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Innovative Use of Patent Examiner Statistics Improves Efficiency and Strengthens PortfoliosWe recently handled an application in which the examiner rejected the independent claims as obvious in view of six references from a variety of different fields. Submitting arguments in response to the Office Action did not convince the examiner to withdraw the rejection. We checked the examiner’s allowance rate and noticed it to be 30%…
USPTO Director Andrei Iancu Discusses Patentability of Algorithms, PTAB Proceedings at Senate Judiciary CommitteeSen. Harris followed up by asking whether algorithms were mathematical representations of laws of nature. “You’re getting right to the heart of the issue,” Iancu said. What Iancu said after that should be a major breath of fresh air to inventors and patent owners frustrated by Section 101 validity issues in the wake of Alice…
Director Iancu tells Senate: 101 is an issue “we must all address”"The PTO we will work to provide more concrete tests – to the extent possible given Supreme Court precedent," Director Iancu said speaking about patent eligibility. "This is an area we must all address, and one on which we will continue to engage this Committee..." The post Director Iancu tells Senate: 101 is an issue…
How to Customize Your Prosecution Strategy for Your ExaminerWhat would you change about your prosecution strategy if you knew more about your assigned examiner’s behavior and could identify cases that require extra care and a thoughtfully crafted prosecution strategy? The post How to Customize Your Prosecution Strategy for Your Examiner appeared first on IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law.
Are fewer continuations the sign of a healthy patent system?Continuations are filed many times not because the examination process has been somehow inefficient or non-conclusive, but rather because the underlying property is so valuable the owner wishes to have a patent portfolio rather than a single patent. Sometimes, with foundational important or pioneering innovations, there will be many patents issuing from the same parent…
Increases in Innovation, Patent Boom Leads to Development in ChinaThe patent boom China has been experiencing is easy to explain. China as a country has been unwavering in its support for domestic patent production in recent years. Indeed, the Chinese government has been actively encouraging not only increased innovation that makes it more likely there will be patentable innovations, but that government has been…
IPWatchdog Seeks to Hire One or More Law Students for SummerIPWatchdog.com is seeking to hire one or more part-time law students with an interest in intellectual property. We are looking for individuals with strong research and writing skills who can work independently and are interested co-authoring articles on a wide variety of topics, including patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret law. The post IPWatchdog Seeks…
USPTO Director Iancu Makes Surprise Appearance at Inventor Conference"We are focused on delivering reliable and predictable IP rights," Director Iancu told the Inventor Group Presidents gathered at the Patent Office as he addressed them to start the day this morning. "I have called for a new dialog in intellectual property. A dialogue focused on the brilliance of the inventors, the excitement of invention…
Samsung Galaxy Smartphones Targeted in Infringement Case Over Secure Device Authentication PatentsTexas-based patent owner PACid Technologies filed a complaint alleging patent infringement committed by South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung (KRX:005930). The case, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, focuses on authentication protocols utilized by Samsung devices which allegedly infringe upon a pair of patents owned by PACid. The post Samsung Galaxy Smartphones Targeted in…
Federal Circuit Allows USPTO to Defend Appeal from Inter Partes ReexaminationIn Knowles Elecs. LLC v. Iancu, Knowles appealed the inter partes reexamination decision of the Board, which affirmed an examiner’s finding that certain claims were anticipated while other claims would have been obvious over various prior art references. The third-party requester declined to defend the judgment in its favor. The Director of the USPTO intervened…
Director Iancu speaks of Wright Brothers as champions of innovation, not villainsHere is what Director Iancu had to say about the Wright Brothers: "At my swearing-in, I remarked that through the doors of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes our future. And indeed, it does, and it always did. We must celebrate that. From Thomas Edison to the Wright Brothers, from Stanley Cohen and Herbert…
A Look At Facebook Patents Covering ‘Big Brother’ Data Collection TechnologiesFacebook users continue to be shocked at the amount and kind of data being collected by the social media platform, including recent reports about call and SMS text messaging data which Facebook has been collecting from Android mobile users. Along with the political heat Zuckerberg continues to take, Facebook itself could be on the hook…
