04.23.18
Posted in Asia, Patents at 11:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Related and recent: In Just a Few Years China Became the Eastern District of Texas
Summary: Misconceptions (or deliberate propaganda) about patent policy in the east poison the debate and derail a serious, facts-based discussion about it
TECHRIGHTS is generally focused on the EPO and USPTO, not only because they account for the lion’s share of capital but also because English is their official language and it’s close to us (we’re based in the UK, the servers are in the US, and many volunteers/community members are in the US).
“India generally recognises — as many patent examiners do as well — that patent quality is what matters and economic justification is needed for any patent.”We sometimes look at smaller patent offices and also look eastwards. Over the weekend we wrote about IP Australia in relation to Grant Shoebridge's article; he and the firm he works for must be paying to repost it in more sites, basically lobbying for expansion of patent scope because IP Australia sought to improve productivity by narrowing the scope of patents.
Further north there are three major patent offices, all part of IP5: Japan’s JPO, Korea’s KIPO and China’s SIPO (the “Five IP Offices” (IP5) are JPO/EPO/KIPO/SIPO/USPTO).
Benjamin Henrion has just (late on Monday) pointed out this paper titled “The Japanese Software Industry: What Went Wrong and What Can We Learn from It?”.
“Software patents as metric fails to take in account the majority of software companies that do not have patents,” Henrion correctly noted. I responded with:
Simplest way to rebut this BS ‘paper’…
Hypothesis: software patents good for software industry
Falsified by:
1) India banned software patents
2) China allows them (one of the few countries)
Which one is a software powerhouse?
We actually brought up this point less than one week ago. It needs to be repeated as much as possible because we continue to see lies repeated about China’s patent policy against India’s. They get it all backwards. Maybe it’s intentional and therefore disingenuous. Less than a day ago (Watchtroll’s Steve Brachmann on Monday and then IP Kat as well) patent maximalists carried on with their glorification of China [1, 2] in the context of so-called ‘IP’. They try to make China some kind of ‘role model’, never mind if it’s India that’s thriving in the software sector, owing in part to the ban on software patents in India. An Indian patent maximalism blog has just published this “Weekly Patent News” post. Under “Indian Patent Statistics” it says:
A total of 1003 patent applications have been published in the 16th issue of the patent journal marking a modest increase of about 13.07% in the total number of patent applications published. Out of the 1003 applications, 55 applications account for early publications while 948 applications account for ordinary publications or publications occurring after the 18 month period. A total of 231 applications have been granted this week as opposed 176 grants in the previous.
Notice the absolute numbers. Also remember that India is not in IP5. India generally recognises — as many patent examiners do as well — that patent quality is what matters and economic justification is needed for any patent. Just throwing millions of low-quality patents into a repository (like China does with SIPO) isn’t indicative of “success”; it’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s hinged on lies like “patents are innovation” and “innovation depends on patents” (coming around full circle). █
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Posted in America, IBM, Patents at 11:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A quick look at some patent trolls that made the news this Monday; we are still seeing a powerful response to such trolls, whose momentum is slipping owing to the good work of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)
IT is no secret that the USPTO bred a generation of patent trolls and the causes are no mystery. Decades of shoddy patents on algorithms lead to that.
“Between 1990 and 2000,” the patent trolls’ lobby* (IAM) wrote on Monday, “a sophisticated IP strategy boosted annual patent licensing royalties at IBM by 3,300%. Learn the importance of IP strategy at our webinar with @PatSnap this Monday, April 25.”
I responded with: “IBM — the company that lays off all the ‘expensive’ staff and is lobbying for software patents like no other company — becoming like a patent troll over time…”
“Unified Patents is already fighting back against this troll by targeting its patents. That’s all one can do about trolls, which cannot really be sued (no products to sue over).”Remember that IBM is nowadays feeding its patents to patent trolls like Finjan. IBM literally makes money by arming patent trolls (Microsoft does the same thing and it financially supports Finjan), whereas several groups like OIN or Unified Patents try hard to disarm trolls.
Remember the patent troll called “Red River Innovations” [sic]? Unified Patents put a bounty on its patent/s last month and Joe Mullin, who covered patent trolls for at least a decade (first in his blog, then in news sites like Ars Technica before joining the EFF), has just labeled its patent the “Stupid Patent of the Month”. Hours ago he wrote:
Online businesses—like businesses everywhere—are full of suggestions. If you order a burger, you might want fries with that. If you read Popular Science, you might like reading Popular Mechanics. Those kinds of suggestions are a very old part of commerce, and no one would seriously think it’s a patentable technology.
