Posts Tagged: "patent"

Patent Filings Roundup: ‘DASH’ Streaming Patents Struck Down Under 101; Samsung IPRs Fall to Fintiv; IP Edge Affiliate Kicks Off New Campaign

It was an average week for patent filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and an above-average week in district courts, with 72 district court complaints filed and 18 new PTAB petitions—one petition for Post Grant Review (PGR), and 17 for Inter Partes Review (IPR). At the PTAB, a number of challenges were filed, including two IPRs by Tesla challenging patents owned by Iqar Inc, four IPRs by Dish challenging patents owned by Entropic Communications LLC (associated with Fortress), two IPRs by Microsoft challenging patents owned by Interdigital Patent Holdings Inc (associated with InterDigital Inc.), and two IPRs by Juniper Networks challenging patents owned by Monarch Networking Solutions LLC (associated with Acacia Research Corporation).

CAFC Judges Split on Indefiniteness Analysis for Identity Theft Patent

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today held that certain claims of a patent for a system to protect against identity theft and fraud were invalid for indefiniteness. Judge Schall dissented-in-part, explaining that he would not have found the claims indefinite based on the intrinsic evidence. U.S. Patent No. 9,361,658 is owned by Mantissa Corporation and is titled “System and Method for Enhanced Protection and Control Over the Use of Identity.” Mantissa sued First Financial Corporation and First Financial Bank, N.A. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging infringement of certain claims. The parties mainly disputed two terms during claim construction: (1) “transaction partner” and (2) “OFF.” The district court relied on First Financial’s expert testimony to conclude that “transaction partner” was indefinite, after finding that the expert used was a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA).

Patent Landscape for Quantum Computing: A Survey of Patenting Activities for Different Physical Realization Methods

The year 2023 marked another year of rapid advancements in quantum computing technology, showcasing significant progress in key areas such as scalable quantum computing and quantum error correction. Multiple physical realization approaches or modalities for creating quantum bits (qubits) are under development, offering different tradeoffs in performance metrics such as qubit count, error rate, decoherence time, and gate speed. Patenting activities are effective indicators of innovation speed and resource distribution in a technology field. As 2024 begins, this post explores the newest development focus and trends in the quantum computing industry through the angle of its patent landscape and discusses strategic considerations for patenting in this rapidly evolving field.

USPTO AI Guidance Reiterates DABUS Decision

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today released guidance for determining inventorship of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted inventions. As the Office has previously stated, the guidance clarifies that “while AI-assisted inventions are not categorically unpatentable, the inventorship analysis should focus on human contributions, as patents function to incentivize and reward human ingenuity.” The USPTO issued a call for comments on AI inventorship in February 2023. That Federal Register Notice (FRN) asked the public to respond to 11 questions, including “how does the use of an AI system [in the invention process]…differ from the use of other technical tools”; whether AI inventions may be patentable under current patent laws on joint inventorship by, for example, simply listing the natural person involved in inventions created by AI machines; and whether statutory or regulatory changes should be made to better address AI contributions to inventions.

Diversity in Patenting: Innovation Has a Lot to Gain with Equity and Inclusion

The importance and profitability of diversity are already well-known by companies. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company shows that in 2019 companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. However, when we look at diversity in the patent sphere, a report published by the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) showed that, in 2021, women accounted for only 16.5% of all inventors listed in Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications.