Posts Tagged: "insurance"

By keeping an eye on stealth and dangerous patents managing the future risk presented is much easier. By proactively monitoring the landscape of published applications and granted patents you may be able to engage in design work-arounds to avoid the most dangerous patents. You may also be able to actively identify patents and pending patent application that are ripe for licensing or acquisition at an early stage, perhaps before the patent even issues or before the patent works its way into the hands of a litigious patent owner. Even if you cannot acquire rights through licensing or acquire all dangerous patents, if you have a meaningful patent footprint that gives you the right to do a variety of things you may well be able to defend based upon having broad based rights to engage in what it is that you are accused of doing.

Our featured patent application today discusses the operation of an automatic teller machine, or ATM, that includes a universal serial bus (USB) port. This USB port would enable the ATM to connect to external security devices, such as a fingerprint scanner, to provide authentication. We’ve pulled up two applications that deal with providing targeted shopping offers digitally, one that provides offers while browsing an online store and another that can provide discounts after the purchase has been made. Other patent applications describe a marketplace for exchanging gift cards, as well as a system for vehicle navigation to points of interest along a driving route. The recent additions to Bank of America’s patent portfolio include a number of very interesting new systems designed to help those in economic need. Two issued patents discuss methods of preventing economic loss because of unforeseen circumstances, one that applies to any credit account and the other which can prevent foreclosure proceedings specifically. Mobile banking units for access to financial accounts during catastrophes are prevented in another patent. Another issued patent provides for a financial product referred to as “goal insurance,” designed to motivate policy holders to achieve defined goals.

The Prometheus decision shows that you can never know for sure what the outcome will be once you arrive at the Supreme Court. We also know that the Supreme Court is taking more patent cases now than ever, and those decisions have significant implications for the entire industry above and beyond the patent claims at issue and the parties involved. Your patent portfolio may be at risk because some other company obtained poorly written claims and the Supreme Court has taken the opportunity to decide not only the issues before them but to make decisions based on overarching concerns about the entire patent system.

Yesterday The Hartford announced via press release that it had invented a faster way to deliver life insurance, which is now patent pending. Can you that be true? As with many things associated with the law, particularly patent law, a simple, straightforward answer is not possible. In a nutshell, it is possible that one could patent a method of more quickly delivering life insurance if the process is new and non-obvious. However, given the law that the United States Patent and Trademark Office is required to apply there will need to be much more than a real world business method, or “pure business method” as they are sometimes referred to.

Therefore, no one should read this decision as stating a general rule that patent infringement is covered under “advertising injury” provisions in a typical insurance contract. Rather, the decision should be read as saying that it is possible, based on these peculiar facts, that coverage could exists for this particular patent infringement claim under the advertising injury provisions. Essentially, reaching this determination on summary judgment without full consideration was deemed inappropriate.

Many clients are unaware that the commercial general liability insurance (CGL) policy they hold is not fully protecting their most valuable assets, the ability to sell their products. And, most IP attorneys do not know that IP insurance is available to help fund their client’s IP litigation risks. If a client’s IP becomes involved in litigation, specialized IP Insurance products will help ensure that there are funds available to pay the associated legal expenses. Without specific IP Insurance in place, the client may be left with a less desirable way of protecting their IP assets.