Posts Tagged: "technology"

A Manhattan federal jury recently ordered Nintendo Co. Ltd. to pay Tomita Technologies International, Inc. (“Tomita”) over $30 million in damages in a patent infringement case that concerned certain 3D technologies. Tomita, which originally filed the claim against Nintendo back in June of 2011, claimed that Nintendo’s 3DS hand-held video game system (which launched in March of 2011) infringed on Tomita’s patent called “Stereoscopic image picking up and display system based upon optical axes cross-point information” (also known as the ‘664 patent), which is technology that shows 3D images that can be viewed without the use of special 3D glasses. Nintendo has made it clear that it is confident that the verdict will be set aside and that it will not impact its continued sales of that gaming system or any of its other systems, software and accessories.

Individual inventors and corporate IP owners are used to dealing with accountants, lawyers and investment advisors – all professionals who are governed by state and/or federal professional regulations, and/or national association guidelines. Well, the question I pose is: What professional regulations govern the qualifications and conduct of all these IP middlemen? The short answer to the above question is “none!” After all, there is no IP brokerage or IP middlemen governing body.

The US Patent and Trademark Office recently awarded over 200 new claims to user interface designer Eric Gould Bear, co-founder of MONKEYmedia. The two most recently issued patents that have 72 claims between them fall under MONKEYmedia’s “Relativity Controller” family of patents, and the Patent Office has stated that an additional 153 claims spread across three pending patent applications in the same family will issue soon. MONKEYmedia is currently suing both Apple and various Hollywood Studios for patent infringement.

I spend a lot of time every day and my staff also spends time every day looking through press releases, looking for stories. And I can’t tell you how many times I have come across something that I knew was good but I couldn’t get any information on. I mean literally no information other than the self-congratulating, back slapping stuff that you see in two or three paragraphs in a press release. So that is one of the things I want to talk to you about today. How do you get your story to those journalists and reporters out there who care? Continually there are calls from detractors who want to change the technology transfer system regardless of how wildly successful it has been.

The FDA decided not to pursue a re-hearing before a federal appeals court that recently ruled the federal government could not prosecute a sales rep who promoted off-label uses of a medicine because his speech was not false and misleading. Meanwhile, Congress delayed Medicare price restraints on a group of medications that will benefit Amgen while costing taxpayers up to $500 million over two years. Still further, after a federal court judge decided that the Bristol-Myers patent on the Baraclude hepatitis B treatment was invalid, some analysts are saying the ruling may prompt greater scrutiny of so-called composition of matter patents.

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office only released 16 published patent applications from Apple this week, which is a fair amount less than usual. Many of the applications listed here focus on improvements to media processing and storage, an area of computer systems which has long been a focus for Apple. Other patent applications include improvements to Mandarin Chinese language translations and methods of grading display screens for light leakage.

The pending litigation between Grant Street Group and Realauction.com finally appears to be headed for trial. A trial date for Grant Street Group v. Realauction.com, LLC has been set for June 3, 2013, with jury selection commencing a few days prior on May 29, 2013. Grant Street Group is currently the world’s largest Internet auctioneer and according to its website was founded in 1997 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Realauction while a bit smaller, was founded in 2004 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This lawsuit has been pending since 2009.

Bowman v Monsanto involves a farmer who figured out how to get Monsanto’s patented seeds cheaper from a grain elevator than from the company. I won’t attempt to delve into the intricacies of the litigation or the doctrine of patent exhaustion, but do want to consider a larger point. What happens if our innovators lose confidence in the patent system? Some apparently believe this is a desirable outcome