Posts in Patents

Commissioner Christine Wilson of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) addressed the IPWatchdog Patent Masters Symposium on Tuesday, September 10, emphasizing three main points in her keynote: that Judge Lucy Koh’s decision in FTC v. Qualcomm was flawed, that antitrust analyses should be more focused on dynamic, rather than static effects, and that, despite the latter point, antitrust authorities routinely try and fail to integrate dynamic effects into antitrust law. She was clear up front that her views did not necessarily match those of her fellow commissioners. First, Wilson reiterated the ideas expressed in her May 28 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, which she summarized by saying that U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Lucy Koh’s opinion in the FTC v. Qualcomm case “creates bad law and bad policy.” Wilson explained that Koh in her lengthy analysis took the opportunity to “radically expand a company’s legal obligation to help its competitors” by reviving a “discredited” 1985 Supreme Court case, Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp. “My opposition to the court’s opinion does not stem from any desire to help or protect Qualcomm,” Wilson said. “I am focused on applying and preserving sound antitrust principles and this decision scares me.”

Speaking at IPWatchdog’s Patent Master’s Symposium today, Professor Kristen Osenga of The University of Richmond School of Law gave attendees a glimpse of her upcoming paper examining problems with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – Standards Association’s (IEEE-SA) 2015 amendment to its intellectual property rights (IPR) policy. In reference to the title of the panel on which she was speaking, “Balance, Transparency & Reasonableness: Converging Approaches to SEP Licenses and FRAND Royalties,” Osenga explained that “balance transparency, and reasonableness simply were not part of the process” by which IEEE adopted the new policy. Osenga’s paper, which is due to be published on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) by the end of 2019, will examine the actions leading up to the adoption of the 2015 amended policy, as well as the aftermath. Below is an abstract of the paper; many of the issues it will touch upon were also covered in Osenga’s 2018 paper, “Ignorance Over Innovation: Why Misunderstanding Standard Setting Organizations Will Hinder Technological Progress.”

To seek relief in Federal Court, a plaintiff must demonstrate a personal, legally protectable interest in the outcome of the dispute for which relief is being sought, i.e., must demonstrate standing. The legally protectable interest may be under threat because of a government conduct. In patent disputes, the plaintiff may be an inter partes review (IPR) petitioner who has challenged a patent and is dissatisfied with the final written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) regarding upholding of patent claims by the PTAB. Here, the decision upholding the claims would be the government conduct complained of. The dissatisfied petitioner may appeal to the Federal Circuit and, to prove standing, allege that it is injured because the decision upholding the claims reduces its ability to compete with the patent owner. If the petitioner has no current interest in practicing the claims, would it have standing? No, it would not, according to the Federal Circuit in Avx Corporation v. Presidio Components, Inc. 2018-1106 (Fed. Cir. May 13, 2019) (“Avx Corp.”), where this scenario played out. The court explained that although “competitor standing” can be found to challenge government actions in certain situations, this was not one of them, as the petitioner was unable to demonstrate any present or nonspeculative interest in engaging in conduct even arguably covered by the claims at issue. Avx Corp. at 9.

In his luncheon keynote address to attendees of IPWatchdog’s Patent Master’s Symposium: “Standard Essential Patents: Striking a Balance Between Competition and Innovation” on Tuesday, former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader drove home a point made by multiple speakers during the event that the concept of “patent hold-up”—in which innovator companies use SEPs to hold up implementer companies from getting products to market via anti-competitive practices—is “one of the largest misnomers in our discipline.” Earlier in the day, David Kappos, former Director of the USPTO, explained that— although he signed off on the Joint Policy Statement, that it was thoughtfully and heavily negotiated and edited, and that he felt at the time that it was a good document and a compromised agreement—he stepped back after Delrahim’s announcement last year and has now reconsidered his view. “I was defending the IP system given everything we knew at the time,” Kappos said. “I didn’t think the guidelines were anti-innovation; I thought they were balanced. But in stepping back, I realized—between 2013 and 2019 we’ve learned a lot. Multiple empirical studies have shown us that the phenomena on which we based the guidelines— hold-up and royalty stacking — aren’t occurring. There is no evidence of our predictions.”

On September 5,  the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) held that state sovereignty principles asserted by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System (UT) do not give UT the right to bring suit in an improper venue. The appeal clarifies once again that sovereign immunity may be used only as a shield, not a sword. UT argued that Boston Scientific Corporation’s request that the case be transferred to the District of Delaware should be reversed because venue was proper in the Western District of Texas since a state has the right to sue a nonresident in a forum of its choosing where personal jurisdiction is satisfied. It argued that the federal patent venue statute cannot override this sovereign right. UT also argued that the District of Delaware lacks jurisdiction because UT never consented to suit in Delaware, nor did it waive its sovereignty in Delaware or abrogate its sovereignty by statute. The CAFC disagreed with the above, holding that state sovereignty does not allow states to bring patent infringement suits in an improper venue, as is the case where BSC does not have a place of business in Texas. It also held in Regents of University of Cal. V. Eli Lilly & Co. that sovereign immunity does not apply where the state acts only as the plaintiff, and therefore the right of UT to choose the forum does not apply because the Eleventh Amendment only applies to suits against a state, not by a state.

