Posts Tagged: "patents"

The appointment of USPTO Director Kathi Vidal in April 2022 and her introduction of interim guidance in June 2022 has spurred changes at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that may result in an increase in instituted inter partes reviews (IPRs) due to a dramatic decline in discretionary denials. Under the reign of former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu, the number of discretionary denials of IPR petitions had steadily increased over the last five years, in part due to the application of the PTAB’s 2020 precedential decision in Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc.

Intel Corp. has asked the United States District Court for the District of Delaware to throw out a $4.1 billion patent lawsuit from VLSI Technology in a filing unsealed Friday, December 9. Intel claimed that VLSI “has repeatedly failed to disclose its full ownership as required,” and the company’s “opaque ownership structure is an entrenched feature of hedge fund-driven patent litigation.” In its filing, Intel argued that VLSI has failed to comply with U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly’s standing order for the company to identify “every individual and corporation with a direct or indirect interest.”

he United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sent out a reminder today to those interested in speaking at an upcoming Public Listening Session on collaboration efforts between the USPTO and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they must sign up to participate by January 5, 2023. The listening session will be held on January 19, 2023. Speakers must attend in person. Those who just wish to listen, virtually or in person, must register for the event by January 17, 2023. The Federal Register Notice announcing the listening session and request for comments on the subject was published on November 7, 2022 and relates to a joint July 2022 announcement of the USPTO and FDA that the Office plans to execute a number of initiatives aimed at lowering drug prices, as directed in July 2021 by President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.”

During an IPWatchdog-hosted webinar held today, panelists reflected on the impact that U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal has had on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) so far and called her handling of the VLSI v. OpenSky case a “giant missed opportunity” to create a roadmap for how the Office will handle bad faith behavior.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee gears up for an Executive Business Meeting Thursday where members will in part consider S.2774, the Pride in Patent Ownership Act, co-sponsored by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a number of patent advocacy organizations have sent a joint letter to the committee asking it to oppose the bill. The Pride in Patent Ownership Act (PPOA) is seemingly intended to ensure that the public has access to information about the true owner of a patent. But critics of the bill have noted that it focuses on ownership of patents, and does not seek to provide true transparency by identifying those funding and benefiting from Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) challenges, for instance. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) last year questioned the bill’s approach, which  would entail penalizing patent owners who fail to record accurate ownership information within 90 days after the issuance date.

At the very end of the movie “The Current War,” Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor who played Thomas Edison, bumps into Michael Shannon, the actor who played George Westinghouse. The two had battled for years over implementations of their respective electric current systems into society, with Westinghouse winning in the end. This particular meeting probably never took place, but the conversation in the movie was rather interesting. 

The latest mainstream version of the ubiquitous Wi-Fi standard, known as IEEE 802.11ax or “Wi-Fi 6,” offers substantial technological improvements over traditional Wi-Fi, including Wi-Fi 6’s immediate predecessor—Wi-Fi 5 (IEEE 802.11ac). In particular, Wi-Fi 6 offers faster performance, lower power consumption, and better battery life, all while enabling reduced network congestion and latency. These substantial improvements made over even the immediate predecessor in Wi-Fi technology are made possible by several key technological advances. Wi-Fi 6 has enjoyed good timing as well—its benefits are valuable and necessary improvements as consumers and enterprises increasingly look for high-speed connectivity across a wide and ever broadening array of devices and uses, including the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), and autonomous vehicles.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential opinion affirming a district court order that struck parts of an infringement expert report and also granted summary judgment of non-infringement to Valve Corporation. The CAFC held that it is proper to strike expert testimony that did not rely on the agreed upon claim construction adopted by the district court. Treehouse Avatar, LLC owns U.S. Patent 8,180,858, which relates to a method of presenting data based on choices made by users with respect to characters in a network site, such as choosing clothing and hairstyles for the characters. The case turned on the meaning of “character-enabled (CE) network sites” (“CE limitation”) in the claims, which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) had construed in an earlier inter partes review (IPR) proceeding to mean “a network location, other than a user device, operating under control of a site program to present a character, object, or scene to a user interface.”

Following the denial of Juno Therapeutics’ petition to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month, Juno last week petitioned the High Court for rehearing, arguing that the grant of certiorari in Amgen v. Sanofi warrants reconsideration. Juno explained that the issues presented in the Amgen case “are tightly related, and the outcome in Amgen is likely to at least affect, if not be outcome-determinative of, this case.” Juno is asking that the Court grant the petition for rehearing, vacate the denial of certiorari, and hold the case pending the outcome in Amgen.

Worldwide IP filings increased by 3.6% in 2021, according to a report published November 21 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The increase came during a turbulent time for the world economy, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a global economic downturn. The biggest increase in patent filings was in Asia, where 67.6% of worldwide patent applications were filed. The United States saw a 1.2% decrease in filings and a 1% increase in trademark filings. Trademark applications grew at a much faster rate than patent applications, with a 5.5% in trademark filing activity. Industrial design filing activity also rose by 9.2% with the largest uptick again in Asia. China saw high rates of growth and is a global leader in sheer numbers across all indicators.

On November 17, patent owner VLSI Technology and petitioner OpenSky Industries each filed briefs at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in response to Director Kathi Vidal’s order for OpenSky to show cause as to why it should not be required to pay attorney’s fees to compensate for its abuse of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). While VLSI argues that OpenSky should be ordered to compensate all attorney’s fees and costs incurred from each IPR petition encouraged by OpenSky’s own petition filing activities, OpenSky argues that Director Vidal’s order to show cause fails to identify any compensable harm stemming from OpenSky’s IPR conduct.

Do you want a simple way to search for specific patents and to get PDF copies of those patents? And do you want those PDF files to come straight from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), so you can be confident that they contain any Certificates of Correction? Our first article in a series about the USPTO’s Public Patent Search (PPS) web page shows you how. PPS launched on December 1, 2021. It’s critical to get to know PPS now—especially if you want to get access to PDF copies of patents, because the USPTO removed the only other remaining method to get PDFs from their site just last month. Like any new technology, it can take some getting used to—but once you get the hang of it, it can make your life much easier. This short how-to article explains the essentials of using PPS to find and download specific patents and how to deal with the unique idiosyncrasies of PPS’s text versions of patents.

It was a light week for patent filings, with 18 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and 38 district court complaints; last week saw the first Fintiv denials in months in a tranche of cases very close to trial; this week there were five more discretionary denials under Section 325(d), where the parties failed to point out any material error in earlier proceedings analyzing similar art under Advanced Bionics. And obviously, the third Fortress/VLSi trial resulting in another near-billion-dollar award splashed the headlines. The District of Delaware was busy uncovering the story behind IP Edge/Mavexar LLC and how they run and control their subsidiaries, and it’s even more interesting than I thought it was; though of course, it hasn’t stopped entities like those run by Jeffrey Gross from continuing to roll out filings. More below.

IPWatchdog held its Standards, Patents and Competition Masters ™ 2022 Program this week, November, 14-15, in Ashburn, Virginia, covering topics from how to define “fair reasonable and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) rates to litigating standard essential patents (SEPs) in South America and Europe. Almost all of the panels touched on how courts around the world are viewing the practices of implementers and patent holders in the SEP debate and how standoffs between implementers and patent owners in FRAND cases can be better resolved.