Posts in IP News

Recently, I was working on a patent search requiring me to look in areas of patent art relating to male underclothing (a very popular area for patenting, as you may guess) when I came across this little number: US Patent Application 12/071,878, which is titled “Scrotal Support Garment.” This application serves as a great example of rejection through non-patent literature. When you apply for a patent, the examiner can use any information available to the public to reject your application – not just patents. In this case, the examiner had an easy time finding a picture of Borat in the swimwear and was gracious enough to include several pictures in the rejection.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will host the 2012 National Trademark Expo on Friday, Oct. 19, and Saturday, Oct. 20, at the USPTO’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. The free two-day event is designed to educate the public about trademarks and their importance in the global marketplace. Last year’s Trademark Expo attracted more than 15,000 visitors of all ages.

The USPTO has returned to the historical philosophy that patent examiners should work cooperatively with patent applicants to identify allowable subject matter and issue patents on what is allowable, not just focusing on rejection after rejection after rejection. While there are quite a few positive changes, with more in the works, Track One is by far the most successful policy initiative that has come to bear during the Kappos Administration. The only problem with Track One is that more applicants are not using it! What are you waiting for? A look at the numbers shows that Track One is a huge success and ought to be employed far more than it has been.

Ray Niro responds — There is nothing disingenuous about the licensing and enforcement of the Innovatio IP patent portfolio. Nor is this effort about “forcing quick licensing agreements” on questionable patents. The earliest of the Innovatio patents resulted from the pioneering work of Ronald Mahany and Robert Meier of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the early 1990s. Mahany and Meier are widely considered to be the “Fathers of Radio Frequency Local Area Networking Technology” – commonly referred to as wireless local area networking (“WLAN”) or “Wi-Fi.”

Well, Justice Breyer, the writer of the dissenting opinion in Laboratory Corp. v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., finally got his wish. Writing the opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., Breyer ruled that a claimed drug dosage calibration method based on previously unknown “precise correlations between metabolite levels [of administered thiopurine drugs] and likely harm or ineffectiveness” was patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because it “adds nothing to the laws of nature that is not already present when the steps [of the claimed method] are considered separately.” While I’m not surprised that Breyer ruled the claimed method patent-ineligible, his reasoning in Mayo Collaborative Services is, in my view, often nonsensical, and is fraught with unfortunate statements that could potentially eviscerate the patent-eligibility of drug testing methods generally under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

It is with great interest that we at Sentry IP read the report the United States Patent and Trademark Office made to Congress earlier this year on “International Patent Protections For Small Businesses”. The USPTO’s report highlighted the link between the ability of small US businesses to secure international patent protection and the availability to these businesses of a number of commercial advantages, such as attracting investor capital and accessing foreign markets by means of licensing, franchising and exporting. Research suggests that these advantages are directly related to the general economic health of the USA, with improved levels of manufacturing and production leading to job creation.

The sky is falling! Those who feel the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. is terrible are right, although many won’t likely fully apprehend the gravity of the situation at first. Those in the biotech, pharmaceutical and chemical industries have just been taken out behind the woodshed and summarily executed by the Supreme Court this morning. An enormous number of patents will now have no enforceable claims. Hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate value has been erased. But that might be a good thing. Immediate attention now must turn to Congress. Thank goodness that the technical amendments to the America Invents Act are outstanding. This will provide a perfect opportunity for Congress to save an industry that employs many millions of people, while at the same time undoing a pathetic, narrow-minded decision of the Supreme Court.

AP’s common law misappropriation claim has its origins in a remarkably similar suit AP brought against a competing news service almost a century ago. In INS v. AP the Supreme Court, in 1918, enjoined INS, a competing news service, from free-riding on the work product of AP. The misappropriation action was based on INS re-distributing information to its customers which AP had previously released into the public domain. INS was enjoined from using the information for a limited time period while it was hot news (i.e. while it had commercial value as news). The Supreme Court’s decision was based on two rationales: (1) preventing unacceptable conduct in the form of a commercial enterprise free-riding on the investment of time and money by a competitor; and (2) avoiding the resulting ruinous competition that could result from a commercial enterprise free-riding on the efforts of a competitor.

Ray Niro is a nationally recognized trial attorney specializing in the enforcement of patent, trade secret and related intellectual property rights. The name Niro, however, is not like any other in the patent industry. It was as a consequence of a lawsuit one of his clients brought against Intel in 2001 that the term “patent troll” was coined. On March 12, 2012, Niro went on the record with me in an exclusive interview. We discussed many things, including the nearly constant attempts to erode patent rights, make it more difficult for patent owners to seek redress for infringement and what the America Invents Act will mean for patent litigation moving forward. We also discussed the undeniable reality that there are bad actors in the industry.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) announced on Friday, March 15, 2012, the launch of the USPTO/AUTM Patent Examiners Training Initiative, a joint program designed to improve the strength and quality of U.S. patents through specialized training between patent examiners, innovators and scientists.

Where the en banc decision gets particularly interesting (and adversarial) is with respect to the second question, namely when does “intervening rights” apply to reexamined claims? By a 6 to 4 vote, (and a reversal of the panel decision), a majority of the en banc Federal Circuit also concluded “as an alternative ground for affirmance” of the district court’s judgment that “intervening rights do not apply to claims that have not been amended and are not new.” The majority opinion by Judge Lourie (the dissenter in the panel decision) was joined by Chief Judge Rader, and Judges Newman, Bryson, Prost, and Linn (who was one of the 5 “nay” votes on the meaning “biocompatible). The dissenting opinion on the “intervening rights” question by Judge Dyk (who wrote the majority opinion in the panel decision) was joined by Senior Judge Gajarsa (who also joined the majority opinion in the panel decision), Judge Reyna, and Judge Wallach.

Raymond P. Niro is patent litigator with tremendous experience and a reputation that is larger than life. To some he is a champion of independent inventors and small business community, frequent clients of his. To others he is nearly the definition of evil. It was as a consequence of a lawsuit one of his clients brought against Intel in 2001 that the term “patent troll” was coined. He has been trial counsel in literally hundreds of intellectual property cases, and since 1996, has won verdicts and settlements for his clients totaling more than $1 billion. On March 12, 2012, he went on the record for this exclusive interview.

Despite difficult economic conditions worldwide, international patent filings under the WIPO-administered Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) set a new record in 2011 with 181,900 applications – a growth of 10.7% when compared with 2010, and the fastest growth since 2005. China, Japan and the United States accounted for 82% of the total growth, and the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corporation was the largest filer of PCT applications in 2011. 2011 also saw the highest number of international trademark applications ever filed under WIPO’s Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks (“Madrid system”) with 42,270 applications, or a 6.5 % increase compared to 2010.

The telework program affords employees the ability to work from home from 1 to 5 days a week, and the largest of these telework programs — the Patent Hoteling Program (PHP) — had 2,600 patent examiners participating at the end of fiscal year 2011. With so many patent examiners working from home does the “brain drain” affect the learning curve of new patent examiners who have fewer people around to help and mentor. The Inspector General’s report does not address the issue of “brain drain,” but does quite clearly demonstrate that those examiners that work from home are more productive than examiners who report to work on campus at the USPTO.