Posts Tagged: "patent"

Trials were held in 128 patent cases in 2013, including 52 bench trials and 63 jury trials. Thirteen cases involved both bench and jury trials. Over half of all trials were held in the District of Delaware (25), the Eastern District of Texas (25) or the Southern District of New York (17). Cases went to trial fastest in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; its 255-day median time to trial was approximately 12 times faster than the 2,423 days it took a case to get to trial in the Western District of New York, the slowest district.

FTC says that it considered and implemented many of these suggestions it did receive in order to sharpen the focus of the study and reduce its likely burden on study respondents. Frankly, I see little evidence that the burden on the responding PAEs has been reduced to anything that approximates a reasonable level. The information that the FTC will seek from 25 different PAEs is extraordinarily detailed and it will be onerous to produce, if it can even be produced… The questions seek detailed information about each patent owned by the PAE. In one case a seemingly simple question asks the PAE to for every patent they own identify the patent’s “priority date,” which is a term not defined in the Notice. Asking this question in and of itself presents an objectionable burden in my opinion.

By claiming mutual and unilateral mistake, DuPont had placed the truthfulness of its subjective belief concerning its stacking rights at issue… The problem for DuPont was that the internal e-mails showed that in-house attorneys advised DuPont executives that the company did not have the right to commercialize the stacked product “[b]ecause of the field of use limitation” contained within the Licensing agreement. Upon learning that DuPont had been advised that they had no right to stack, Monsanto moved for sanctions, asking the district court to rule that DuPont had misrepresented its subjective belief concerning stacking rights and had perpetrated a fraud on the court.

Those who claim that patents harm innovation and stifle innovation see a patent at an insurmountable hurdle, or perhaps a brick wall. There is no way around the obstacle. The only option is to infringe or simply not offer the product or service, but to them that is not an option because if they can’t sell the product that they want to sell then that has to mean that innovation is being harmed. I have always found it odd how true inventors so frequently don’t think what they have come up with is unique enough to pursue a patent, but copycats who offer little or nothing unique conclude that their product represents innovation and it would be an afront to humanity if they are not able to sell it without having to pay a licensing fee to the innovator.

Medical technologies are a major focus for many of the Companies We Follow, and our featured application today discuss one novel Hitachi innovation designed to improve patient care. This innovation provides a tile-based interface for providing biological information and medical advice to either patients or doctors, respectively. Improvements to heavy industry vehicle designs as well as an intriguing system of software analysis for farmland planning. Our coverage of Hitachi’s recently patented technologies brought us a closer look at more interesting inventions in more heavy machinery, especially construction vehicles, as well as a useful automotive system of obstacle detection to reduce the risk of nighttime pedestrian accidents. Other patents we cover include a downwind type of wind turbine and a mobile X-ray device similar to those we’ve seen developed by other corporations.

Fuel cell technologies have become a bigger focus in our world as we seek to get away from fossil fuel emissions, and today’s featured patent application looks to take a big step in that direction. This technology improves the strength of seals within fuel cells, improving the efficient use of fuel gases for energy generation. Other intriguing patent applications we discuss today involve some novel medical device technologies as well as improved lighting arrays for light-emitting diodes and electroluminescence systems. Panasonic is a heavyweight in the world of patent protections, and it has recently been issued dozens of patents protecting its electronic products. One patent we discuss relates to methods of improving music playback in electronic devices when an incoming phone call is registered. Another interesting patent relates to portable beds in medical facilities which can easily transport patients from room to room. We also noticed a couple of patents again related to various lighting technologies developed by this corporation.

Earlier today the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Dolly the cloned sheep, and any other genetic clones, are patent ineligible in the United States because the “claimed clones are exact genetic copies of patent ineligible subject matter.” — The holy grail of personalized medicine, at least with respect to organ transplantation, is to create an organ that is identical to what occurs in nature. Now we know that if that is accomplished the resulting organ will not be patentable. That being the case, why is anyone going to spend the billions, or possibly trillions, of dollars it will require to make this branch or personalized medicine a reality? Without possibility of exclusive rights research will dry up.

