Posts Tagged: "patent"

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will host its next Software Partnership Meeting on Tuesday, July 22, 2014, at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, from 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm.

The value of such innovation is best measured through the improved health outcomes for patients. In this context, a few examples from the developing world are even more illustrative. Given that those who most vehemently oppose protection for incremental innovations frequently cite the need for treatments for neglected diseases and maladies of the developing world, it is important to note that many of the treatments that do exist for the world’s most vulnerable populations are themselves incremental innovations. Numerous incremental innovations have resulted in improvements that have specific application to neglected diseases and the maladies of the developing world.

Recently I visited a Congressional office with a friend who led technology transfer at a public institution located in a mid-level city not normally associated with innovation. By skillfully using the authorities of Bayh-Dole and the patent system combined with good business judgment the program was very successful in start up formation and licensing, making it a driver of the regional economy. The Congressional staff were effusive in their praise of the results, which are well known in the state, vowing to do everything they could to support continued success. However, just before the meeting my friend confided that their new leadership made it clear that they did not consider technology transfer a profession requiring special skills and experience. The staff that labored so long and hard building the program got the hint and was leaving. Luckily their achievement is recognized by other institutions that are happy to snap them up. Unfortunately, the economy of the area they left behind will pay a high price for this boneheaded mistake.

Evidence about man’s attempts to provide some sort of cooling technology to beat the heat in warmer climates extends back almost 2,000 years. Early air conditioning systems from 2nd century China, for example, involved a manually-powered rotary fan designed to force air through a room. In 3rd century Rome, a system was developed for the importing of ice from the mountain regions via donkey train to cool the garden of Emperor Elagabalus… Another attempt at improving air conditioning technology arose in response to one of the sadder days in the history of the United States. On July 2nd, 1881, U.S. President James Garfield was shot by an assassin and passed away more than two months later, on September 19th of that year. In order to provide comfort to the commander in chief during his final weeks, engineers from the U.S. Navy constructed a cooling unit that blows hot air over a water-soaked cloth, forcing cool air to travel underneath the hot air.

On Thursday, june 19, 2014, the United States Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Thomas the Supreme Court Court held that because the claims are drawn to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, they are not eligible for a patent under Section 101. In what can only be described as an intellectually bankrupt opinion, the Supreme Court never once used the word “software” in its decision.

The Samsung Group is one of the most active patent-seeking organizations in the world, and it has added hundreds of patents to its intellectual property portfolio in the past few weeks alone. A couple of patents we discuss today focus on the corporation’s home appliance offerings, including one for a removable cutlery basket within a dishwasher which allows for easier removal of knives, forks and more. Another patent protects a method for allowing a user to easily select the proper format for 3D image display corresponding to their stereoscopic glasses. We were also intrigued by a recently issued patent that improves upon Samsung’s previous activities in the field of robotics, which relates to a method of generating human-like motion in a humanoid robot.

Essentially, innovation patents are 8 year short form patents available in Australia as an alternative, or in parallel with standard, or utility, patents. An innovation patent can be filed on an obvious invention, is hard to invalidate and, when filed as a divisional from a standard patent application, can be infringed from a date before the standard patent application was published.

As always, we start with a close look at one featured patent application, and we were intrigued by one technology designed to encourage group completion of fitness activities. This lifestyle companion system can also suggest fitness activities to users based on personal interviews conducted by the system. Other inventions directed at personalized services, including a method of creating avatars reflecting a user’s current emotional state, are also described in a series of patent applications discussed in today’s column. Apple’s patent filing activities always result in a great deal of patent grants from the USPTO, and recently the company was issued many patents protecting improvements to various software and device hardware products. Improvements to media editing programs for recording voice-overs, a smarter progress bar for conveying project completion information and a processing system for determining that a person’s shoes have become worn out and should be replaced are also protected by recently issued patents.

Other patent applications describe some fairly unique innovations which stirred our imaginations, including an electronic blackboard as well as a method of simulating boomerang flight paths through a mobile device. Hon Hai Precision is constantly patenting new technologies and our search of patents recently issued to this corporation from the USPTO rendered up a number of patents protecting some useful improvements to various electronics systems. A couple of patents are directed at components for dissipating heat from electronic devices. Container data centers, which house servers and other advanced computing electronics, are also the focus of a couple of issued patents, one of which focuses on heat dissipation while the other is directed at a system for reducing corrosion near areas with high atmospheric salinity.

The way that many plaintiffs argue damages has always amazed me, and this shift to reasonable royalties at least somewhat vindicates my long held position. The law on lost profits makes it extremely difficult for a patentee to prevail, although historically lost profits has been where big awards have come. Still, reasonable royalties are guaranteed as a minimum for a victorious plaintiff. I have long believed that spending more time making a compelling reasonable royalty case and painstakingly establishing the reason a reasonable, yet high royalty would pay dividends. I suspect this is particularly true in a world where there are over 7 billion people and counting, and by some estimates the number of mobile phones is predicted to surpass the number of people on the planet by the end of 2014. There were over 1 billion smartphones purchased in 2013. The sheer numbers of devices that can infringe are staggering.

In a decision barely reaching 11 pages, a unanimous Supreme Court in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies reversed and remanded the Federal Circuit’s per curiam majority ruling in Akamai Technologies and McKesson Technologies. That the Supreme Court overturned the Federal Circuit’s per curiam majority ruling is not a surprise. But what is truly shocking are the factually inaccurate statements, as well as the problematical reasoning that appears in Justice Alito’s opinion for this unanimous Supreme Court. With all due respect, Alito’s opinion is an abysmal ”comedy of errors.”

Canada is not the first country that comes to mind as a threat to U.S. trade. After all, Canada is our largest goods trading partner, with $632 billion in total goods traded bilaterally during 2013. . . Over the last decade U.S. pharmaceutical companies have faced trade challenges in the form of a narrow interpretation of patent eligibility in Canada. Canada’s patent utility provisions are a serious threat to U.S. innovative industries, and therefore are legitimately being raised in NAFTA’s dispute settlement system.

Knowing when to give up on a patent application is one of the most critical questions facing for any patent applicant… When faced with the decision regarding whether to file an RCE or file an Appeal, the desire to not give up and to hopefully obtain a patent can easily lead any application to elect to the file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE). This is true for the cost reasons already stated, but also because filing an RCE you will undoubtedly get treatment much faster than going on the appeal track, and there is always hope that additional time working with the patent examiner will yield patentable claims. Of course, sometimes filing that next RCE is going almost certainly accomplish nothing.