Patent consultant Gary Odom, who blogs and does business as "Patent Hawk," used to help Microsoft defend itself against patent lawsuits. But in August, Odom slapped his former client with a patent lawsuit of his own. On his blog, Odom took a quick break from denouncing patent reform to announce his new project, in an understated post titled "Tool Groups."
Odom gamely admitted that Microsoft had been his client for years. "They had every opportunity for friendly discussion," he wrote.
New documents filed in the case reveal much more about Odom's relationship with his client-turned-target. Not only did Gary Odom work for both Microsoft and one of its outside law firms over a period of several years—he actually signed contracts in which he agreed not to file his own patent or IP lawsuits, and agreed to disclose his own patent activity.
Google's "Chrome Browser" violates a patent, Aloft Media claims in Federal Court. Google announced the launch of its Chrome Browser on Sept. 1. Aloft claims it patented its "Network browser window with adjacent identifier selector interface for strong Web content" in March 2007.
A federal appeals court here ruled Monday that a California trial judge went too far when he stripped chip maker Qualcomm Inc. ( QCOM) of all legal rights to two video patents as a consequence of engaging in misconduct.
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On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the trial judge that Qualcomm should have disclosed its patents to the working group. But the appeals court said the judge should not have stripped Qualcomm of all of its rights to the two patents.
Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, announced that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today upheld a decision by a federal judge in San Diego that Qualcomm violated its duty to disclose its patents to a standards body and that, as a result, the patents are unenforceable against products practicing the standard at issue.
Under participant agreements, however, disclosure was required to help ensure "a simple royalty free baseline profile." And, under Rambus, even non-explicit disclosure requirements can create a duty to disclose patent rights during standard setting discussions.
Because the patentee intentionally failed to disclose its patents, the court agreed that the patents were unenforceable under the equitable doctrine of implied waiver. However, the court limited the scope of the waiver only to products that were compliant with the new (H.264) standard.
Software patents have been a hugely controversial debate, with lines of battle drawn primarily between large corporations holding large patent portfolios and engaged in multiple cross-licensing deals, and the Have-Nots, entrepeneurs, small and medium enterprises, and software users from the student using GNU/Linux all the way to institutional users in governments.
There's 78 pages of the report, and it goes into some very sensible public policy recommendations (ban software patents etc) along with ideas for education and corporate governance.
Moreover, the court indicated that "[p]urported transformations or manipulations simply of public or private legal obligations or relationships, business risks, or other such abstractions cannot meet the test, because they are not physical objects or substances, and they are not representative of physical objects or substances."
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the term “intellectual property”, and that I prefer the more technically correct term “intellectual monopolies”. Despite that, I strongly recommend a new book from someone who not only approves of the term “intellectual property”, but of its fundamental ideas.