Posts Tagged: "Google"

Today marks the return of our Other Barks & Bites feature, which will profile a collection of news headlines from around the IP world and across practice areas every Friday. This week, the patent spat between Apple and Qualcomm heats up at the PTAB; China’s intellectual property court at Beijing shows signs of heightened requirements in trademark appeals for foreign entities; and the European Union delays debate on copyright reforms that would affect major tech firms that aggregate news and videos online.

On Tuesday, November 20th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential decision in Google LLC v. Conversant Wireless Licensing, which vacated a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to uphold the validity of patent claims owned by Conversant after conducting an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding petitioned by Google and LG Electronics… It is hard to reconcile decisions where the Federal Circuit bends over backwards to give more process and procedural rights to petitioners when for so long patent owners have been railroaded at the PTAB and then had those summary execution proceedings rubber stamped by the Federal Circuit. If increased scrutiny on the PTAB is a two-way street I welcome it.

On Tuesday, November 27th, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a redacted version of a decision to institute an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding petitioned by Unified Patents to challenge the validity of patent claims that have been asserted in district court against at least one of Unified’s subscribing members. The PTAB panel of administrative patent judges (APJs) decided to institute the IPR despite the patent owners’ assertion that the petition should be denied because Unified didn’t identify all real parties in interest (RPIs) including members of Unified’s Content Zone. The charade that Unified is the only real party in interest and simply acts in uncoordinated ways and not at the behest of those who pay for them to challenge patents continues, at least at the PTAB.

The Alliance of U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs (USIJ) recently released a report detailing the organization’s research into serial attacks on high quality patents at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The USIJ’s research shows that, far from being a cheaper alternative venue for small businesses to challenge the validity of weak patents being asserted against them as was originally intended, the administrative tribunal has instead become a tool for rich, sophisticated companies who are able to harass owners of valuable patents with duplicative petitions filed either by themselves or by profiteering entities which weren’t envisioned when the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 was passed into law.

According to statistics provided by the USPTO, since the beginning of fiscal year 2012, the Office has received a total of only 1,584 third-party submissions of prior art for consideration by patent examiners. The high water mark occurred in 2016, when the office received a total of 329 third-party prior art submissions. This declined to 266 submissions in 2017 and in fiscal year 2018, the USPTO received a total of only 141 prior art submissions.

Why is it that innovators such as Universities and independent inventors are caricatured as patent trolls while entities such as Unified Patents and RPX, who exist for the sole purpose of destroying property, are somehow let off the hook or even celebrated? In a different era, about 100 years ago, those large corporations and their allies who ganged up on smaller companies and individuals were characterized as ‘robber barons’ and caricatured as ‘fat cats’… The AIA makes clear that patent owners should not have to endure repeated attacks on their patent claims at the PTAB.

During the week of October 8, 2018,  there were five cases involving patents that were decided without an opinion as a result of Rule 36 affirmances at the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Three of those cases were issued by panels including Chief Judge Sharon Prost. In two cases, the Federal Circuit upheld district court invalidations of asserted patents whereas another two affirmed rejections of applicants claims by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The last case was a summary affirmance of a victory by German drugmaker Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep over Eli Lilly in the Eastern District of Texas.

he U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a final office action in an ex parte reexamination of a patent owned by Google self-driving car development subsidiary Waymo. As a result of the reexamination, Waymo stands to lose 53 of 56 claims, including all 20 of the patent claims originally issued. The patent in question had been asserted as part of the company’s well-known infringement suit filed against Uber.

As Jaime Siegel, OIN’s Global Director of Licensing, notes, OIN is able to grant free membership to companies joining the consortium thanks to the efforts of eight full-funding member companies which have each funded $20 million to support OIN’s operations through an endowment. These companies include the first six companies to form OIN: Sony, Phillips, IBM, Red Hat, NEC and SUSE; joining those companies are Google and Toyota. OIN’s board consists of representatives from each of these full funding members. Every new member of OIN signs the same licensing agreement as the full-funding members, giving all members in the organization equal standing in terms of the cross-license agreement.

Tech giant Google had conducted its first-ever sale of patent assets in the U.S. brokered patent market. Data collected and provided to Bloomberg from the Richardson Oliver Law Group shows that Google had sold 207 assets, including 138 U.S. patents, in a single deal this year. The U.S. patents sold by Google covered lithium-ion battery-related technologies, which Google had first acquired in 2012 from its acquisition of the Motorola Mobility portfolio.

How ironic is it that the infringer lobby – the very people trying to weaken the patent system and who ignore the patent rights of others through a free riding scheme of efficient infringement – are the ones who are seeing their monopoly power consolidated. By ignoring the property of true innovators the infringer lobby has grown in size, power, strength and influence.  Profits are soaring in Silicon Valley, yet they claim patent trolls are killing high tech. That claim is simply not credible. Stop and think about that for even half a second in an objective way and the claims don’t stand up to any level of scrutiny. In 2017, Apple had nearly $50 billion in net income, Microsoft has over $20 billion in net income, Facebook over $15 billion, Goggle approximately $13 billion. If patent trolls are killing, or even attempting to kill the tech elite of Silicon Valley we all ought to be able to agree they are doing a very poor job.

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are semiconductor films composed of an organic compound having electroluminescent properties which utilize an electrical current to emit light. The technology has wide applications and has been incorporated into digital displays for mobile phones, automotive dashboards and television screens. OLEDs can be constructed to be thinner and lighter than liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and also provide…

LOT Network markets itself as a non-profit consortium, which offers its members a legal mechanism affording them protection from patent assertion entities (PAEs) and immunizes its members against patent suits from non-operating entities for about 1.2 million worldwide patent assets currently owned by LOT members… The LOT Network conditional license only applies to patents that are in network at the time that a firm joins the consortium. If a business joins LOT after a LOT member sells a patent, previous LOT members are protected by the conditional license whereas the new member still faces the potential of an infringement suit down the road on that patent.

British patent data insights firm Cipher recently released an IP strategy report that provides a look at how many firms are patenting technologies in the hopes of disrupting various industry sectors. Among the various highlights of the report include a look at fintech patents, which shows that tech companies and not banks are leading the way in obtaining patents that cover the future of banking.

On Wednesday, July 11th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Apple v. ContentGuard Holdings vacating a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to institute a covered business method (CBM) validity proceeding… Amazingly, the Federal Circuit’s vacature of the PTAB’s determination of unpatentable subject matter came after appeals from petitioners Google and Apple sent the case to the Federal Circuit. Although the panel of administrative patent judges (APJs) determined the challenged claims to be unpatentable, they also granted a motion from ContentGuard to amend claims which substituted the unpatentable claims. This appeal gave ContentGuard the ability to cross appeal the PTAB’s determination that the ‘280 patent was subject to CBM review.