Posts Tagged: "Amazon.com"

In AC Techs., S.A. v. Amazon.com, Inc. the Federal Circuit found the PTAB did not exceed its statutory authority by addressing a non-instituted ground on reconsideration; in fact, it would have violated the statutory scheme for the PTAB not to consider the previously non-instituted ground… The claims at issue related to data access and management, namely, storing copies of data across a network to improve data integrity and reduce network lag. Amazon and Blizzard challenged the ’680 patent based on a single prior art reference. They presented three grounds in their petition, all centered on the construction of the term “computer unit.”

On Friday, December 14th, San Francisco, CA-based home furnishing retailer Williams-Sonoma filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California alleging claims of trademark and design patent infringement against Seattle, WA-based e-commerce giant Amazon.com. The lawsuit targets Amazon’s pattern of trading upon Williams-Sonoma’s goodwill and infringing the company’s intellectual property including the use of the registered mark “WILLIAMS-SONOMA.” If the allegations are true, this is simply the latest instance of this e-commerce behemoth choosing to flout IP law in an effort to line the pockets of itself and its incredibly affluent CEO Jeff Bezos.

While many holiday shoppers may think that they’re getting a bargain by purchasing goods displaying a particular brand without having to pay brand prices, these shoppers are unwittingly gifting low-quality items or worse, products that pose health hazards, to their friends or loved ones. Thanks in large part to the Internet, counterfeiting operations have reached epidemic levels in recent years. Nearly half of all brand owners are losing revenues because of the sale of counterfeits and, in 2017, U.S. customs agencies seized a total of 34,143 shipments carrying counterfeited goods being imported into the U.S. But counterfeiting is a victimless crime, the common refrain goes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Terrorist organizations and organized crime families are turning to counterfeiting as a meaningful source of income given the exceptionally low penalties even if they are caught and extraordinarily high profit margins — profit margins that are even higher than selling drugs on the street. 

The Federal Circuit recently issued a nonprecedential opinion in Amazon.com, Inc. v. ZitoVault, LLC, affirming a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that e-commerce giant Amazon failed to prove a patent owned by security solutions provider ZitoVault was unpatentable. The Federal Circuit majority of Circuit Judges Kara Stoll and Kathleen O’Malley disagreed with Amazon’s that the PTAB erred in its claim construction. Dissenting, Chief Judge Sharon Prost wrote that she believed the PTAB’s analysis of a specific claim term was flawed, and she would have vacated the PTAB decision and remanded the case for further consideration. The patent-at-issue was ZitoVault’s U.S. Patent No. 6484257, titled System and Method for Maintaining N Number of Simultaneous Cryptographic Sessions Using a Distributed Computing Environment. Issued in November 2002, it claims a software architecture for conducting a plurality of cryptographic sessions over a distributed computing environment.

Dystopian novels and science fiction often return to the subject of the loss of personal privacy which is often encouraged by the use of technology enabling constant, omnipresent surveillance. Perhaps the most famous example of this in the science fiction canon of the 20th century is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. First published in 1949, Orwell’s novel conceives of a world where government surveillance is so complete that the vast majority of citizens don’t mind being watched by two-way telescreens in their own apartments. Even the novel’s rebellious protagonist Winston Smith comes around at the end to fall prey to the same cult of personality that allows the government overseer — Big Brother — to remain in power… With concerns over the use of personal data fresh in the mainstream news, we’ll run a series of articles that will take a closer look at U.S. tech giants both in terms of the types of data they track and the purposes for which that data is used.

Although it’s not illegal to earn a profit, unfair business practices in the pursuit of holding a monopoly over an entire industry led to the breakup of Standard Oil, especially the rebates from railroad companies for oil shipments which substantially lowered Standard Oil’s transportation costs relative to its much smaller competitors. Recent academic research has suggested that, while the U.S. government acted appropriately to stop the cartelization of an industry, Standard Oil was engaging in typical capitalist activity in securing better deals which optimized oil shipments. This would seem somewhat less nefarious than an outright copying technologies from smaller competitors in an effort to stave off competition.

the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it, along with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had seized a record number of counterfeit and pirated products which violated intellectual property rights last year. Collectively, CBP and ICE seized a total of 34,143 shipments of goods during 2017’s fiscal year, an increase of 8 percent over the total number of counterfeit shipments seized during 2016. About 90 percent of the shipments seized were in the express carrier and international mail environments. According to the law enforcement agencies, the total estimated manufacturers’ suggested retail price (MSRP) for the genuine versions of those good reached $1.2 billion.

