Posts in IP News

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.

Currently there are 364 chapters of SCORE operating in over 800 locations across the United States as well as in US Territories. The organization, which is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia and Washington DC, supports small businesses with both training and business counseling. Whether you are just starting out, or have been established for quite some time, SCORE can set you up with a personal business coach who can guide you along every step of your business.

As you review the statements below, all of which were publicly available on the Internet when I found them, I think what you will find is that those companies you would most like to review your ideas and inventions are the companies that are not going to do so on a confidential basis. Many companies require an issued patent, or at least a pending patent application. Over and over again they recommend that you at least file a patent application prior to submitting in order to preserve your rights, and recommend that you contact a patent attorney.

In this patent Google gives us a glimpse at the possible future of Google Books, which can censor books it serves based on the copyright laws of the location from which you access the Internet. In one implementation the method disclosed includes a user requesting a document, the request being received, information being processed and the viewable portions of the document being determined based on the governing copyright laws. The governing copyright laws are determined based on information relating to the user, such as relying on the IP address of the requester, which can disclose the geographic location of the user, at least when it is not spoofed.

Picking up on this theme and focusing on things that at first glance seem incredibly obvious but must not be at all obvious given that those who are exceptionally smart can’t figure them out, I thought with tax season right around the corner it might be worthwhile to explore method of stimulating the economy by cutting taxes. I am sure there are other pieces of prior art, even some pieces of enabling prior art, or come to think of it wildly successful and unimaginably enabling prior art, but I am going to hang my hopes on secondary considerations.

The process that would make the most sense to me would be to have the USPTO create a first draft of MPEP chapters. To the extent there is interest the USPTO could solicit volunteers from the patent community to collaborate with members of the Patent Office responsible for drafting the MPEP. When a suitable draft has been achieved it could be posted for comments and editing.

Only one court (District of Minnesota) seemed to give much consideration to the argument that plaintiff would be unduly prejudiced by defendant’s continuing allegedly infringing activity during the stay. One court acknowledged that a party may be prejudiced by the delay of the stay if it can be shown that the ability to gather evidence would be compromised by the stay.

The federal government knows that small businesses are critical to the economic strength and recovery of our country, especially as the economy stands today. For this very reason, programs have been put into place to assist entrepreneurs in starting their own businesses.

GE asserts that the Mitsubishi 2.4MW wind turbine is an example of an infringing product. The 2.4 MW wind turbine is a large-size wind turbine with a 2.4 megawatt rated output. According to the Mitsubishi website, the MWT92/2.4 and MWT95/2.4 (versions of the 2.4MW wind turbine) “are strategically targeted at the global market for large-scale wind turbine generators. MHI developed the MWT92/2.4 proprietarily and, since January 2006, has verified its performance and reliability through testing…”