Negotiating Your First Big Tech Software LicenseOne of the critical moments in the life of a start-up tech company is landing its first big contract with a giant tech company. That first tech deal is also a daunting process. Take a deep breath. You can negotiate these agreements, as long as you negotiate smartly. Here are five common-sense tips for going…
Protecting Trade Secrets in Europe – An UpdateWith the June 9 deadline for national implementation fast approaching, we surveyed colleagues in our other European offices to check the state of play in their jurisdiction. The picture which emerged was mixed. Much progress has been made towards national implementation of the Directive in the UK, Italy, France, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Hungary.…
Are Today’s Social Media Tech Giants the Big Brother that Orwell Warned Us About?Dystopian novels and science fiction often return to the subject of the loss of personal privacy which is often encouraged by the use of technology enabling constant, omnipresent surveillance. Perhaps the most famous example of this in the science fiction canon of the 20th century is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. First published in 1949, Orwell’s…
Claimed and prior art ranges must have meaningful difference for nonobviousnessPatent claims can recite a numerical range and a patent can be awarded based on the novelty and nonobviousness of the claimed range. Normally, compositions are claimed in this manner but other types of inventions can be defined in terms of a numerical range such as a length as well. In re: Brandt (Fed. Cir.…
Desilu Studios Files Trademark Infringement Complaint Against CBS in California Federal CourtManhattan Beach, CA-based entity Desilu Studios, Inc., filed a complaint alleging trademark infringement and other claims against New York City-based television and film production firm CBS Studios. The complaint, filed in the Central District of California, asks the court to declare Desilu Studios the correct owner of trademarks covering the use of the Desilu trademark,…
NH Judge rules ‘patent troll’ not ‘necessarily pejorative’In a breathtakingly disingenuous passage from the decision, Judge Tucker finds that not all definitions of patent trolls are necessarily pejorative. Are we really to believe Judge Tucker thinks the term "patent troll" is a loving and endearing term spoken with great admiration for inventors who spend tremendous amounts of time, money and energy seeking…
America Needs an Eighteenth-Century Patent SystemWe hear politicos so often proclaim that what America needs is a Twenty-First Century patent system. NO! America most certainly does not need a Twenty-First Century patent system. America needs an Eighteenth-Century patent system. The patent system our founding fathers created recognized the contributions made by everyone in the innovation ecosystem were important and necessary.…
Issue Preclusion, PTAB, and the Split Federal Circuit: Knowles Electronics v. Cirrus LogicUnder the status quo, neither the patentee nor the public is able to rely on judicial determination of an issue that might later be taken to the PTAB. Knowles, Dissenting Op. at 10. Should the differences in standards between the courts and the PTO for proving invalidity, which contribute to the status quo in a…
Spotify, SoundCloud and Deezer Music Apps Sued for Infringing Music Organizer and Entertainment Center PatentPatent owner MOAEC Technologies filed suits alleging claims of patent infringement in the District of Delaware against a series of music entertainment app providers including Spotify, SoundCloud and Deezer. The suits claim that music services offered by all three defendants infringe upon a patent covering a music library collection technology invented by the founder of…
Standing on $450,000Raniere v. Microsoft and AT&T (Fed. Cir. 2018) Chain of Title problem. Keith Raniere is one of the listed inventors of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,215,752 and 7,844,041. Back in 1995, all the inventors, including Raniere, assigned their rights and interests to Global Technologies Inc. (GTI). However in 1996, GTI was administratively dissolved. 18 years later, in 2014 Raniere executed a…
USPTO Oversight Hearing by Senate Judiciary CommitteeNew USPTO Director Andrei Iancu testified in Congress on April 18 for the first time in his new official capacity — this time before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Director must certainly be a visionary — as the chief guide of U.S. intellectual property policy. At the same time, the Director is head of a…
WesternGeco v. Ion Geophysical: Foreign Damages and a French Touristby Dennis Crouch In WesternGeco v. Ion Geophysical, the Supreme Court is focused on the extraterritorial application of U.S. Patent Law. The particular situation is the scope of damages available for the harm caused by exporting a components of a patented invention in violation of 35 U.S.C. 271(f). The April 16 oral arguments began with Former…
