Posts Tagged: "Authors"

I’m traveling around the country showcasing some fun holiday gift ideas.  First up, if you hate plugging in all of your tech toys to their chargers every night, then check out Duracell myGrid Smart Charger. Your tech toy/smart phone wears either a power sleeve or power clip. At the end of the day, you just drop your tech toy onto…

I applaud Popular Mechanics for tackling the under-covered issue of patent reform in Inventors Slam Patent Reform Effort. However, I disagree with some of the magazine’s assertions. Regarding first-to-invent vs. first-to-file, PM says: FTI theoretically allows an inventor to sit on an idea for years, gradually improving it until he or she is ready to file. FTF eliminates that strategy,…

The meaning of words often depends on the context in which they appear.  That principle is also true of terms which appear in patent claims.  In Ultimax Cement Manufacturing Corp. v. CTS Cement Manufacturing Corp., the Federal Circuit reaffirmed that the context matters in reversing a district court grant of summary judgment that certain patent claims were not infringed or…

After Monday’s oral argument, many are trying to divine how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in the Bilski v. Kappos, and whether the Federal Circuit’s “machine or transformation” test will survive. Having now read the oral argument transcript, my own prognostication is that the Federal Circuit’s “machine or transformation” test will be trounced as too inflexible, although the Supreme…

Unlike Gene I did not really plan very well. I did not have credentials and am not (yet) a member of the Court. So, I was in line with the public. A patent centric public, but the public none-the-less. My fellow line standers included: Law students headed to taking the patent bar; a Finnegan partner (made me feel a little…

In recent years the Limited Liability Company, which is typically referred to simply as an LLC, has become the darling of entrepreneurs and small businesses around the country. But the LLC is not always the best choice. Sometimes a Subchapter S corporation or another structure is preferable. This article helps you choose the right structure for your new business. Determine…

False marking is a statute in the Patent Act that imposes civil liability for intentionally marking a product as patented when it isn’t. We’ve all come across a product marked with the phrase, “This product is covered by U.S. Patent No. (fill in the blank).” Such marking puts the world on notice that the patent holder has exclusive rights to…

Legend has it that Zeus punished Prometheus by binding him to a rock while having his regenerating liver eaten daily by a great eagle. After the case of Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, we in the patent world may now be subjected to similar torture in determining when medical/drug dosage calibration methods qualify as statutory subject matter under…

The Federal Circuit, in Amgen Inc. v. F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd, has made it clear that you had better characterize an application as a “divisional” if you want to the benefit of the “safe harbor” provided by 35 U.S.C § 121. And if you don’t, you’re going face obviousness-type double patenting problems.  The Federal Circuit in Amgen also went on…

EDITORIAL NOTE: What follows was submitted by Ron Katznelson as a comment to Why a Global Patent System is a Bad Idea, which took issue with the articulate position of Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez that a global patent system is necessary. It is republished here as an article with the permission of Dr. Katznelson. *********** What seems to be…

The appeal in Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc. from the Southern District of California was considered in many quarters as the potentially seminal case on how to calculate damages based on a reasonable royalty using the Georgia-Pacific factors, especially the “entire market value” rule (aka factor 13). That Microsoft and others were currently on the hook to Lucent Technologies…

I want to thank Mr. Quinn for graciously inviting me to write a post on my forthcoming book The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws and Regulations are Killing Innovation, which should be available on Amazon.com in December 2009. This book started as a project based on my observations. I deal with technology start-up entrepreneurs…

This past spring, a series of prank videos from a couple bored Domino’s employees captured the worldwide attention of the public and the media. Before they were removed from YouTube, they reportedly garnered a million views. In these videos, an employee put cheese up his nose, and farted and sneezed on sandwich fixings he was handling, while the narrator described…

The Federal Circuit has recently issued some highly controversial decisions, such as In re Bilski now before the U.S. Supreme Court. But possibly the strangest this year is Martek Biosciences Corp. v. Nutrinova, Inc. What makes Martek Biosciences strange is not so much the argument between the majority and dissent about whether the claim term “animal” included humans. Instead, it…

We argue, hour by hour, day by day, about large issues of morality and ethics and discuss how to make our nation “green”. We discuss large high-level issues like “should we have a public option for healthcare?”, but we give less attention to the details regarding what such an option might look like. Similarly, in the patent system, the public…