News picks
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Several senators proposed legislation on Thursday to ban tax-planning patents, as concerns mount at the Internal Revenue Service that such patents may be used to illegally avoid taxes. The bill, introduced by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), would prohibit patents on all tax strategies. A similar bill was proposed in May in the House, and was attached to a major patent law overhaul bill during the summer. That overhaul bill is now before the Senate, where it is expected this new amendment will be added.
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Until recently InRotis, a small company spun out of Newcastle University, was part of a High Court action aimed at forcing the UK Intellectual Property Office to ensure the patent protection offered to UK patent holders matches that available in Europe.
However, the firm was granted a European patent for its work, and as a result has dropped out of the action. Lawyers acting for the remaining four firms involved in the case say InRotis' departure proves the very point their clients are trying to make.
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Microsoft won a patent dispute this week over technology that helps computers boot up faster. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, charged Microsoft with infringing on U.S. patent 5933630, which was issued in 1999 to Acceleration Software International Corp. The suit asked the court to award the patent holder $2.50 per copy of Windows XP sold in the U.S. By Microsoft's account, that could have amounted to between $600 million and $900 million.
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SISVEL announced today that it is acting as the facilitator for the creation of a joint CDMA2000 patent license and is issuing a call for patents and other enforceable patent rights that are essential to the CDMA2000 standard. Sisvel has discussed with parties holding essential CDMA2000 patents to advance the process of structuring a joint license to make essential CDMA2000 patents easily accessible to all users on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. Several meetings will be held in the coming months to reach consensus on licensing terms with the objective of reaching an agreement by the beginning of 2008, and upon successful evaluation, all parties holding essential patents will be invited to join the process.
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Fort Myers-based NeoMedia Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is re-examining one of its patents. NeoMedia has developed bar code reading technology that links camera phone users directly to the Web. The company has a large portfolio of U.S. and foreign patents and pending applications for inventions that involve the processing of "machine readable codes over wireless networks."
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The recent introduction of a favourable tax exemption for patents should provide a significant fillip for companies involved in research and development in Belgium. Research and development is the big winner from the introduction of a favorable tax regime for patent income in Belgium.This regime should, together with the notional interest deduction, further attract foreign investors to Belgium and be welcomed by existing Belgian companies and branches. The new tax incentive for patents comes down to an 80 percent tax exemption of patent income as a result of which the nominal tax rate for such income.
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Mark Chandler, Cisco: "As an innovator and large patent holder - our portfolio was recently rated No. 1 in the telecommunications world by the Patent Board - we certainly support strong laws that protect inventors' creativity and innovations and the companies and people who may ultimately own those inventions. Yet, we face a growing tide of patent litigation and an environment that is deterring innovation by siphoning resources that could be spend on research and development."
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Vonage settlement of three software patents suits has critics up in arms again. But calls to restrict software patents as anticompetitive remain pointless and futile. Why is it that software patents get no respect? After almost every high-profile lawsuit involving software patents, there are cries of dismay and derision over how the intellectual property system is being abused to con juries and extract corporate ransom.
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Garmin Ltd. announces today a confidential global settlement of all of its intellectual property litigation with TomTom. The settlement resolves all of the pending intellectual property litigation including cases in the UK, Netherlands, Wisconsin, and Texas. The parties did not disclose details of their agreement.
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Delaware firm Autotext Technologies has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 23 major technology companies including Apple and IBM, regarding predictive word processing. [...] All companies listed in the lawsuit, Autotext alleges, are infringing on a "computer-based transcription" patent that was filed in 1994. The patent is loosely about predictive word processing, where a list of words is presented when a user begins to input letters, hence the Autotext nomenclature.
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Technology Patents LLC may be the new champion for suing 131 companies worldwide—the list goes on and on, naming companies like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telstra, AT&T, Cincinnati Bell, Motorola, Microsoft, Helio, Taiwan Mobile, O2, Rogers Wireless, China Resources Peoples Telephone Company, Yahoo, Sprint, and everyone in between. The company and its founder, Aris Mardirossian, are suing over what he believes to be infringement on two of his patents that address international text messaging.
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The patent-holding firm could "send letters to big companies saying, 'We have 800 patents that cover your business,'" said Ron Laurie, managing director of Inflexion Point Strategy LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., investment bank specializing in intellectual property. That is a "game changer," he said, because companies usually get warned over just a few patents. Faced with such massive numbers, he said, "nobody can risk going to court, and they're just going to write you a check."
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Agreement will cover intellectual property contained in hardware and software products, including certain Linux-based technologies. Microsoft Corp. and Kyocera Mita Corp. have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement to allow access to each company’s respective patent portfolio. The agreement encompasses a broad range of patents and will help further each company’s research and development (R&D) efforts.
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Through this agreement, Kyocera Mita will gain access to Microsoft's patents for Kyocera Mit's current and future product lines, including multifunction products (MFP), printers, copiers and certain Linux-based embedded devices. Microsoft will gain access to Kyocera Mita patents for Microsoft's current and future product lines, including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and other IT product lines.
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In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from universities in Asia." I know I will sleep so much more comfortably knowing that IVL will be out plundering Asia so that it can turn around and plunder the rest of the planet.
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The University of California is a major patent player. It receives by far more patents from the U.S. PTO than any school in the country. It’s generated about $500 million in patent royalties and fee income in the past five years. It also aggressively uses the courts. As a plaintiff alleging patent infringement, the school has settled a claim against Genentech for $200 million, secured a payment of $185 million from Monsanto, and won a $30 million settlement from Microsoft. Yet, when it comes to getting sued for patent infringement, the university, as well as the state of California, are Teflon. The legal doctrine of sovereign immunity protects states and state institutions from legal liability. Courts have held that participating in the federal patent system doesn’t cost a state its immunity. The upshot — states can sue, but effectively can’t be sued. Here’s the WSJ story.
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And, in the light of the newest EU Treaty of Lisbon, majority decisions in this field of law should be possible after ratification thereof. This rough consensus might mature into a full political majority if the French EU Presidency manages to overcome some problems concerning issues like language of proceedings etc. pp. In short, Mr. Gaster believes that the problem of building effective political majorities for a EU-wide patent litigation system can be solved with good luck during the French EU Presidency in 2008.
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A job offer by the EPO recruiting software patent examiners appeared recently on Monster.be. But the EPO don't grant software patents.
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"That is probably fair," said Kim Walker, head of intellectual property at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-law.com. "The solution would really be for somebody like the European Commission to say that protection for software which is constantly evolving and developing and is only really valuable for a couple of years, doesn't need 20 years of protection." "It would be good if someone had the guts to develop a new form of protection for software which would give short, sharp and narrow protection," he said. "I don't know if it would be feasible, the international complications would be enormous, but if you are going to protect software otherwise than through copyright, it ought to be something with a lighter touch."
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The reforms could include viewing patents not as a monopoly on innovations but as a way of making information about them more widely available, European Patent Office vice president Michael Desantes told a conference in Manila. Adrian Cristobal, head of the Philippines' intellectual property office, said the patent system needed to be promoted in his country since only 1.2 percent of all patents in the Philippines were held by Filipinos.
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