Except, apparently, for Red River Innovations LLC, a patent troll that believes its patents cover the idea of suggesting what people should read next. Red River filed a half-dozen lawsuits in East Texas throughout 2015 and 2016. Some of those lawsuits were against retailers like home improvement chain Menards, clothier Zumiez, and cookie retailer Ms. Fields. Those stores all got sued because they have search bars on their websites.
In some lawsuits, Red River claimed the use of a search bar infringed US Patent No. 7,958,138. For example, in a lawsuit against Zumiez, Red River claimed [PDF] that “after a request for electronic text through the search box located at www.zumiez.com, the Zumiez system automatically identifies and graphically presents additional reading material that is related to a concept within the requested electronic text, as described and claimed in the ’138 Patent.” In that case, the “reading material” is text like product listings for jackets or skateboard decks.
Unified Patents is already fighting back against this troll by targeting its patents. That’s all one can do about trolls, which cannot really be sued (no products to sue over).
Unified Patents uses PTAB to disarm another patent troll, one called “Bradium Technologies” [sic] — an obscure proxy or tentacle of General Patent. Patent Troll Tracker wrote about it a decade ago [1, 2] and so did we, e.g. in [1, 2, 3]. Robert Jain wrote about what they did yesterday:
On April 23, 2018, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,253,239 owned and asserted by Bradium Technologies, LLC, a General Patent subsidiary and well-known NPE. The ’239 patent claims the concept of dividing large data sets of images (such as geographic imagery) into “image parcels” at varying levels of detail, allowing users to browse quickly online, and has been asserted in district court against Microsoft (Case No. 1:15-cv-00031).
Jain then added that “[o]n April 23, 2018, Wordlogic Corporation and Unified Patents Inc. filed a joint request to terminate the recently instituted IPR2017-01856 pursuant to settlement.”
We’ve mentioned Wordlogic several times before, e.g. earlier this year, eight years ago, and even a decade ago. █
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* On Monday it also propped up another patent parasite, this one from Taiwan (excerpt from the paywalled article below).
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At last week’s IPBC Taiwan conference, managing IP costs emerged as a key theme of conversation – with some suggesting that financial pressure could lead to more monetisation activity. One firm that has recently opted to go down the monetisation path is a small company called CyWee, which began life within the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). CyWee is evidently an operating company with business across wireless streaming, motion processing and facial tracking. According to a District of Delaware patent infringement lawsuit it filed against Google last Monday, CyWee was formed by two ITRI researchers in 2007…
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Benoît Battistelli is also working as a politician
Summary: The many abuses and offenses committed by Mr. Battistelli whilst he enjoyed diplomatic immunity can and should be brought up as that immunity expires in two months; a good start would be contacting his colleagues, who might not be aware of the full spectrum of his abuses
THE insiders at the EPO all know that their President is involved in French politics. This is not allowed, but then again, Battistelli enjoys diplomatic immunity. He feels and acts like he’s untouchable. He may soon bring millions of euros (EPO budget) to his home down in clear violation of many rules — a serious issue which we encourage French-speaking readers to report to the following people (Battistelli’s colleagues at Saint-Germain-en-Laye):
arnaud.pericard@saintgermainenlaye.fr
ecretariat.elus@saintgermainenlaye.fr
anne.gommier@saintgermainenlaye.fr
monique.dumont@saintgermainenlaye.fr
patrick.lazard@saintgermainenlaye.fr
pierre.degeorge@saintgermainenlaye.fr
angeline.silly@saintgermainenlaye.fr
pierre.camasses@saintgermainenlaye.fr
pascal.leveque@saintgermainenlaye.fr
didier.rouxel@saintgermainenlaye.fr
agnes.cerighelli@saintgermainenlaye.fr
armelle.rouly@saintgermainenlaye.fr
Battistelli will be gone in 2 months, but he should definitely be held accountable for his many abuses. They are well documented and once he loses diplomatic immunity he can perhaps be held accountable. Many people can probably sue him, too. Maybe even victims like staff representatives and Judge Corcoran from the EPO’s Boards of Appeal.
