Posts Tagged: "Authors"

The complaint alleges that two ASUS products sold by Negri Electronics violate a patent that ExoTablet currently holds for combination laptop/cell phone devices: the PadFone and the PadFone 2. ExoTablet is seeking compensation for infringement, lost profits due to infringement, prejudgment interest and treble damages. Negri Electronics does not seem to be too concerned, or at least believes that it has a very strong legal case in defense. Ryan Negri said that the company was very surprised by the legal action, and that they consider the case to be “frivolous.” “The technology industry has been rife with patent trolling in recent years,” Negri said, “which we believe is a fair and accurate characterization of this current lawsuit.”

One of the requirements of finding a violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 is that the Complainant must establish that “an industry in the United States, relating to the articles protected by the [intellectual property right] … concerned, exists or is in the process of being established.

final judgment that was made by the New Jersey District Court in favor of Tetris Holding with respect to its copyright and trade dress infringement claims against Xio Interactive, Inc., I would issue this obvious warning: Copycats Beware.

More than 30 patent applications assigned to California’s Apple Incescribe upgrades to handheld devices manufactured by the electronics firm. A new hearing aid detection system may make iPhone use much easier for the hearing impaired. New security measures for handheld devices, including image-based user authentication, are also outlined.

The Green Technology program has taken on a new importance. Clean tech represents a major element in the economics and pubic debate over federal funding of research and development. The recent spate of high profile company failures — companies that received billions of dollars in loan guarantees and financial incentives and tax credits at state and federal levels — have caused a deceleration in funding of green technology ventures and a new dialog on whether these innovations are market ready and strong enough to succeed in the marketplace without such support

Do cats need pants? Do horses need goggles? Pet clothes and accessories symbolize the close relationship we have with animals. We want to make our pets as “comfortable” as we are. We want to make them as fashionable as we are – or as fashionable as we perceive ourselves. To these ends, hardworking inventors have been striving for new ways to make pets and animals happier and more stylish. Some of their inventions have utility, and some are just about looking cool.

In 1906, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle,” that expose of unsanitary conditions in the meat industry shocked the nation, ranging from the public to regulators. Today, it is too well known how much can go wrong in the food supply chain, which is increasingly global. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in the U.S. alone, each year there are 37.2 million foodborne diseases, 228,744 hospitalizations, and 2,612 deaths. In addition to this human tragedy there are the negative commercial impacts such as the cost of recalls, which can bankrupt a company as it did the Peanut Corporation of America after the 2008 outbreak of Salmonella in its products. That means jobs are lost and communities financially devastated. Also, reputational capital takes a hit, demand could be down for exports, and lawsuits are filed. The full extent of these effects is unknown which is why WHO created the Initiative to Estimate the Global Burden of Foodborne Diseases.

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.

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.

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.

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.