Posts Tagged: "patents"

I am Emil Malak, CEO of VoIP-Pal.com Inc., and a named inventor on two U.S. patents–Mobile Gateway: US 8,630,234 & Electrostatic Desalinization and Water Purification: US 8,016,993. To date, our company owns 22 issued and or allowed patents, which we developed over the past 15 years. Against all odds, we have been 100% successful in defending eight Inter Partes Reviews (IPRs): four from Apple, three from AT&T, and one from Unified Patents. We are presently in litigation against Apple, Verizon, AT&T, Twitter and Amazon. My experience with Voip-Pal has made it painfully clear that the deck has been stacked against companies who own IP being used without license by large tech companies. The America Invents Act (AIA), orchestrated by Silicon Valley, was designed to destroy the very ladder they climbed to ascend to their lofty perch, and make certain that they could not be challenged.

Yesterday, we discussed patenting trends in the cleantech industry. Today, we turn to the mobile phone industry, which has matured with fewer reasons for frequent consumer upgrades while standards drive toward better efficiency and data rates to find even more uses for the platforms. The mobile phone industry has exploded over the last decade with nearly all U.S. consumers owning a smart phone. Additionally, many Internet of Things (IoT) devices have gained cellular modems, along with modern heavy equipment having a data connection for telemetry. The wireless standards have innovation that comes in waves, with 3G and 4G/LTE reaching maturation, while 5G has a solid upward trend. The supply chain for mobile phone manufacture has largely moved overseas and many brands have disappeared or moved overseas. Even though the two mobile operating systems are just over a decade old, we are seeing the pace of software innovation plateau with a couple million apps in the respective platform stores. The ubiquity of cellular data will bring the underlying technology to many different industries in the years to come, as the maturity of the industry allows the focus to move away from the platform itself.

Senators and Representatives Coons, Tillis, Collins, Johnson, and Stivers recently announced in a press release a proposed framework to fix patent eligibility law in the United States. If written as proposed in the draft framework, section 101 may do harm to the patent system. The senators and representatives are now soliciting feedback on the draft framework. They are likely to take additional action on the framework as soon as early this week. Please send the following text with any of your edits to [email protected].

Our last article in this series discussed patenting trends in the Therapeutics and Diagnostic Molecules Industry. Today, we turn to the blockchain industry, which is a foundational technology that is expected to revolutionize many different industries and not just digital currency. Blockchain patent filings are exploding, but we are still very early in the innovation cycle of this technology. Important to note about the data here: it is limited and especially thin, as this industry was just invented a decade ago, when there were just a handful of filings, and less than a thousand filings today. This is the only area in the greater study that was not long established, but the importance of blockchain is something that cannot be ignored in many industries. Although the most well-known application of blockchain is cryptocurrency, blockchain provides authenticity to any electronic transaction or contract in an open and trusted way. Blockchain underpins algorithmically protected currency but is expected to disrupt many other industries where algorithms can be trusted more than conventional mechanisms.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) decision upholding the patentability of Eli Lilly & Co.’s patent claims directed to reducing toxicity of a chemotherapy agent. In so holding, the Federal Circuit cited the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) skepticism of the efficacy of the methods as evidence supporting non-obviousness. See Neptune Generics, LLC v. Eli Lilly & Co., Nos. 2018-1288, 2018-1290, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 12492 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 26, 2019) (Before Moore, Wallach, and Hughes, J.) (Opinion for the Court, Moore, J.) Neptune Generics, LLC, Fresenius Kabi USA, LLC, and Mylan Laboratories Ltd. (collectively, the Petitioners) filed three petitions for inter partes review (IPR) against claims 1-22 of U.S. Patent No. 7,772,209 (the ?209 patent) owned by Eli Lilly & Co. The ?209 patent generally relates to methods of administering folic acid and a methylmalonic acid (MMA) lowering agent, such as vitamin B12, before administering pemetrexed disodium, a chemotherapy agent, to reduce the toxic effects of pemetrexed. The Board found that the ?209 patent was not unpatentable as obvious because it was not known in the art to pretreat pemetrexed with vitamin B12 along with folic acid and the skepticism of others, specifically the FDA, supported a conclusion of non-obviousness. The Federal Circuit found that substantial evidence supported the PTAB’s findings and affirmed.

