Posts Tagged: "Matt Levy"

Industry Reaction to SCOTUS Granting Cert. in Oil States

Russ: Slifer: ”Clearly the Supreme Court is not done with its intellectual property obsession. By granting certiorari in Oil States vs. Greene’s Energy Group, et al. the Court has agreed to address the questions of constitutionality of post grant reviews, the amendment process implemented by the USPTO, and how the USPTO applies the broadest reasonable interpretation to claims. Some commentators believe that this is a good sign for patent owners and the end of IPR’s. I don’t anticipate, however, that the Court will shift in a pro-patent direction and gut a cornerstone of the AIA. This will most likely be one of the rare cases where the Supreme Court substantially affirms the CAFC.”

Patent Exhaustion at the Supreme Court: Industry Reaction to Impression Products v. Lexmark

Bob Stoll: ”And it is the international exhaustion holding that is particularly troubling. Sales abroad act independently from the US patent system and there is no impact from the US patent system on those sales. Yet in this decision, the Supreme Court says that the foreign sale now diminishes patent rights in the US. All sorts of goods, including life-saving pharmaceuticals, are sold at lower prices in poor nations. This decision will encourage powerful foreign groups to gather products up and send them back to the US to get the higher prices. Or, companies will not be able to lower prices and sell their products in those countries. Both the poor in distant lands and the innovators in the US will suffer.”

Does innovation lead to patents, or patents lead to innovation?

We pick up our conversation with me suggesting that there is a problem with claims being found to be abstract when the decision maker has been able to do a complete 102 (novelty) and 103 (obviousness) analysis. We then move on to discuss the meaning of “innovation,” whether innovation leads to patents or patents lead to innovation, and briefly touch on a long-time disagreement about whether patents are property rights. … LEVY: “Uncertainty I agree makes businesses nervous. That’s obvious. But, and again, I’m speaking only for myself here, it seems to me that for many businesses there is a desire to have the benefits of taking the risk without the down side of taking the risk. And one of the downsides here is that the law can change. Patents are not — even if we didn’t change the law patents are no guarantee of anything. Once you get an issued patent that patent could be found invalid. It’s in the law that a patent can be challenged and that I can be found invalid. So no one should think that once I have this patent that’s it, it’s good for all time and I can take on all comers and they’re going to have to pay me regardless. I have heard too many time people thinking that this is some sort of guarantee and any sort of challenge is a violation of their Constitutional rights.”

A Software Patent Discussion with Matt Levy

It is probably fair to say that Matt Levy’s views are contrary to mine with respect to many patent related matters, but particularly so with respect to software patents… One of the things I have always liked about Levy is that while we do disagree about much, we do so in a way that is not disagreeable. I also greatly appreciate how he always tries to work with me to figure out at what point in our analysis we go separate ways, which leads to some very interesting and lively conversations (as you might imagine)… Recently we were swapping e-mails and something came up that I found particularly intriguing. I told him I thought we really need to take this on the record and he agreed. What follows is our conversation.

Industry Reaction: Supreme Court upholds Federal Circuit in Cuozzo

“This is obviously a victory for some who challenge a patent’s validity in IPR proceedings since broadly construed claims are more vulnerable to attack than narrowly construed claims” remarked Scott Daniels, partner at Westerman Hattori Daniels & Adrian, LLP. “Still, the great majority of IPR decisions do not turn on claim construction and for those cases Cuozzo simply makes no difference.”… Levy, who was similarly dead on accurate with his predictions, raises an important point that so many in the patent community who were rooting for Cuozzo failed to keep in mind. Those challenging the action of an agency face a substantial uphill battle when they seek a judicial determination overriding agency rulemaking and statutory implementation.