Posts Tagged: "Matt Levy"

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.”

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.”

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.

“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.

The inaugural IAM event Patent Law & Policy, which will focus on how developments in law and policy affect patent owners’ ability to monetize their rights, will take place in Washington DC on November 17, 2015. This one-day conference in Washington DC offers all those involved in the patent market the perfect opportunity to listen to, learn about and engage in the many legal and policy debates currently taking place around patents.