Posts Tagged: "Judge Pauline Newman"

the patented technology involved screen recognition and terminal emulation processes to download a screen of information from a remote mainframe computer onto a local personal computer (PC). Basically, the patented technology facilitated the ability of the PC to operate like earlier “dumb terminals” in recognizing information sent by a mainframe connected to the PC. The alleged infringing terminal emulator program called “NewLook” was developed in Australia (by Looksoftware Proprietary Limited) but was sold by Lansa, Inc. (Lansa) in the U.S.

Yes, a message from the shameless commerce division no doubt, but there are a handful of excellent PLI patent related programs coming up in February and March that deserve a mention.  After all, how often can one attend a program, get CLE credits and meet Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman?  Not all that often to be sure, but Judge Newman…

This year as we wind down and look back we not only need to look back at the previous year, but the first decade of the new century and new millennium will be ending.  So at this reflective time of year it seems appropriate to take a look back at the biggest patent related news stories of the decade.  As…

If you are going to read only one of the briefs in this case I would strongly recommend the Medtronic amicus brief, which was filed in support of neither party. Much of the Medtronic brief is devoted to explaining what the company does, some of the key medical innovations created by the company, why these innovations have helped improve the quality of health care for real people, and what technologies they will no longer be able to seek patent protection for, which will all but certainly lead to less medical innovation, which is hardly good for society.

Determining what compounds are obvious under the doctrine of “structural similarity” can be a daunting challenge, even for those of us with a chemistry or pharmaceutical background.  Add the doctrine of “inequitable conduct” to the “structural similarity” brew, and the plot truly thickens.  But there’s enough schizophrenia about the structural differences between one prior art compound called Schmutz X and…

In the 1972 case of Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp, a bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled that exporting three separate boxes of parts that could be assembled abroad into a patented deveining machine in less than an hour was not actionable under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a). In response, Congress in 1984 enacted 35 U.S.C. § 271(f) to…

The Federal Circuit has recently issued some highly controversial decisions, such as In re Bilski now before the U.S. Supreme Court. But possibly the strangest this year is Martek Biosciences Corp. v. Nutrinova, Inc. What makes Martek Biosciences strange is not so much the argument between the majority and dissent about whether the claim term “animal” included humans. Instead, it…

Lets be perfectly clear, the Patent Office does not call me and ask my input regarding anything, which should be readily apparent to those who read IPWatchdog.com regularly.  Had the Patent Office done so, and actually taken my suggestions to heart the Department of Justice would not have needed to ask the Federal Circuit to hold off on taking the…

In a decision that is simply painful to read, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday decided in Autogenomics v. Oxford Gene Technology that a foreign patent owner cannot be made a defendant to a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment of invalidity, unenforceability and noninfringement.  According to the majority opinion, Oxford is a British biotechnology company…

As we continue to wait for President Barack Obama to select the next Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property (a.k.a. the Director of the USPTO), I feel compelled to make yet another nomination.  As some may know, since September 2008, I have periodically nominated various people who I thought would make a good choice for the next PTO Director, including…

Not long ago the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc., a decision that just screams for Congress to codify Rule 56 and settle once and for all the duty of candor that is owed to the Patent Office during the patent application process. To be perfectly clear, it…

Last week I was in Arlington, Virginia, teaching the PLI Patent Bar Review Course, so I was a bit out of touch with what was happening in the patent world as I tried to help a number of would-be patent attorneys and agents get through the PLI immersion course. Like clockwork, during this time out of the office the United…

EDITORIAL NOTE: This post was originally published on October 6, 2008, by the PLI Patent Practice Center Blog. It has since become unavailable, so it is been republished here on IPWatchdog.com. As the Presidential election continues to heat up it is time for me to start compiling names of those who I think are qualified to be the next Under…

While the Federal Circuit has not said that software cannot be patented, what they did say substantially changes the law that has prevailed over the last 10 years and will render many software patents useless. Moving forward, you can protect software, but only by protecting the machine that the software operates on, which is the way patent attorneys used to be forced to write software patent applications many years ago. What it also means is that to have any chance at protecting software with a patent you will have to be willing to spend signficant amounts of money, because simply put there is no economical way to draft patents cost-effectively given the new Federal Circuit guidelines.