Guest Post by Professor Chien: Inequality, Innovation, and PatentsGuest post by Colleen V. Chien, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law. Thanks to the USPTO Office of the Chief Economist and Innography for sharing patent data. Just over a week ago, the United States proposed tariffs on over 1,000 Chinese imports in response to various intellectual property grievances. China responded…
Eligibility: Preamble Does the Trick for Federal Circuitby Dennis Crouch Vanda is an important patent eligibility case drawing a fine line between the the eligible personalized medicine treatment claims and the ineligible methods of Mayo and Ariosa. Vanda Pharma v. West-Ward Pharma (Fed. Cir. 2018) In a split decision, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the validity/infringement of Vanda’s U.S. Patent No. 8,586,610 covering…
Continuing Patent Applications and Performance of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as of Fiscal Year 2017The chart above comes from the newest update on Continuing Patent Applications by Cotropia and Quillen. [LINK]. The article notes “Application Allowance Rates corrected for Refiled Continuing Applications have continued to increase, reaching 96% in FY 2017.” Continue reading Continuing Patent Applications and Performance of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as of Fiscal Year…
Federal Circuit Continues (And Even Expands) is Program of No-Opinion-Judgmentsby Dennis Crouch The Federal Circuit continues to aggressively issues R.36 No-Opinion Judgments as a mechanism for more efficiently deciding appeals. I was looking forward to the outcome in an interesting Gov’t vs Gov’t takings case — Mississippi County, Missouri vs. USA. However, rather than issuing an opinion, the court simply affirmed-without-opinion as permitted under…
VirnetX wins Another $500,000,000 from Apple, but Will They Ever Get Paid?VirnetX won another big Jury verdict against Apple — $500 million after the Jury found that Apple’s FaceTime, iMessage and VPN on Demand violated several VirnetX patents. U.S. Patent Nos. 6,502,135, 7,490,151, 7,418,504, and 7,921,211. The district court previously ruled on summary judgment that the patents were not invalid. In a 2012 decision, prior versions…
Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)by Dennis Crouch President Trump has signed into law a significant roll-back of protections for internet platforms for the purpose of shutting-down prostitution in America. The title “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017.” [UPDATED] Someone who “owns, manages, or operates” an interactive computer service and “uses a facility ……
Brunetti, Tam, and Next Steps for TM Registration Limitsby Dennis Crouch The US Gov’t petition for en banc reheraing in the Brunetti (FUCT) scandalous mark case has been denied without opinion. Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act (codified at 15 U.S. Code § 1052) authorizes the PTO to refuse registration of marks that are: immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may…
TTAB Test: Are Aerated Waters Related to Orange Juice for Section 2(d) Purposes?The USPTO refused to register the mark LOVE AT FIRST SIP, in standard character form, for "mineral and aerated waters; none of the foregoing flavored with juices," finding the mark likely to cause confusion with the identical mark registered for "orange juice beverages." Applicant argued that the number of third-party registrations that cover mineral or…
TTAB Test: Is KRANKY KOOKYS for Cookies Confusable With KRANKY for Chocolate Covered Corn Flakes?The USPTO refused registration of KRANKY KOOKYS for "individually baked cookies decorated with icing showing an image of a frowning face and sold individually" [COOKIES disclaimed], finding the mark likely to cause confusion with the registered mark KRANKY for "chocolate covered corn flakes." Applicant Dwayne Roscoe argued that the unusual spelling of KOOKYS and the…
TTAB Test: Is "THE MASTER CLASS" Generic For Educational Services in the Field of Beauty?The USPTO refused to register THE MASTER CLASS, finding it to be generic for “providing educational demonstrations in the field of make-up application; providing seminars, workshops, and training in the field of beauty." Applicant Mario Dedivanovic argued that THE MASTER CLASS is not generic for his services because there is no definition of "Master Class"…
Precedential No. 12: TTAB Rejects Functionality Claim But Finds Truck Light Configuration Lacks Acquired DistinctivenessThe TTAB sustained an opposition to registration of the product design shown below left, for "Electric lighting fixtures, namely, lights for vehicles," and granted a petition for cancellation of a registration for the product design shown below right, for "Lighting products for vehicles, namely, a combined stop-turn-tail lamp," finding that the two designs lacked acquired…
TTAB Test: Is DATA ATOM Confusable with ATOMIC DATA for Computer Support Services?The USPTO refused registration of the mark DATA ATOM for various computer services, finding the mark likely to cause confusion with the registered mark ATOMIC DATA, in standard character and design form, for overlapping computer services. Applicant argued that the marks differ in sound and appearance, and further that "atomic data" is a widely used…