“Battistelli will be gone in 2 months, but he should definitely be held accountable for his many abuses.”Speaking of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal, they have repeatedly complained about Battistelli, who keeps breaking the EPO’s rules. With two months left to sack him — something which is unlikely to happen — action is now imperative. Don’t let such a destructive person get away with sending millions of euros to his existing and next employer. His colleagues at Saint-Germain-en-Laye need to at least become aware of what he’s doing. If his “padrone” Nicolas Sarkozy can be punished almost a decade late, why not him as well?
The EPO spent the day yesterday writing some more fluff about Battistelli’s victims, whom he sent to Haar as (collective) punishment. It said: “Read about the five-year objective of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal as well as their performance in the past year. […] Here’s how you can share your opinion on proposed changes to the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal.”
“The EPO spent the day yesterday writing some more fluff about Battistelli’s victims, whom he sent to Haar as (collective) punishment.”They just try to give the false impression that things are rosy and the public is in control. This is nonsense.
Less than a day ago a patent maximalists’ site wrote about “Guidance on the Therapeutic Methods Exclusion,” courtesy of the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO), which Battistelli — and by extension the EPO — had been attacking mercilessly. To quote:
The therapeutic methods exclusion is often problematic to navigate. In T 0699/12, the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) has provided some useful guidance on its application. In an opposition before the Opposition Division, the division held that the patent in suit (which was for a method for performing in vivo dosimetry) was invalid pursuant to Art 53(c) of the European Patent Convention (EPC).
Hours ago the EPO also promoted a Seattle (US) event of the EPO, promoting software patents abroad (in another continent!), not to mention patents on life. As the EPO put it some hours ago: “We have prepared a series of plenary sessions, panel discussions and break-out workshops on the patentability of life sciences inventions at the EPO.”
“It’s never too late for justice to be served.”The EPO has become a threat not only to Europeans but also to people living outside Europe. Battistelli’s regime is like a think tank of patent maximalism — the UPC notwithstanding — and the Boards of Appeal are unable to stop that because Battistelli keeps intimidating and punishing them. Judge Corcoran is alleged to have communicated with people in Saint-Germain-en-Laye; this is perhaps why Battistelli attacked him so viciously. We strongly encourage readers who can write in French to E-mail the above people with information about the European Inventor Award, informing them not only about improper venue selection but also many of Battistelli’s other abuses (we’ve lost count of them). It’s never too late for justice to be served. █
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Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 2:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Justice does not really serve those who profit from injustice and extrajudicial actions such as patent extortion
Summary: A week’s roundup of news about PTAB, which is eliminating many bad (wrongly-granted) patents and is therefore becoming “enemy number one” to those who got accustomed to blackmailing real (productive) firms with their questionable patents
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board is great. We love it. Not only does it help the USPTO‘s patent examiners improve their examination; it also deals with erroneous grants (post-grant, i.e. after mistakes were made). It’s not hard to imagine who would hate such judges with a great passion. Who possibly benefits from wrongly-granted patents? Patent law firms, patent trolls and their messengers. Any mistaken grant may mean more legal action — spurious/frivolous litigation basically.
“Who possibly benefits from wrongly-granted patents? Patent law firms, patent trolls and their messengers.”Daniel Nazer (EFF) wrote about a patent of GEMSA, which had engaged in SLAPP against the EFF in addition to its bullying of companies. It had attempted to silence critics of its patent (or of itself) and now we see the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) smashing that “stupid” patent to pieces. In Nazer’s own words:
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has issued a ruling [PDF] invalidating claims from US Patent No. 6,690,400, which had been the subject of the June 2016 entry in our Stupid Patent of the Month blog series. The patent owner, Global Equity Management (SA) Pty Ltd. (GEMSA), responded to that post by suing EFF in Australia. Eventually, a U.S. court ruled that EFF’s speech was protected by the First Amendment. Now the Patent Office has found key claims from the ’400 patent invalid.
The ’400 patent described its “invention” as “a Graphic User Interface (GUI) that enables a user to virtualize the system and to define secondary storage physical devices through the graphical depiction of cabinets.” In other words, virtual storage cabinets on a computer. E-Bay, Alibaba, and Booking.com, filed a petition for inter partes review arguing that claims from the ’400 patent were obvious in light of the Partition Magic 3.0 User Guide (1997) from PowerQuest Corporation. Three administrative patent judges from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) agreed.