We begin today’s column with a detailed look at our featured patent application, an improved assembly for a horizontal multi-joint robot. This robotic technology, developed for various repetitive job applications, has an electric cable duct of a smaller size that reduces vibrations. We also discuss a couple of other patent applications describing robotics, as well as a couple of other patent applications seeking to protect printing inventions. We’ve also collected what we found to be Epson’s most intriguing patents, which truly determine the value of Epson’s intellectual property development. This company has also recently received a number of U.S. patents protecting printing technologies; today, we look at patents protecting a white ink solution and a thermal printer. Other issued patents of note feature a couple of color correction technologies in imaging devices as well as one patent protecting an improved magnetocardiogram (MCG) monitor for medical applications.

The featured patent application focuses on mapping technology, an area of innovation that we’ve seen from many of the electronic device and software manufacturers we cover. This system enables more effective road map generation from a plurality of sources of GPS data, including taxis and other vehicles on the road which are already equipped with location data sensors and devices. We also discuss a couple of patent applications which would protect printing technologies, as well as a novel system of electronic circuitry to prevent unauthorized access of cash drawers. Hewlett-Packard has a fairly strong portfolio of intellectual properties, and the USPTO has recently added dozens of patents to this company’s holdings in recent weeks. We take an in-depth look at a trio of patents related to printing technologies, including one patent for electronic storage of warranty data for printer components which HP had been trying to patent for more than a decade. We also explore a couple of patents protecting novel imaging systems, including one method for more effective capturing of lightning strike images.

Certain things are obvious. It was obvious in the oral arguments that it was a challenge for both the Supreme Court judges and the lawyers to distinguish between abstract ideas, ideas, computer programs, technological innovations, patentable subject matter, and inventions. This confusion also showed up in the seven different written opinions of the judges in the Appeals Court review of this same case… Mr. Perry was wrong about word processing and e-mail. Providing a “technical solution to a then unmet problem” and providing a “technological advance” often does not constitute making an invention. That’s because with computers you can often make a technical advance that is obvious.

I think that the Supreme Court decision will be enough to prevent the so-called “patent reform” from gaining any traction in the Senate. The cynical view is that there is so much lobbying money flowing why would Congress want to turn that spigot off when it could easily flow into the next Congressional term? Further, there has been a growing and steady effort by those opposed to the pending patent legislation. Opponents were already making their case heard as the Senate continued to time after time postpone dissemination of the Manager’s Amendment, signaling the consensus that some Senators desperately wanted to reach was illusive, if not impossible. Now with the Supreme Court decisions in these two cases those on the Hill who were already skeptical have more than enough ammunition to slam on the brakes, at least for now, to see what the ultimate ramifications of the decisions will be on the reality of patent litigation.

This patent application was filed by Fujitsu with the USPTO in July 2013, and claims the benefit of priority of a prior Japanese Patent Application filed on Oct. 26, 2012. The application seeks to protect new methods of detecting illegal connections with a network monitoring apparatus, which is capable of determining that a reverse connection is unauthorized. Although this system seems as though it can only protect a computer network once the malware has been noticed, after it has been executed, the system would be able to effectively limit the transmission of private material and identify untrustworthy data communications. To detect a reverse connection, this system analyzes the behavior of information packets sent between information collection apparati which are communicating with each other.

Canon has been involved with developing X-ray technologies in the recent past, as we’ve profiled in our past coverage of this company’s intellectual property portfolio. Previous improvements to X-ray imaging devices that we profiled included improvements to durability, like better resilience to shocks from physical impacts as well as devices with a better capacity for withstanding heat from electrical energy generation. This patent application was filed by Canon with the USPTO in October 2013 to protect a mobile apparatus capable of performing X-ray imaging techniques on a patient. The apparatus is comprised of an X-ray tube contained within an arm that is supported over a cart through the use of a vertical pillar. The bottom portion of the mobile cart includes a wheel and caster system for moving the imaging device from room to room. To provide power for the X-ray device, the cart also includes a battery device on the cart that energizes the X-ray tube through the use of an alternating high-voltage cable.