If Snap cannot protect its ability to differentiate its platform, how is it going to compete with a rival that has more resources and a larger base of distribution? If Facebook and Snap compete on user experience, and that experience is essentially the same between both, there’s no way for Snap, the smaller player, to gain any sort of competitive advantage… An analysis of U.S. capital markets published last May by Ernst & Young noted that the decline of IPO activity over the past 20 years has been so significant that it has warranted conversations on policy action to reverse the trend. A restoration of patent rights, which gives a patent owner a reasonable ability to obtain and enforce patents, could very well have the positive impact desired to improve the business climate for IPOs.

Between 1882 and 1906, this market dominance reportedly brought Standard Oil a total of $838,783,800 in net income. On an annual basis, that would mean that Standard Oil earned nearly $35 million in net income each year, which equals approximately $969 million in 2017 dollars when adjusted for inflation… To some of the tech super giants of today, $1 billion in profits is nothing more than pocket change… If Standard Oil remains the benchmark for what it means to be a monopoly, which many believe it does, it is difficult to understand why U.S. Antitrust regulators are not at least asking very serious questions about the market dominance of the tech super giants and the associated suppression of smaller, truly innovative enterprises.

Looking at the types of damages being awarded in trademark cases and how they’re being awarded, it’s highly likely that most damages awarded in these cases might never be recovered. “You can see it as two separate worlds of trademark cases,” Howard said. “There are cases in which a defendant doesn’t show up and it goes straight to default judgment, and then there’s everything else.” $4.6 billion dollars, or 84.6 percent of all damages awarded in district court trademark cases going back to 2009, have been awarded on default judgment.

October 30th was a very busy day for amici filing briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court on how the highest court in the nation should decide in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, a case in which oral arguments will be heard on November 27th. Many of the briefs filed on the 30th were submitted by some of the biggest names in the tech industry. Taking a look at briefs filed by this major companies, some of whom have been seeing great success in patent validity trials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), it’s both revealing and unsurprising to find how the tech ruling class feels that the Supreme Court should decide in Oil States.

At issue in the trademark infringement suit is Amazon’s sale of counterfeit wheel center caps bearing distinctive Mercedes-Benz trademarks… Daimler argues that Amazon “facilitates the sale of an exorbitant number of counterfeit and infringing goods” through its platform, counterfeit activity which has increased since 2015 when the company began inducing Chinese manufacturers to list on its U.S. and European e-commerce platforms. Daimler notes that lawsuits over counterfeit products have been filed against Amazon by well-known consumer brands including a February 2017 suit filed by French luxury goods brand Chanel against the American e-commerce giant.

At first sight Amazon´s patent portfolio is indeed remarkable, with respect to its total value as well as its development over time: the total value of the company’s patent portfolio shows a strong over-proportional growth within the past six years. Starting 2010 with about 550 patent families and € 130m, the patents have reached a total value in September 2016 an impressive total sum of € 1,15b with 4,162 alive patent families. For a company being recognized as a retailer this is indeed remarkable and shows the trend of being more and more a high tech company. This can be seen within their strong increase of total patent portfolio value but also the technical analysis.

Eight tech companies owning a collective 115,000 patents announced the establishment of the High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA), an organization they claim is “dedicated to supporting balanced patent policy.” According to coverage by Congressional blog TheHill, the formation of the HTIA is intended to further debate on Capitol Hill over patent reform… The members of the alliance are your typical “Who’s Who” of the efficient infringer lobby… Every member of the HTIA, including Adobe, Cisco, Oracle and Salesforce.com all lobbied on issues related to the Innovation Act.