The PTAB opinion notes that Partition Magic’s user guide teaches each part of the patent’s Claim 1, including the portrayal of a “cabinet selection button bar,” a “secondary storage partitions window,” and a “cabinet visible partition window.” This may be better understood through diagrams from the opinion. The first diagram below reproduces a figure from the patent labeled with claim elements. The second is a figure from Partition Magic, labeled with the same claim elements.
Good riddance to stupid patents. It’s worth noting that this is clearly a software patent, too.
There are other new “success stories” from PTAB. To name some of the new ones, MONKEYmedia’s patent has been determined to be likely invalid. It’s a patent troll which is based in the Eastern District of Texas and Unified Patents wrote this:
On April 16, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all independent claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,247,226 owned and asserted by MONKEYMedia, Inc., a known NPE. The ’226 patent, generally directed towards computer readable media and methods for playing stored content, has been asserted against Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas (Case No. 2:17-cv-00460).
Unified Patents is also disarming the patent troll Sound View Innovations [sic]. To quote Unified Patents’ writeup from 4 days ago:
On April 18, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 6,125,371 owned and asserted by Sound View Innovations, LLC, a well known NPE. The ’371 patent, which generally describes systems and
methods for managing versions of data records in a database to increase data capacity, has been asserted in multiple litigations against such companies as Fidelity Investments, Facebook, and Hulu.
Another new example from Unified Patents deals with a very notorious patent troll called Uniloc:
On April 17, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 6,564,229 owned by NPE Fortress Credit Co. LLC and asserted by Uniloc Luxembourg, S.A., another notorious NPE and exclusive licensee of the ’229 patent. The ’229 patent, generally directed to pausing move or copy operations within a data processing system, has been asserted in 10 separate district court proceedings in 2017 against such companies as Square Enix, Nexon America, Big Fish Games, Ubisoft, Kaspersky Lab, and Akamai Technologies.
Last but not least (for now), the patent troll Vilox is likely being disarmed:
On April 19, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims and grounds in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 7,302,423 owned and asserted by Vilox Technologies, LLC, a well known NPE. The ’423 patent, which generally relates to a method for formatting search results returned by a database query, has been asserted in multiple litigations against a number of retail companies such as Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline, Neiman Marcus, Buy.com, Costco and Walmart, among others.
This is the kind of thing we appreciate PTAB for; it’s all about justice (even for relatively cash-strapped entities) and trolls are impacted the most. It makes predation a lot harder. Access to justice achieves that.
“This is the kind of thing we appreciate PTAB for; it’s all about justice (even for relatively cash-strapped entities) and trolls are impacted the most.”Going back to the aforementioned/above-mentioned riddle, why would anyone who actually respects justice attack PTAB? Who would compare judges to ‘death squads’? Well, follow the money trails…
Alluding to Chris Walker and Melissa Wasserman with their academic research into PTAB (quite a few recent papers/work, e.g. [1, 2]), a few hours ago Lisa Ouellette (Assistant Professor at Stanford Law School) wrote:
Christopher Walker is a leading administrative law scholar, and Melissa Wasserman’s excellent work on the PTO has often been featured on this blog, so when the two of them teamed up to study how the PTAB fits within broader principles of administrative law, the result—The New World of Agency Adjudication (forthcoming Calif. L. Rev.)—is self-recommending. With a few notable exceptions (such as a 2007 article by Stuart Benjamin and Arti Rai), patent law scholars have paid relatively little attention to administrative law. But the creation of the PTAB has sparked a surge of interest, including multiple Supreme Court cases and a superb symposium at Berkeley earlier this month (including Wasserman, Rai, and many others). Walker and Wasserman’s new article is essential reading for anyone following these recent debates, whether you are interested in specific policy issues like PTAB panel stacking or more general trends in administrative review.
Related to this, we expect the US Supreme Court to deliver a ruling on Oil States any day (or week) now. The ruling may deal with some of the above questions. It’s about Inter Partes Reviews (IPRs) that PTAB undertakes upon being petitioned.
“Related to this, we expect the US Supreme Court to deliver a ruling on Oil States any day (or week) now.”Judging by what we’ve seen from Christopher Walker and from Melissa Wasserman in recent years, we have no reason to question their motivation. Even Ouellette is quite alright. She’s a friend and colleague of Professor Lemley, so we know whose side she’s on.
