THE PATENTS which the USPTO had granted for a number of decades perished in recent years. Many of these, software patents in particular, became worthless. This was fine because it meant less litigation. Revocation of patents in no way affects the existence of actual, physical products.
"Revocation of patents in no way affects the existence of actual, physical products."As we noted several months ago, the WesternGeco v Ion case at the Supreme Court does not really interest us because it does not deal with patent scope. Having said that, we've just become aware of the courts in the US invalidating patents at hand, owing to PTAB IPRs:
The Federal Circuit has affirmed the PTAB’s invalidation of claims of three patents involved in the WesternGeco v Ion case at the Supreme Court
"No doubt the patent maximalists won't be happy about this. To them it's another reminder that patent maximalism is going away."Here we have the professor-bashing, PTAB-bashing Mr. Gross having a go at Google. He claims that "after prompting and directing PTO to kill [sic] almost all of these types of data analytics patents, GOOG wants its spinoff to be able to sue someone on same type of concepts" (calling it a "spinoff" is an overstatement, as does accusing Google of "prompting and directing" the USPTO to "kill"). This is probably more of that Michelle Lee-bashing spiel. They keep blaming Google for everything. They pretend that Google alone (or primarily) is responsible for the demise of patent maximalism. Another PTAB-bashing twit has written this tweet about a PTAB decision from the end of April, noting that: "The PTAB Affirmed the Examiner's 101 Rejection of an SMS Device and Added Another 101 Rejection: https://anticipat.com/pdf/2018-04-30_13437195_178334.pdf"
Software patents, as usual. Speaking of which, the EFF's Daniel Nazer continues the fight against software patents and patent trolls, having used IPRs against Personal Audio LLC, a notorious patent troll. Having gotten out of the Eastern District of Texas, this whole case seems to be over for good after "the Supreme Court rejected Personal Audio’s petition for review."
From Nazer's new outline of it:
Back in early 2013, the podcasting community was freaking out. A patent troll called Personal Audio LLC had sued comedian Adam Carolla and was threatening a bunch of smaller podcasters. Personal Audio claimed that the podcasters infringed U.S. Patent 8,112,504, which claims a “system for disseminating media content” in serialized episodes. EFF challenged the podcasting patent at the Patent Office in October 2013. We won that proceeding, and it was affirmed on appeal. Today, the Supreme Court rejected Personal Audio’s petition for review. The case is finally over.
We won this victory with the support of our community. More than one thousand people donated to EFF’s Save Podcasting campaign. We also asked the public to help us find prior art. We filed an inter partes review (IPR) petition that showed Personal Audio did not invent anything new, and that other people were podcasting years before Personal Audio first applied for a patent.
Meanwhile, Adam Carolla fought Personal Audio in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. He also raised money for his defense and was eventually able to convince Personal Audio to walk away. When the settlement was announced, Personal Audio suggested that it would no longer sue small podcasters. That gave podcasters some comfort. But the settlement did not invalidate the patent.