Posts Tagged: "groupon"

Groupon’s complaint and spokespersons have been widely reported that labels IBM as a “dial-up dinosaur” and “a relic of once-great 20th Century technology firms” that is now resorting “to usurping the intellectual property of companies born this millennium.” But IBM spends $5 billion annual on R&D investment, which outpaced Groupon’s total 2015 revenues of $3.1 billion. It’s seems a tough argument to make that a tech firm that invests more money in R&D than the other company earns in a year is somehow a “relic” that is only “usurping” the innovation of this millennium.

The Court affirmed the Board’s finding that one Figure and certain passages in the description of the reference disclosed a limited number of elements and suggested combining them in a manner that anticipated the system claimed by Blue Calypso. Thus, “a reference may still anticipate if that reference teaches that the disclosed components or functionalities may be combined and one of skill in the art would be able to implement the combination.” This was an anticipation, without resort to obviousness, because the reference sufficiently disclosed making the combination, though not expressed a single embodiment or example.