Posts Tagged: "Software"

The Court also affirmed that the this means-plus-function term was indefinite. In the case of computer-implemented functions, the specification must disclose an algorithm for performing the claimed function. The patents-in-suit did not disclose an operative algorithm for the claimed “symbol generator.” A patentee cannot claim a means for performing a specific function and then disclose a “general purpose computer” as the structure performing that function. The specification must disclose an algorithm in hardware or software for performing the stated function.

What makes the Enfish case particularly interesting is that the court found that the software patent at issue was not even an abstract idea. As such, the inquiry as to patent eligibility did not proceed beyond the abstract idea analysis step. Basically the Enfish court used the wording in Alice to refute post-Alice perceptions that all improvements in computer related technology and/or software inventions are inherently abstract and therefore “are only properly analyzed at the second step of the Alice analysis.” Enfish at 11. This interpretation represents what could be a meaningful shift in the interpretation of software patent validity.

In the field of Intellectual Property (IP) attorneys have options when counseling clients on how to protect their IP. However, these options remain subject to constant forces of change. For example, IPWatchdog readers will remember the latest version of the PATENT Act that the U.S. Senate worked on for months in 2015, which proponents say would strengthen enforceability of U.S. patents, but not as much as some would prefer. Then in 2016, the IP landscape changed again with the passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DSTA) that President Barack Obama later signed into law, which federalizes civil actions in trade secret disputes.

the Courts have found it difficult to use the Mayo two-part test in the examination of a patent’s validity thus creating great uncertainty… One should not confuse the uncertainty of the complex U.S. patent system with the clarity of the Alice decision. There is no reason to believe any new legislation will provide any improvement in deciding what should, and what should not, be patentable.

Source Code Review is the most powerful tool in a litigator’s war chest in patent and trade secrets cases. An important consequence of the judicial climate shifting farther away from business methods and closer to technically complex IP is that receiving parties now face a higher burden of proof and subsequently higher legal costs. Not only are receiving parties now required to be more diligent prior to a case filing but they also end up spending extra thousands of dollars reviewing millions of lines of code to successfully formulating their infringement arguments. A significant cost and exposure risk can be avoided simply by a diligent assessment on both sides as to what source code needs to be produced to the receiving party.

2016 has gotten off to a strong start for the company as the patent portfolio analysis tools at Innography are showing us that IBM has already earned 1,927 U.S. patents through the first three months of this year. Not surprisingly, much of IBM’s patent activities have been focused on computing devices, data sets, computing environment, storage devices and data structures. Natural language technologies are another area where IBM has pursued recent innovative advances. Likewise, we note a trio of patents recently issued to IBM in automotive and related sectors, starting with the crash damage mitigation technology, technologies for communicating information between vehicles, and enhanced methods of traffic routing involving stoplight timing.

Several questions every patent attorney should be asking before responding to an Alice rejection are: (1) How many Alice rejections has the examiner issued? (2) What does he or she consider to be the sticking points of the decision? (3) How many applications that received an Alice rejection were eventually allowed? Once an attorney has the answers to these questions in hand, the path to success in responding to an Alice rejection is considerably clearer.

While the history of Internet development involves many names and was not reliant on a single discovery, it is also true that certain innovations have done more to enable better networks for all. It is with that idea in mind that we’d like to profile the achievements made by Radia Perlman, the inventor of spanning tree protocol (STP) and a 2016 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Thanks to spanning tree protocol, switched network environments are capable of connecting bridges and switches with multiple paths for data transmission redundancies without those redundancies causing a network loop, which can seriously degrade network service. Without STP, a single frame looping on an Ethernet network would create out of control data traffic that would prevent communications of all other data. February 4th marks the 24th anniversary of the issue of the U.S. patent protecting spanning tree protocol.

The first mover storyline also provides a false narrative because it is flat wrong from the customer perspective as well. Simply stated, the first mover myth ignores the very real concerns facing customers in the marketplace for expensive enterprise solutions. An innovative solution provider with a complicated enterprise software product must show an established and growing customer base or big money behind them, or more likely both, in order to pass the first step of a sales process, which itself can take a year or more. Then there may be large upfront costs until the system is integrated and running before it becomes profitable. This all means an enterprise software startup must have substantial funding if they are to have any chance to succeed. This, of course, requires strong patent rights.

IBM once again has topped the list of annual U.S. patent recipients, receiving 7,355 patents in 2015. This is the 23rd consecutive year IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other entity in the world. More than 8,500 IBMers residing in 50 states and territories and 46 countries are responsible for IBM’s 2015 patent tally. IBM inventors who reside outside the U.S. contributed to more than 36 percent of the company’s 2015 patents.

Over the last decade, there has been a movement among the software developer community to employ some form of “agile development” rather than the traditional software development methodology. The belief is that these agile methodologies lead to higher quality software and faster development cycles. More recently, the implementation of agile software development has transitioned not only from small startups to large companies, but also from enterprises developing noncritical, consumer apps to those developing software for medical, aviation, military, and financial systems, where the presence of errors pose high human or economic risk. With these transitions, intellectual property (IP) law practitioners must adopt their traditional lawyering approaches to capturing and securing IP (especially patent) rights. A failure to recognize and adapt to the agile software development environment will result in a failure of IP law practitioners’ essential job function—helping to create or sustain client profitability and enable long-term business growth.

A computer is a machine, yet there is an ongoing trend to “anthropomorphize” computers. That is: functions that are performed by humans are said to be able to be performed by computers. Anyone who has done any serious programming knows that is not how it works. Let me explain. Steps that humans can do almost mindlessly, for instance changing paragraph numbers in a text, may be excruciatingly difficult as programming steps. That is because computers are machines that process signals that follow very strict and inflexible routines that have no concept of what the signals mean.

U.S. Patent No. 9180882, which is titled Avoiding Blind Spots of Other Vehicles, covers a method for maneuvering a vehicle protected here involves receiving sensor data collected along a roadway, detecting objects in the roadway from the data, identifying a set of objects relevant for blind spot detection, determining a blind spot area defining a lane space adjacent to a particular identified object and maneuvering a vehicle if it’s predicted that future locations of the vehicle would be within the determined blind spot area for any object. This technology is intended to both keep drivers safe on the road as well as improving the comfort of those drivers who might not want an autonomous or semi-autonomous car driving in their blind spot.

”There should be no serious question that computer-implemented inventions such as software constitute patent-eligible subject matter under § 101,” Paul Clement wrote in a brief filed on behalf of IBM to the Supreme Court in 2014. Ultimately, the IBM brief would argue that the abstract idea doctrine is unworkable, which it is. Sadly, nearly 18 months after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Alice v. CLS Bank we are no closer to having a working understanding about when and under what circumstances software is patent eligible.

CUBAN: I have invested in more than 150 companies and never has having or not having a patent impacted the final decision. Small businesses can and do become great without patents. The problem for little guys with patents is that no patent lives in a vacuum. Particularly with software and technology. There is always a work around and you can always find a patent that enables the big guy to sue the little guy. So with just few exceptions the current system doesn’t protect anyone.