Recently, the Federal Circuit reversed, vacated and remanded a decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado that granted Mushkin, Inc.’s (“Mushkin’s”) motion to dismiss Anza Tech.’s (“Anza”) complaint seeking damages for alleged patent infringement occurring between March 2011 and April 2012 because the claim for damages was time-barred by the six-year statute of limitations in the Patent Act, 35 U.S.C. § 286. See Anza Tech., Inc. v. Mushkin, Inc., No. 2019-1045, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 24432 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 16, 2019) (Before Prost, Chief Judge, Newman and Bryson, Circuit Judges) (Opinion for the Court, Bryson, Circuit Judge). In its determination of whether newly alleged claims, based on separate patents, relate back to the date of the original complaint, the Federal Circuit considered: (1) the overlap of parties, (2) the overlap in the accused products, (3) the underlying science and technology, (4) time periods, and (5) any additional factors that might suggest a commonality or lack of commonality between the two sets of claims.

If you’re reading this blog, then you likely are an avid follower of the Section 101 saga. The most recent episode in this saga, Chamberlain v. Techtronic at the Federal Circuit, is about so much more than a garage door operator being an abstract idea. It’s about the fact that we still have no clue what’s supposed to happen in the 2A and 2B steps of the judicially-created Alice/Mayo test. The Chamberlain panel applied the Alice/Mayo test completely backwards compared to what the Berkheimer panel said. First, the question of improvement was assessed in Chamberlain’s “Step One” (or 2A). Not only that, the panel then immediately went on to find that “(t)he specification admits that the act of transmitting data wirelessly is ‘well understood in the art,’ and no other changes to the generically claimed movable barrier operator are recited in the asserted claims or described in the specification.” 

This week marks Congress’ return from its August recess and patent owners should be encouraged to see the Senate IP Subcommittee meeting on Wednesday to explore the STRONGER Patents Act in its latest attempt to improve the U.S. patent system. In the House, various subcommittees will focus on FCC broadband map accuracy, advancements in forensic science, and security issues in the nation’s Internet architecture. Outside of Capitol Hill, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will hold a pair of events to look at the global race for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI) and the country’s R&D funding agenda, and the Brookings Institution will explore autonomous transportation and service delivery systems, as well as federal data privacy legislation.

Courts construe, administer, and apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure so as “to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 1. Large patent portfolios have contributed to the increase in numbers of unwieldy cases that assert many patents and claims. A court presiding over such a case usually makes every…

While online giant Amazon has been in the news recently for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to ease restrictions for its planned drone-based delivery services, a battle is raging behind the scenes for the future of unmanned delivery vehicles. Walmart is combating the narrative of online retailers overtaking brick-and-mortar businesses by revamping its image and services. Besides using a hybrid of online shopping and manual pick-up at the store, the company is very interested in delivering its products to the customer directly—not only through traditional means, but with unmanned drone delivery couriers.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Chinese government announces stricter punitive measures in its IP system; the Federal Circuit says state sovereignty principles do not allow the University of Texas to bring suit in an otherwise improper venue; Congressional leadership asks Google to expand copyright protections under its Content ID tool; Google and Facebook to face antitrust probes from state AGs; George Mason University to create an Innovation Law Clinic; Ariana Grande files a copyright and trademark infringement suit against Forever 21; the Hudson Institute publishes a report on China’s 5G developments; and South Korea’s government has reportedly been collecting copyright payments for use of North Korean TV broadcasts.

An inter partes review (IPR) petitioner appeals the final written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as to claims upheld but is found to have no standing, as there is no present indication that the challenger would face a patent infringement suit in future. Under these circumstances, would the IPR statutory estoppel provision, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e), prevent the petitioner from asserting the challenges it brought against the upheld claims if the patent owner were to assert those claims against the petitioner in future? Note that under these circumstances, if estopped, the petitioner would have sought judicial review, but the merits of the challenges would not have been reviewed by an Article III court. This was one of the questions before the Federal Circuit in Avx Corporation v. Presidio Components, Inc. 2018-1106 (Fed. Cir. May 13, 2019) (“Avx Corp.”). Although the court declined to answer the question, as there were no adversarial presentations on this question, it clarified that the operation of estoppel was not a foregone conclusion under these facts, which, the court indicated, may fall under one of the exceptions to issue preclusion.

A recent study by Patexia analyzing the win/loss record of 784 law firms representing patent owners in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) found that Carmichael IP had the highest win percentage. The study counted all decisions rendered in the past five years for firms that handled a significant number of IPRs before the Board. Carmichael IP ranked #1 out of the 784 qualifying law firms in the Patexia survey and Carmichael himself ranked third out of 5,000 individual attorneys.

The most effective way to protect an inventive business method is with a patent on a technical invention. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice decision, the U.S. courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have consistently held that you can’t patent a business method by itself. The Alice decision overturned several related business method patents as being nothing more than an attempt to patent a fundamental economic process. Lower court decisions have since affirmed that “no matter how groundbreaking, innovative or even brilliant” a business method might be, you still can’t patent it. The only way to use patents, therefore, to protect business method inventions, is to patent the technological inventions required to make the business methods work. These inventions will be patentable since they will “improve the functioning of the computer itself.” See Buysafe, Inc., v. Google, Inc. 765 F.3d 1350 (2014) citing Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., ___ U.S. ___, 133 S.Ct. 2107, 2116, 186 L.Ed.2d 124 (2013).