Posts Tagged: "intellectual property"

An antibody can take various forms, including the following: a monoclonal, polyclonal, mouse, human, humanized, monospecific, bispecific, glycosylated (sugar chain-modified), Fc-modified, or ADC (antibody-drug conjugate) antibody; an antibody fragment (e.g., Fab, scFv, diabody, sdAb, tandem scFv); or an antibody of different class or subclass (e.g., IgG (e.g., IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, IgG4), IgM, IgE, IgA). If claim 1 recites an “antibody”, whether or not the antibody includes each of the above forms can be an issue in an infringement lawsuit. In Baxalta Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2020), Baxalta alleged that Genentech’s Hemlibra® (emicizumb-kxwh) product infringed its U.S. Patent No. 7,033,590 (’590 patent). In this lawsuit, the issue was whether or not the “antibody or antibody fragment thereof” in claim 1 of the ‘590 patent should comprise a bispecific antibody (the form of Hemlibra).

This week in Other Barks & Bites: China’s IP administration issues a first batch of guiding administrative cases for IP enforcement; the EU’s highest court finds that EU law prohibits copying the shape of protected designations of origin products when that copying misleads consumers; the Ninth Circuit affirms the dismissal of racketeering charges filed against Google over that company’s appropriation of an inventor’s architecture software platform; WIPO’s annual IP indicators report shows that global patent application filings are down owing in large part to fewer filings from Chinese residents; the USPTO delays its trademark fee adjustment for international applications under the Madrid Protocol until late February; and a German court rules that YouTube does not have to give identifying information of individuals allegedly uploading copyright-protected content to its video platform.

December remains a light month at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), with just 16 petitions filed last week, 15 inter partes reviews (IPRs) and one post grant review (PGR). District court cases were steady, with 62, propped up by a new banking campaign by Raymond Anthony Joao, detailed below. On the policy front were rumors of a last-minute extension of the covered business method patents program (CBM) being worked into the lame-duck session, but it was unclear whether that was just the rumor mill reacting to Innovation Alliance’s posting of a counter-statement and fact sheet lobbying against an extension so late in the year, or some actual threat of an extension being passed at the eleventh hour. Separately, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) posted a series of qualities it seeks in a new USPTO Director—mostly generic—including at least 15 years of patent lawyer experience, something I personally think excludes many phenomenal candidates from industry, business, and the inventor community.

This is the fifth and final article in a series of articles analyzing statements made by various entities in the cellular industry regarding licensing Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) on a Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) basis. The fourth article focused on the obligations of SEP owners in the process of FRAND licensing. This article considers the obligations of implementers.

As of December 2020, LinkedIn, Microsoft’s social networking service for professionals, has over 722 million total members in 200 countries and regions worldwide. Its growth seems unstoppable: the service continues to attract legions of newcomers to the workforce and more seasoned late adopters. Meanwhile, existing members are expanding their engagement, leveraging LinkedIn in new ways they hope will prove fruitful. Intellectual property professionals—defined broadly here as persons or entities whose professional work involves or relates to IP or IP practitioners—abound as members on LinkedIn. Law firm, corporate, and government attorneys and their colleagues. IP and legal service providers of all kinds, from litigation and prosecution support to software and IP monetization. Judges and law school professors. Legal associations, recruiters, and producers of IP conferences. The list goes on. Not surprisingly, corporate IP attorneys like myself are constantly typecast as LinkedIn buyers, viewed as a source of coveted business in a highly competitive field. For me, LinkedIn has become the single most active forum where sellers attempt to pitch me services. This has been both a blessing and a curse, an opportunity to be impressed—or not.

“Qualified women are unnecessarily excluded from membership in the patent bar,” wrote Mary T. Hannon in a recent law review article seen by Senators Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), who promptly sent a letter to United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu demanding answers. A scandal of epic proportions in 2020 if an agency of the executive branch is actively excluding women from the ranks of patent practitioners. But it’s just not true.

