Posts Tagged: "walmart"

While online giant Amazon has been in the news recently for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to ease restrictions for its planned drone-based delivery services, a battle is raging behind the scenes for the future of unmanned delivery vehicles. Walmart is combating the narrative of online retailers overtaking brick-and-mortar businesses by revamping its image and services. Besides using a hybrid of online shopping and manual pick-up at the store, the company is very interested in delivering its products to the customer directly—not only through traditional means, but with unmanned drone delivery couriers.

At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet this morning, titled Counterfeits and Cluttering: Emerging Threats to the Integrity of the Trademark System and the Impact on American Consumers and Businesses, members of Congress expressed concern over the steep rise in trademark applications by Chinese filers, many of which have been found to be fraudulent. The problem has been exacerbated by poor enforcement on the part of platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart; by the limited authority of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to revoke registrations once issued; and by incentives offered by the Chinese government in the form of subsidies to Chinese applicants for U.S. trademarks, said panelists.

One of the more dramatic moments in my $20 million dollar patent brawl occurred in the pivotal preliminary injunction hearing at the courthouse in downtown Tyler, Texas. I learned that Walmart was coming to monitor the proceedings. I think they were curious to meet the crazy inventor who dared to sue the largest retailer on the planet. The proposal on the table was that I dismiss the suit with prejudice (i.e., drop the suit and waive all my rights) or else Walmart would never buy another product from my exclusive licensee, Zuru—no balloons, no robotic fish, no dart guns. Distraught, I hid in a side room and didn’t show for the meeting where my lawyers had advised me to capitulate. Curiosity heightened; the Walmart attorney unexpectedly suspended all demands and invited me to sit down and explain my point of view. I pointed to the infringing spiral-faced Battle Balloons and told her they were selling my invention without permission, thereby harming me and my family. The Walmart attorney was flummoxed and suggested that I didn’t understand how the patent system worked and was overreaching. Here I was claiming to have invented this apparatus that looked different than mine. It had a spiral face and mine was flat. This is the problem with our patent system; it is run by people who don’t understand invention. Think about it, we have to use this bizarre legal document not only to describe our discovery but to describe the boundaries of it. For inventors, there are no boundaries—why would we stop applying and extending our discoveries? We do our best to describe it, but in the end, non-inventors write and interpret the laws that determine our rights.

Apple made headlines with its recent decision to close its stores in Frisco and my home town of Plano, Texas. The rumor is that Apple was afraid of the dreaded “patent troll.” However, Apple is not afraid of patent trolls. They are afraid of inventors. Whenever you hear the term patent troll, think of inventors. Inventors like my friend Bob Short, who solved an important technical problem in 1998 with his invention—a protocol that encrypts real-time audio and video transmissions. Apple wanted his technology for their FaceTime app, so they took it. Bob’s company, VirnetX, has spent six years trying to stop them and make them pay. Meanwhile Apple, Google, and other tech titans have spread propaganda and paid lawyers, academics, lobbyists, and politicians to destroy the U.S. patent system.

It’s not just counterfeits of gadgets or luxury fashion items available for sale on Amazon, lining the already deep pockets of Bezos. As we’ve noted in other reports, there are plenty of counterfeit items that mimic badges and official documents from law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Secret Service. But a recent letter sent by the Federal Communications Commission in late May of this year indicates that Amazon is also allowing the sale of set-top boxes which falsely use FCC logos in the branding, indicating that the device is permitted by FCC regulation when in fact it is not.

If serial provisional patent applications seems like a good strategy for Wal-Mart, which is one of the largest corporations in the world, and if serial provisional patent applications is recommended by the likes of Gaudry and Franklin at a well respect law firm like Kilpatrick Townsend, why wouldn’t serial provisional patent applications be an appropriate strategy for inventors, small businesses and start-ups working with a shoestring budget?

According to the patent application filed by Walmart, the system will utilize a series of docking stations, sensors, motors and cameras to offer consumers the ability to “hail” a shopping cart using an app on their smartphones, much like they would a taxi or Uber and that upon completion of use, the system will somehow be able to recognize abandoned carts within the store or in the parking lot and will be able to manually return itself to a docking station for use by another consumer.

In late 2014, Nike Converse Inc. launched an aggressive attack in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn against companies including Walmart, Under Armour and Ralph Lauren for infringing upon Converse’s signature Chuck Taylor shoe. Nike Converse sued a total of 31 companies for copying the rubber “bumper” running around the front, a “toe cap” on the top of the shoe above the bumper, and lines or stripes running around the sides of the classic kick. Many of us have either owned or seen the Chuck Taylor and can identify these unique traits.

As bleak as the picture looked for brick-and-mortar retail, it was much brighter for e-commerce and online retail, which saw their best day ever. According to global analytics firm comScore, 2015’s Cyber Monday saw $2.28 billion in online spending from desktop computer users, the heaviest day of online spending ever recorded and an increase of 12 percent over last year’s Cyber Monday results. When including sales from mobile device consumers, Cyber Monday sales surpassed $3.1 billion.

A digital receipt innovation designed to help Walmart employees conduct better in-store audits after customer checkouts to reduce theft is discussed within U.S. Patent No. 9165276, titled Locating and Organizing Digital Receipt Data for Use in In-Store Audits. It claims a method for reordering digital receipt data for use in an in-store audit involving receiving digital receipt data for a sales transaction conducted at a point-of-sale (POS) system in a store location, generating a digital receipt for the sales transaction including an entry for each purchased item, receiving an indication that the sales transaction will be audited in a store location, referring to audit rules defining an audit priority for each purchased item, reordering the receipt entries of the digital receipt based on the defined audit priority and sending the reordered receipt entries to an auditor mobile device in the store location. This invention intends to improve upon the marginal success in stopping store theft achieved by in-store auditors by presenting auditors with a priority list of which items are most important to audit.

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.

A dim view of software patents does not make Mark Cuban unique, but his latest foray into the patent debate does provide interesting insights into his arbitrary views on innovation. Like your technophobic grandfather, Cuban seems to believe that innovators are entitled to patent rights as long as the innovations are tangible. When those innovations manifest themselves in the form of intangible software the underlying innovation is for some reason no longer entitled to patent protection. Surely Cuban has to realize that this self balancing scooter could accomplish the same exact functionality if the control logic were software based, right?

With so much brash bluster, it was inevitable that Cuban would argue himself into a corner eventually. It finally looks like Cuban’s shoot from the mouth first approach is exposing him as something of a patent hypocrite. More specifically, Mark Cuban recently made threatening comments toward Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), threatening the retail giant with a patent infringement lawsuit of his own. It would seem that Cuban, like so many others who so loudly want patent reform, have an exceptionally dim view of your patents, but his patents are rock solid and deserve to be respected. Such hypocrisy is not new in the patent reform debate, but it is extremely telling.