On Wednesday, the USPTO held the first of three scheduled hearings prompted by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science (SUCCESS) Act, which requires the USPTO Director to provide Congress with a report on publicly available patent data on women, minorities, and veterans, and to provide recommendations on how to promote their participation in the patent system. The hearing featured emotional testimony from five inventors, one of whom has recently joined Debtors Anonymous as a result of her patent being invalidated in the Southern District of New York. The SUCCESS Act was signed into law by President Trump on October 31, 2018 and gave the USPTO a one-year period to study representation of women, minorities, and veterans groups in patents. The Office released a report in February which showed that the number of women named as inventors had not been increasing at the same rate as the number of women who were now in STEM professions. Deputy USPTO Director Laura Peter said at the hearing on Wednesday that the Office is seeking input from industry, lawyers, and academics at the public forums, the next two of which are scheduled in Detroit on May 16 and San Jose on June 3. “We’re looking for concrete ideas and action plans to increase the numbers of these groups applying,” Peter said, before explaining that she would be unable to stay for the remainder of the hearing.

During a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Tuesday titled, “Intellectual Property and the Price of Prescription Drugs: Balancing Innovation and Competition,” senators heard from five witnesses about proposals to lower drug prices for Americans and what role the patent system plays in the high cost of prescription drugs. The witnesses included two professors, a patient advocate, the Director of South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, and the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The hearing is one of several so far this term on the topic. Judiciary Committee Chair, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), opened the hearing by summing up the problem they faced in a question: essentially, how do we make sure that America continues to be the most innovative place on the planet and avoid killing the “goose that laid the golden egg,” without having a system that drives up cost for the consumer? Graham said he expects the committee will move on legislation related to patents and prescription drug pricing this year, and there seemed to be broad agreement on at least one bill currently under consideration—the CREATES Act of 2019, which has been floating around Congress since 2016.

In the sixth installment of our 13-part patent-trends study (performed in collaboration with GreyB) providing high-level data across industries, we will examine trends in the medical-device industry. The United States has been the largest target medical-device market, at nearly 50% of the global market. These devices are highly variable in purpose, design and complexity. Thus, developing an effective patent strategy can be highly valuable yet complicated. Our study not only identified a set of applications that pertained to this industry, but also—for each application in this set—it was determined whether the application pertained to one or more of the categories shown in the topology below. If so, the application was appropriately tagged, such that it could be included in one or more category-specific data subsets for subsequent analysis.

It has been a wild decade for the automotive industry, with U.S. auto brands almost dying in the Great Recession. Federal government intervention rescued brands and attempted to turn them toward efficiency instead of profitable large SUVs. Although there has been a steep increase in patent filings in the automotive space, U.S. companies have a smaller proportion of them, indicating global forces are a major threat. This is especially acute in the area of electric propulsion, where our early patent lead has plateaued. Many of the car brands and battery innovators have been sold to Chinese interests who are moving quickly with government support to dominate the car industry, at least for electric vehicles (EVs). Our study not only identified a set of applications that pertained to this industry, but also—for each application in this set—we determined whether the application pertained to one or more of the categories shown in the topology below. If so, the application was appropriately tagged, such that it could be included in one or more category-specific data subsets for subsequent analysis.

