Posts in IP News

As you can see from the first cartoon in the series, the creator of a project has left the company and his unfinished project is being passed on to the hapless Dilbert. Scott Adams, through Dilbert, teaches us not only that no one should ever trust Dilbert, but also about the importance of documenting your invention. I then take this opportunity to also opinion about the impending first to invent changes to US patent laws. What fun!

Below is the current list of events posted on the IPWatchdog Social Network. Joining is free, and you can add your industry events for free as well. The plan is to periodically post an upcoming list of events on the IPWatchdog.com blog taken from the current list over on the IPWatchdog Social Network. So if you have a program at a law school, an inventor group meeting, CLE or expo join the group and let everyone know about your event.

PLI is offering scholarships for unemployed attorneys and they are also hosting Winning Strategies for Managing Your Career 2010 for the special price of $25. From time to time PLI also gives away ethics credits for free, and pro bono training. In reality, an announcement of scholarships and $25 programs hardly comes from the shameless commerce division, and for that reason I hope that you will consider helping spread the word.

On February 17, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an order in Hyatt v. Kappos vacating the previous decision issued by a 3 judge panel on August 11, 2009, when the case was then styled Hyatt v. Doll. Hyatt’s petition for rehearing was denied. After polling the judges of the Federal Circuit, however, rehearing en banc was granted on whether 35 USC 145 requires de novo review and the submission of new evidence.

Last week Inc.com published an article titled How to Find a Good Patent Lawyer. Unfortunately, if you follow this advice you are likely to do exactly the opposite. If you can believe it, Inc.com suggests that you not ask business associates or others for reliable recommendations, which goes completely against the well established best practices in the industry. The article also suggests that if you have an Internet business you might want to find a patent attorney who also specializes in First Amendment law, almost as if those types of lawyers readily exist, which they don’t.

“Patrick Walsh” was a little too broad; I limited it to “Patrick Walsh patent,” to see if anything of interest popped up more specific to my career as a professional patent searcher. What I found was this gem of early 1900’s journalism from the New York Times: Dated May 14th, 1909. If you were so unlucky as to fall victim to the former Walsh Bros. & Company, you were only down $4, Even by 1909 standards, $4 isn’t not the end of the world.

Earlier this week, on February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted US Patent No. 7,669,123, which covers a patent on a method for dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network. While this may have been new to social networking sites in December 2005 through August 2006, automatically updating news feeds were hardly new even then.

The new count system seems to place emphasis on complete and thorough initial examination, and even provides incentive for examiners to issue patent applications early in the process. Examiners are also given up to 1 hour of non-examination time to initiate an interview with the applicant or the applicant’s representative, and to write up an interview summary. Given that patent examiners will receive more credit under the new count system for disposals without need for a Final Rejection, it seems reasonable to anticipate that when there is allowable subject matter present in an application at least some examiners will find it in their own best interest to work with an applicant to get a patent issued quickly.

The day starts out quiet enough. I wake up and scoop my contacts out of the Clear Care® contact lens solution they’re swimming in. Blinking rapidly to settle my contacts, I focus on some tiny numbers printed on the contact solution box. Patent numbers. I’ve been using the solution for years and wonder how old the patents must be. I do a quick Google search and discover that the patents have expired. Strange that expired patents would be printed on the box… My 3 year old interrupts my thoughts as she walks up to me still rubbing her eyes, complaining that her Goodnite’s® Sleep Shorts are soggy. Knowing that absorbent products containing hydrogels with ability to swell against pressure don’t change themselves, I quickly get her some dry pants. Doing so, I check the box and sure enough, more expired patent numbers.

Director Kappos is making his case for patent reform by making 4 key points. First, patent reform would lower patent office fees for independent inventors and presumably small businesses by establishing a new class — micro entities. Second, the fee setting authority in the patent reform legislation will allow for the USPTO to generate more revenue, thereby improving IT systems and hiring more patent examiners, while not costing micro entities more in the way of fees. Third, post grant review of patents will be condensed into a 12 month period and the threshold for initiating review will be raised, which should result in at settling effect not unlike the quieting of title in the real property scenario. Finally, the US will not become a pure first to file system, but rather into a first inventor to file system, which will have little or no effect on independent inventors and small businesses.

The Network also includes a forum, list of upcoming events, allows for the creation of member groups and allows members to submit news stories, which others can comment on and vote up and down. My hope is that those with blogs in this space will submit content they create there, providing a title, link to the full article and a couple sentence teaser. I also hope members will submit interesting, topical news stories they find as well. Of course, the Network also allows for Twitter integration and a whole lot more.

One of the main criticisms of patents by those who are not intimately familiar with patent law, or on the periphery of the industry, is that patents last too long. The reality, if any generalizations could be made at all, is that the overwhelming majority of patents do not last “too long,” but if anything last for only a fleeting moment in the greater scheme of life. So while it is completely true to say that software and certain other high tech innovations should not be locked up for 20 years, the reality is that no patent provides 20 years of protection.

Unfortunately, those who oppose software patents frequently, if not always, want to turn the patentability requirements as they apply to software and business methods into a single step inquiry. They want it all to ride on patentable subject matter, which is a horrible mistake. The majority of the Federal Circuit got it completely wrong in Bilski, and other notable recent decisions. Patentable subject matter is a threshold inquiry and should not be used to weed out an entire class of innovation simply because bad patents could and will issue if the other patentability requirements are not adequately applied. That is taking the “easy” way out and is simply wrong.

Gov. Rick Perry today announced the state will invest $1 million through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) in LegalZoom.com for the relocation of certain office functions from Los Angeles to Austin. This investment will create up to 600 jobs and more than $11.7 million in capital investment.

Submarine patents are not ever likely going to be the problem that they once were prior to the publication of patent applications at 18 months and prior to the change in patent term. On June 8, 1995 the term for a US patent changed from 17 years from issuance to 20 years from filing. There is still an opportunity to obtain additional patent term, for example where the Patent Office interjects unnecessary delay into the process, but it is unrealistic to think that patents will remain pending unknown for decades, which was frequently possible and how Lemelson masterfully manipulated the system, within the rules of course. But the TiVo patent was pending for a decade, unknown and secret. That should not be able to happen and should justifiably cause an alarm.