A wave of thousands of 5G Self-Declared Standard Essential Patents (SD-SEPs) applicable to everything from devices to network infrastructure is fast approaching. The value of these patents is 6-10% of the retail product value, if recent LTE SEPs court decisions are to be believed. However, ex ante 5G licensing rates announced by traditional licensors Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia, and Interdigital total around $18 (or 3.6%) on a $500 handset. Yet these licensors hold less than 17.4% of the relevant 5G SD-SEP families, which would make the total royalty burden 20% or higher. Implementers faced with high SEP licensing cost and uncertainty typically mitigate risk by: (1) using licensed components, (2) receiving indemnification, and (3) leveraging defensive portfolios. But there is another strategy that should be considered given the tools which are now available: preemptively challenging patent family validity in foreign jurisdictions that are relatively quick, inexpensive and often more effective.

On December 14, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a decision of the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Adaptive Streaming Inc. v. Netflix, Inc., holding that that claims of Adaptive Streaming Inc.’s patent were invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In particular, the CAFC agreed with the district court that the claims of the patent in suit were directed to the abstract idea of “collecting information and transcoding it into multiple formats” and that the claims did not incorporate anything more that would transform the claimed subject matter into an eligible application of the abstract idea.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held its last hearing of the year on reforms to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) today, three days before Subcommittee Chairman Thom Tillis (R-NC) is set to release a discussion draft of a DMCA reform bill he has said will contain “revolutionary changes to online copyright law.” Tuesday’s hearing included representatives of YouTube and Facebook; Twitter refused to participate, and Tillis recently published a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressing his disappointment with the decision.

On Thursday, December 10, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, released text of bipartisan legislation titled the “Protecting Lawful Streaming Act of 2020” (the Act).  The Act would punish commercial, for profit streaming piracy services that willfully and for commercial advantage or private financial gain offer to the public illicit services dedicated to illegally streaming copyrighted material. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Coons (D-DE), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), and David Perdue (R-GA).

On October 17, 2020, the Standing Committee of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress (China’s top legislature) passed the Fourth Amendment to the Chinese Patent Law, which will become effective on June 1, 2021 (“Effective Date”). As I was digesting the news and browsing through the 29 newly published changes made to the previous version of the Chinese Patent Law, which was passed in 2008, a line from “The Song of the Pipa Player”, a popular poem written in 816 A.D. by Bai Juyi (one of the three most famous poets in China’s Tang Dynasty), came to mind: “Only after our repeated calls did she appear; her face half hidden behind the pipa she held.” Indeed, while the First, Second, and Third Amendment to the 1984 Chinese Patent Law each came out with clockwork precision eight years after the previous enactment—in 1992, 2000, and 2008, respectively—this Fourth Amendment took 12 years to incubate, and struck a number of new areas that will need to be further revealed in future practice.

This week in Washington IP news, the Senate IP Subcommittee holds a hearing on emerging methods of combating online piracy, from private agreements to anti-piracy technology, while the Senate Commerce Committee explores ways to incentivize a more even distribution of venture capital funding for small businesses and tech startups across America. The American Enterprise Institute hosts an event on Tuesday to explore research that advocates for less patent protection for pharmaceutical products. Also this week, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce co-host the 14th annual roundtable event for IP attachés stationed around the world.

The European Patent Office (EPO) issued a press release and 75-page study on December 10, titled “Patents and the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the global technology trends enabling the data-driven economy,” which examined global trends in innovation in fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies. As used in the study, 4IR denotes “the full integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the context of manufacturing and application areas such as personal, home, vehicle, enterprise and infrastructure,” and it marks a “radical step towards a fully data-driven economy.” The study examined international patent families (IPFs), i.e., inventions for which patent applications have been filed in two or more patent offices, related to 4IR worldwide between 2000 and 2018. The study revealed that, between 2010 and 2018, global patent filings for 4IR technologies, including smart connected objects, Internet of Things, Big Data, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), grew at an average annual rate of almost 20%, which is nearly five times faster than the average of all technology fields.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched their INSPIRE (Index of Specialized Patent Information Reports) “database of databases” on November 4, 2020. It provides useful summaries of patent databases to help both novice and expert patent searchers identify the most suitable search system. WIPO’s ultimate goal was to speed up the pace at which innovation takes place. To do this, INSPIRE identifies database features without commenting on any strengths or weaknesses of products. At the time of writing, INSPIRE listed 23 databases, both free and subscription. Content was still being added to the collection and there was scope for more sources to be included.