Two years ago, we told the story of a patent broker who said: “This market keeps on getting worse; the case law keeps on coming out against patent owners; the prices keep dropping. This job keeps getting harder.”  We replied: “Our data says that you did pretty well last year.” “Right,” the broker conceded. “Last year was our best year ever …” This is truer now than ever before. Many of the metrics by which we analyze the patent market have been focused on the price of a single patent, a patent family, or even a group of patents in a package. But this leaves out a key market statistic: volume. As the market matures, we see: prices stabilizing across listings, buying and selling programs becoming more streamlined, and more transactions overall. The market is up, with more sales and more participants than ever before. While average asking prices dropped again, this drop was mostly due to single-asset prices normalizing to the pricing of the rest of the market. Meanwhile, listings, sales, and dollars transacted have all increased. The market continues to grow.

In our fourth article studying patent trends data across industries, we turn to the computational biology and bioinformatics industry. Computers have transformed many aspects of our everyday lives. However, much of drug-discovery, treatment testing and biology research is performed using the same wet-lab techniques developed decades ago. Rather recently, biotech companies have begun to capitalize on the impressive computational power, sophisticated models and skilled workforce to integrate computers into their operation. This integration can facilitate generating more accurate hypotheses, conducting more efficient tests and more thoroughly evaluating results. For example, modeling can be used to identify a set of therapeutics that have a physical structure complementary to a target, to better define a screen. Given that this valuable technological area sits at the intersection of biology and computers—which traditionally are associated with very different types of applications, examination and applicants—it is important to be well informed about the patenting arena when identifying patenting strategies.Our study not only identified a set of applications that pertained to this industry, but also—for each application in this set—it was determined whether the application pertained to one or more of the categories shown in the topology below. If so, the application was appropriately tagged, such that it could be included in one or more category-specific data subsets for subsequent analysis.

A 2018 amendment to the Indian Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Act, 2015 (“Commercial Courts Act”) makes it mandatory for a party to exhaust the remedy of mediation before initiating court proceedings under the Commercial Courts Act, with the limited exception of cases where urgent relief is being sought. Patent infringement disputes, being disputes of a commercial nature, are governed by the Commercial Courts Act and, therefore, the mandatory pre-institution mediation provision applies to such disputes. The time bound mediation procedure envisaged in this provision allows a patentee to not only bring a possible infringer to the negotiation table under the threat of future litigation but also allow patentees to resolve disputes in a timely manner by avoiding long-drawn litigation in Indian courts. Patentees can now consider a different strategy when considering steps for enforcement of patent rights in India in view of the possible advantages of such mediation proceedings discussed in this article.

This week in IP news: the CASE Act, which would create a small claims system for copyright claims, is reintroduced in both houses of Congress; Qualcomm earns a massive $4.5 billion payment from its settlement with Apple; the U.S. Supreme Court seeks input from the Solicitor General on Oracle v. Google; and China amends its trademark law, increases copyright actions, and earns more than one-third of all 5G SEPs.

In yesterday’s article, we discussed patent trends in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, as part of our patent-trends study (performed in a collaboration between Kilpatrick Townsend and GreyB Services). Today’s article pertains to the Financial Technology (FinTech) industry, which is defined as technology used to support banking and financial services. In June 2014, the Supreme Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank, which nearly immediately made it much harder to patent a FinTech invention. This resulted in fewer FinTech patent application filings. Nonetheless, the use of bank accounts, credit/debit cards and money-transfer systems is ubiquitous, and protected innovations in this area offers a high potential value. Thus, it is essential to understand the industry and the patenting prospects, which can inform both R&D investments and patenting strategies.

In yet another pathetic result of the U.S. government crashing the patent system, Amazon announces it is a patent infringement court. I guess we can call it the District of Amazon Federal Court (DAFC). They claim a cheaper, faster alternative to traditional patent lawsuits. Ring a bell?  The last time I heard that we got the PTAB. This irony is judiciously served. First, Amazon used the patent system to differentiate themselves from their competitors with the one-click patent, thus gaining market share. Then the U.S. government crashed the patent system so that no small inventor or startup could challenge Amazon with improved technologies. With no challengers, Amazon monopolized.