Posts Tagged: "patent"

At the very beginning of the program Siegel, during his opening remarks, said: “At Acacia we are not in the litigation business, we are in the licensing business.” I know that many will shrug or laugh at the comment, but from what I know about Acacia if you care to dig underneath the surface and listen past the sound byte it is true. Siegel explained that there are real costs and real risks associated with litigation, so doing business together and licensing is always a preferable strategy. Of course, Siegel pointed out that there is still a reluctance by many entities to pay for intellectual property. Siegel is exactly correct. There are many companies, large companies who themselves are owners of very large patent portfolios, who are reluctant to pay for intellectual property rights even though they infringe. Somewhere along the way it seems that the narrative got away from the innovator and has been turned on its head.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will be conducting a roundtable on December 2, 2014 to solicit public opinions concerning the USPTO’s use of crowdsourcing to identify relevant prior art. The roundtable will be held in the Moot Court Room, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003. It will begin at 1 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) and end at 5 pm EST. The meeting will also be accessible via webcast.

The settlement with MPHJ is the first time the FTC has taken action using its consumer protection authority against a patent assertion entity (PAE). PAEs are companies that obtain patent rights and try to generate revenue by licensing to or litigating against those who are or may be using patented technology. “Patents can promote innovation, but a patent is not a license to engage in deception,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Small businesses and other consumers have the right to expect truthful communications from those who market patent rights.”

DuPont is a company responsible for many impressive industrial and commercial innovations, and our latest survey of patent applications published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office bears this fact out. We explored a couple of patent applications that discuss novel methods of creating fuel from biomass materials, especially those materials that don’t draw from the food supply. Transparent conductive materials, ink-jet inks with better pigment stability and a whipping agent for frozen sorbet are other technological advances which are discussed below. This corporation benefits from a strong patent portfolio and we’ve chronicled the addition of several important patents to DuPont’s intellectual property portfolio today. More food production innovations are reflected here, including a patent protect a better method for obtaining betaine from sugar beets for the production of molasses. Plastics production, including dielectric films for capacitors, are explored in more detail below. We also profile inventions involving relief printing methods for corrugated cardboard as well as another innovation for producing ethanol from biomass.

Siegel: “I think this effort to destroy the value of intellectual property is a bigger wet towel on innovation. When startup companies, after they get their angel investing, go out to try and raise funds on round Bs and round Cs, one of the things that investors look at is whether or not that company has an innovation that is different and protectable so that the investors know that number one there is something in there that’s protectable so that they can protect their investment. And when companies, small companies that make the investment into intellectual property portfolio development it sends a signal, two signals. It sends a signal that, number one, they’re progressive enough and smart enough to think about protecting their innovation. And, number two, it provides collateral for the investments that the investors are making into the company. So if the company were to not be successful in its business, they would have this asset of an IP portfolio sitting there that could still be sold or otherwise monetized to help the investors recoup their investments.”

There are few more interesting tragedies in the history of American business than the demise of Kodak, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2012. and few that are more frustrating given the fact that the key to the company’s renewed success lay within its grasp for years. Digital photography, the technology that decimated Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, was originally a Kodak innovation. The company’s stubborn refusal to support the development that rivalled its core product, film, should be a cautionary tale to any major corporation and a sign to innovative start-ups that even the most monolithic corporations can become vulnerable.

In the patent applications filed by this company, we found an interesting trio of printing technologies, including one filing which would protect an improved system for printing and binding booklets. Medical innovations, including an endoscopic tool which can be selectively made transparent and visible depending on endoscopic operation needs, are discussed below. We also noted an innovation for reducing erroneous operations in an electronic device with multiple touchscreen panels. There have been many recent additions to Canon’s already globally renowned patent portfolio that we profile today. We discuss a few patents issued to protect improvements to robotics technologies for manufacturing facilities. A couple of patents show Canon’s interest in improving nanofabrication techniques for creating semiconductors. We also explore inventions related to printing copy-forgery-inhibited patterns and high precision scanning technologies.

In a concurring opinion, Judge O’Malley, who was joined by Judge Hughes, wrote that she felt constrained by the Federal Circuit’s precedent in In re Seagate and Bard Peripheral Vascular v. W.L. Gore, but that recent Supreme Court decisions call into question the continued viability of that precedent. As such, Judges O’Malley and Hughes have urged the Federal Circuit to reconsider en banc the standard for awarding enhanced damages under 35 U.S.C. 284. With willful damages back on the table future patent reform is in question.

According to a myriad of patent applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Nikon is serious about expanding its intellectual property holdings in the area of lithography, especially immersion lithography, for the manufacture of semiconductors and other electronics. An X-ray device which is less affected by thermal expansion and a digital bulletin board for an online electronic album service are also discussed in recently filed Nikon patent applications. Nikon’s patent portfolio isn’t the most extensive one we feature on IPWatchdog, but it is still quite valuable. A number of immersion lithography innovations are featured in these patents and we discuss a couple of technologies designed to improve the control of fluids or vapors in use by these systems. Digital cameras and their electronic components were the feature of a smorgasbord of other patents that we came across. A couple of these protect techniques designed to increase the ease that image file data may be shared and edited by other cameras or external devices.

The Raze 4G/LTE patent portfolio, which includes patents having priority filing dates all the way back to April 2001, is currently for sale and could well fetch a handsome sum even given downward pressure in the market because these standard essential patents cover carrier grade technologies… This 4G/LTE patent portfolio includes 18 issued U.S. patents and another 4 pending U.S. patent applications. Broadly speaking, these patents are applicable to several technology areas with the next generation wireless and wireline technologies, particularly wide-area networks, narrow-area networks and cellular traffic to network offloading. The patents have no encumbrances, have never been licensed and have all commonly owned by Raze Technologies since the development of the underlying innovations.

J&J is pretty active in terms of patenting, and our recent survey of patent applications filed with the USPTO showed us that the company is looking to usher in the next age of contact lenses. In a time when many people are talking about Google Glass and other wearable technologies, we were intrigued to find a large number of patent applications filed by J&J to protect methods of incorporating semiconductor components into contact lenses for digitizing vision care and correction. A surgical implant for hernia repair and cosmetic compositions which cause less skin irritation are also discussed below… Even more contact lens innovation is reflected in these recently issued patents, including contact lenses for stopping myopia progression or for providing more stability when worn on the eye. Anti-tumor topical compositions and disposable assay devices for the simpler completion of biochemical tests have also recently entered the intellectual property portfolio of this firm.