But we cannot say the same about Dennis Crouch, whose blog generally panders to patent maximalists (just look at the comments any day). Less than a day ago he returned to his usual modus operandi, showing that he is still trying to slow down PTAB (he has attempted that for at least a year). The latest involves an IPR and appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC):
In Security People, the underlying Inter Partes Review involves a challenge to Claim 4 of Petitioner’s U.S. Patent No. 6,655,180 covering a “locker lock with adjustable bolt.” The Board found the claim invalid as obvious based upon the combination of two prior art references.
We already wrote many rebuttals to these assertions from Crouch, who either fails to understand that CAFC cannot deal with thousands of cases/appeals at the same level of granularity/pertinence or simply pretends not to understand that (we guess it’s the latter because he’s not so thick). If a patent can be granted by a single examiner working for at most a few dozens of hours, why should an applicant/assignee be expected to take up time of the high court without even legal action being filed? It seems disproportionate. The court’s priority shouldn’t be so asymmetric, but PTAB bashers see that differently because they just want to disrupt PTAB’s good work.
“The court’s priority shouldn’t be so asymmetric, but PTAB bashers see that differently because they just want to disrupt PTAB’s good work.”Looking at blogs of other patent maximalists and PTAB bashers (typically the same or at least overlapping groups), some hours ago Rob Sterne published another anti-PTAB piece at Watchtroll, which is generally unable to keep up with its old pace of anti-PTAB pieces (they now try to hire another ‘volunteer’ writer, probably for purposes such as these).
Patent Docs, which habitually promotes a “scam” to bypass PTAB, published exactly a day ago promotion of an event that includes “Hon. David Ruschke, Chief Administrative Patent Judge, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office” (Ruschke is OK, he’s coping well with the attacks on him).
Patent Docs also mentioned this upcoming ‘webinar’ on “scams” by which to bypass PTAB. From the outline:
• Recent decisions handed down by the Patent Trial Appeal Board, including decisions that:
— held a university entity waived its sovereign immunity by filing a patent infringement case in district court
— denied trial sovereign immunity for lack of establishment that trial sovereign immunity should be applied in PTAB proceedings
How about using tribes? That infamous new “scam” which nobody seems to talk about anymore…. the “scam” whose firm (the one that came up with it) sends me threatening legal letters.
Going back to Crouch and CAFC, a few days ago he wrote about Droplets, Inc. v E*Trade Bank — a new case in which the PTAB and then CAFC got rid of a bogus patent.
To quote:
Droplets Patent No. 8,402,115 (interactive link delivery) is invalid as obvious unless it properly claimed priority back to its 1999 provisional application. The Board found that priority had not been properly claimed — a judgment affirmed on appeal by the Federal Circuit.
This is what typically happens. CAFC agrees with PTAB’s decisions almost all the time. Patent maximalists like to pretend there’s discord/rift, but there’s none. They try to brew scandals where none exist. Watchtroll does this by far the most.
“They try to brew scandals where none exist. Watchtroll does this by far the most.”Facebook, which publicly supports PTAB (e.g. though HTIA), was mentioned by Watchtroll’s protégé Steve Brachmann last week. The site focuses on creepy Facebook patents; maybe it’s part of that familiar pattern at Watchtroll, which likes to demonise large technology companies, especially Google, not for unethical spying but for their patent policy. Watchtroll habitually calls such companies “efficient infringers”; failing to hide the bias? Last but not least, see what James Yang wrote for Watchtroll on April 15th. The site is a megaphone for patent extremists and people who profit from ‘patentism’ (like it’s a religion).
