end of December 2015 to respond (the exact closing date has not yet been published).

Despite the Supreme Court ruling that laches is no defense to a copyright infringement action brought during the statute of limitations, the Federal Circuit ruled laches can bar recovery of legal remedies in patent infringement. The Federal Circuit explained that the 1952 Patent Act codified the common law rule, meaning that laches was codified as a defense under 35 U.S.C. 282.
The Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, followed the common law principle that, ”[w]hen a statute covers an issue previously governed by the common law, [the Court] must presume that Congress intended to retain the substance of the common law.” The Federal Circuit also ruled that laches does not preclude an ongoing royalty.

In the past decade, the patent system has been turned on its head. Inventors are now villainized as cartoon characters called patent trolls simply because they assert their hard-earned patent rights against corporations who steal their inventions. These infringing corporations have cleverly cultivated the myth that all patent owners are patent trolls by engaging high-powered lobbyists and public relations firms to loudly attack inventors. This toxic concoction of myth, media and money has gagged opposing voices effectively creating political cover for the government to make rapid and fundamental changes to patent law that skew the field toward big corporations at the expense of inventors and small innovation companies, including those high tech start-ups that are responsible for creating high paying jobs.