02.01.18
Patent Sharks Hope to Regain Control of the US Patent System With Iancu Appointment Likely Just 4 Days Away
Summary: The campaign to dethrone Michelle Lee and replace her with someone like Andrei Iancu is almost complete; the objective is to turn the USPTO (US patent office) into a trolls-friendly and PTAB-hostile place
THE USPTO has been headless since Michelle Lee got bullied out (like Ms. Brimelow at the EPO). Her colleague was thereafter the PTO Director (in the interim). He too got mobbed/bullied at times, but not to the same degree. The patent microcosm was eager to replace him with one of its own.
“The patent microcosm was eager to replace him with one of its own.”Here is a reminder of why the PTO does not need a person like Andrei Iancu but a technical person. Will they ‘get’ that? How about Drew Hirshfeld? Do not listen to Koch-funded ‘scholars’ like Adam Mossoff, who are still pushing for maximalism this week (“Here’s just one of many examples of how small biz & individuals need stable & effective #IP protections, contrary to the rhetoric that IP hurts new creators, startups & small biz.”) because their aim is to prop up the litigation ‘business’ and patent trolls. And speaking of which, Watchtroll followed IBM’s patent chief Manny Schecter (close to Watchtroll) in noting, based on this publication, that “Senate Schedules Andrei Iancu Confirmation Vote for February 5″; Schecter tweeted: “Says here that the full Senate will take up confirmation of Andrei Iancu as US Patent & Trademark Office Director on Monday, February 5 http://bit.ly/2l2VmjU” (“EXECUTIVE CALENDAR”).
These people would love to see a patent microcosm person like Iancu in charge of the PTO. They lobbied towards that.
And lobbying being noted, watch what Dennis Crouch wrote yesterday about Trump’s speech. Trump never even mentioned patents, but Dennis Crouch already ‘helps’ by ‘interpolating’ and filling the ‘blanks’, so to speak. For example: “Although, high drug prices are, in many cases, premised upon exclusive rights granted by patents, the Administration has – thus far – not offered any indication that it will be breaking (or bending) pharma patent rights.”
“These people would love to see a patent microcosm person like Iancu in charge of the PTO.”There are no “patent rights” because patents are not "rights" — a miconception just repeated again in “Litigation Conduct Evincing Lack of Respect for Patent Rights and Litigation Process Supports Attorney Fees Award” (“Respect for Patent Rights” is very lawyer/liar talk).
What these people generally hope for is a PTO Director who uses nonsensical terms like these. The last thing they want is a person like Lee, herself a former scientist with high qualifications.
A few hours ago (Thursday) Watchtroll was once again defending the Mohawk patent scam, quite frankly as usual. That scam relies on misconceptions such as patents being “property”. With anti-PTAB on their agenda, such overt misconceptions too are considered “OK”.
Mitchell Feller, partner with Gottlieb, Rackman & Reisman, wrote that “Native American tribes have the same types of sovereign immunity that states do. Absent a waiver, they too are immune from lawsuits asserting infringement of Federal patent, trademark, and copyright laws and subject to the same types of waiver considerations.”
“What these people generally hope for is a PTO Director who uses nonsensical terms like these. The last thing they want is a person like Lee, herself a former scientist with high qualifications.”But those patents have nothing to do with tribes. It’s a major scam. A Federal judge and several politicians have already called it that. “In September,” he continued, “2017, the large pharmaceutical company Allergan took steps to employ tribal immunity to protect its patents on the drug Restasis. Allergan assigned its patents to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. The tribe then licensed the patents back for $13.5M and more than that amount in yearly royalties. Immediately afterwards, the Tribe argued that an IPR challenging those patents could not proceed because of tribal immunity. The motion has not been decided.”
At the moment, as we pointed out earlier this week, this tribe is just being completely exploited by the patent microcosm as a vector for attacks on PTAB. For a large sum of money the tribe has basically disgraced its name/reputation.
What we have here isn’t US interests being served but the profits of few ultra-wealthy individuals being guarded so that they can deny access to medicine (e.g. generics).
“What the US needs is a technology-centric PTO; what it might soon get, however, is a legal ‘industry’-centric PTO, promising to further exacerbate things for the benefit of patent trolls (not technologists but litigators).”The notion that patent maximalism is somehow “great” for the US is a false one; it’s promoted by people who profit from litigation activity. Depending on what the highest court has to say (if anything) about design patents [1, 2], we may soon see more setbacks like this one for Apple. Apple uses patents against a Korean giant that now yields more chips than the US-based Intel (as per new reports). As sales of “iPhone” fall (many reports about this throughout this week) the patent case too seems to be falling apart. 2 days ago in Law.com:
Apple will soon return to court to continue its legal battle with Samsung over Samsung’s infringement of Apple’s iPhone design. The latest chapter of this saga concerns the proper methodology for calculating damages that Samsung must pay to Apple for infringing Apple’s design patents.
As background to this case, a jury trial in the Northern District Court of California back in 2012 resulted in a verdict ordering Samsung to pay Apple more than $1 billion for willfully infringing Apple’s design patents. The damage calculation was based upon 35 U.S.C. 289 of the Patent Act. Section 289 includes a special profit-disgorgement provision for design infringement damages requiring that “Whoever during the term of a patent for a design … sells or exposes for sale any article of manufacture to which such design or colorable imitation has been applied shall be liable to the owner to the extent of his total profit.”
What the US needs is a technology-centric PTO; what it might soon get, however, is a legal ‘industry’-centric PTO, promising to further exacerbate things for the benefit of patent trolls (not technologists but litigators). █
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