“The patent extremists are failing to see how aloof/disconnected they are from the “real world” — a world where patents are rare and strong, not pertaining to a mere thought.”How about Mr. Gross, who is writing anti-EFF pieces for literal patent trolls and is attacking academics who merely highlight a study about patent trolls? Mr. Gross is so upset at PTAB that he bemoans another § 101-based invalidation and then mumbles about “lazy/crazy [Section] 101 rejections,” saying that he is “going to file reconsideration for no other reason than to force them to admit shoddy process…”
Maybe he should file reconsideration calling them “death squads” in the filing. Sure, that ought to sway them. Maybe he’ll mock their court, calling it a “kangaroo court” or something even worse. The patent extremists are failing to see how aloof/disconnected they are from the “real world” — a world where patents are rare and strong, not pertaining to a mere thoughts. § 101 in its current form is well overdue. █
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Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 12:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It pays off to be a lawyer — not a practicing (technical) professional — in Texas
Summary: A roundup of patent cases in ‘low courts’ of the United States, where patents are being reasoned about or objected to while patent law firms make a lot of money
THE Eastern District of Texas (EDTX/TXED) has made the US patent system almost synonymous with patent trolls. It’s the fault of the courts there, not the USPTO, which merely granted poor- or low-quality patents that judges in Texas are happy to affirm/uphold. “Ribbon (as Sonus Networks) filed two more lawsuits against Metaswitch on March 8, 2018, in the Eastern District of Texas,” according to this article from a few days ago. To quote:
Ribbon’s patent campaign against Metaswitch has a somewhat complicated history, starting with an infringement lawsuit filed in January 2014 under the case name Genband US v. Metaswitch Networks. Genband (Ribbon’s predecessor) asserted its patents against Metaswitch’s Perimeta Session Border Controller, a cloud native carrier-class virtualized SBC, as well as several other Metaswitch products. By today’s patent litigation success standards, Genband fared extremely well in that lawsuit. However, not satisfied with an $8.8 million royalty award after trial in January 2016, which was upheld on appeal and remand, Ribbon (as Sonus Networks) filed two more lawsuits against Metaswitch on March 8, 2018, in the Eastern District of Texas. Collectively Ribbon has asserted infringement of ten more patents against Metaswitch, on top of the seven patents that Metaswitch was found to infringe in 2016.
Notice how far back it goes: 2014. How much has it cost so far? Will there be justice? Not if patent lawyers make millions in the process, in which case the remaining question will be “who pay their bills?” rather than “should they be paid?”
“We generally believe that most if not all design patents are bunk; designs are already well covered by copyright law and to a certain degree by registered trademarks, e.g. on shapes.”Looking at another Eastern District, this time in Michigan up north, the courts too are getting involved. Ellie Mertens wrote that they “recently applied the brakes to the Automotive Body Parts Association’s efforts to invalidate Ford’s design patents…”
We wrote about this before. We generally believe that most if not all design patents are bunk [1, 2]; designs are already well covered by copyright law and to a certain degree by registered trademarks, e.g. on shapes.
Anyway, on we proceed to another case. The H2O, Inc v Meras Engineering, Inc. patent case’s “verdict was excessive,” according to this report about ‘damages’ being cut by almost three quarters (down from $12.5 million to $3.5 million). To quote the Docket Navigator:
Following a $12.5 million jury verdict for infringement of plaintiff’s water system disinfectant patent, the court granted defendants’ alternative motion for remittitur, subject to plaintiff’s acceptance of a $3.5 million award, because the verdict was excessive.
There are some other cases of interest being covered by Docket Navigator this month. In Columbia Sportswear North America, Inc. v Seirus Innovative Accessories, for example, a design patent is being scrutinised:
The court granted plaintiff’s motion for pre-judgment interest and rejected defendant’s argument that plaintiff was not entitled to any interest because the jury awarded design patent profits under 35 U.S.C. § 289.
Here’s a new motion to dismiss a case. citing the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC):
The court denied defendant’s motion to dismiss on the ground that plaintiff’s signal processing patent encompassed unpatentable subject matter under In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
In another new case (Nox Medical ehf v Natus Neurology Inc.) it seems clear that the patent aggressors are so very afraid of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). They would do anything to avoid their patents being properly checked/scrutinised. To quote this Docket Report:
The court denied in part plaintiff’s motion in limine to exclude certain obviousness theories due to IPR estoppel.
One last Docket Report (regarding Integra LifeSciences Corporation et al v HyperBranch Medical Technology, Inc.) deals with a motion to exclude a testimony:
The court denied defendant’s motion to exclude the testimony of plaintiffs’ damages expert regarding a reasonable royalty for failing to apportion damages on a claim-by-claim basis.
When they talk about “damages expert” they usually speak about grossly overrated people who make up a bunch of numbers. So basically, any effort to discard their testimony would be fine with us. Sometimes these people attempt to justify billions in so-called ‘damages’ using pseudoscience and urban myths.
Who always wins these cases at the end? Lawyers. They have nothing to lose, only to gain (more so by perpetuating such feuds). █
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