News picks
Articles from other sources; copy title, first paragraph, and put URL in body of post.
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Lastly Dr Froehlinger addressed the controversial issue of bifurcation. The Commission's aim is to introduce choice and flexibility into the system and she insisted that there would be no imposed bifurcation of validity and infringement proceedings. [...] She agreed that states should be dissuaded from having local chambers if that resulted in compromised quality. In an upbeat conclusion she claimed to be optimistic, albeit with the 'innocence of a newcomer', and confirmed that the Commission believes that France is hoping to reach an agreement on these proposals under its forthcoming presidency.
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by: 14 Dec 2007 21:47 |
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The same cannot be said for MPEG. Despite the MPEG proponents' claims that MPEG-licensed codecs protect against liability, patent disputes involving MPEG codecs have occurred as recently as the past few months. For example, Lucent v. Gateway [4] and Multimedia Patent Trust v. Microsoft Corp. The MPEG-LA's own sublicense disclaimer warns that licensees are not protected from patent-related litigation nor are they protected from submarine patents.
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by: 14 Dec 2007 11:11 |
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A Federal Court judge has found that MercExchange LLC is due $30 million from eBay in compensation for a patent breach of MercExchange’s “Buy It Now” patent, a long standing feature available on eBay auctions.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 13:54 |
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A Federal Court judge has found that MercExchange LLC is due $30 million from eBay in compensation for a patent breach of MercExchange’s “Buy It Now” patent, a long standing feature available on eBay auctions.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 13:52 |
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Prof. Magliocca compares 19th century problems with "patent sharks" to today's problems with "patent trolls" and suggests the only politically acceptable path out of today's problems may be the path taken out of the 19th century problems, i.e. elimination of the class of patents that triggered the problems. He provides tons of interesting context, but here's one of his proposals: "If the historical parallel between sharks and trolls rings true, then the obvious implication is that repeal is the only real answer to the troll problem. This is does not mean that we should wipe out all technology patents. A more discriminating approach would focus on the most problematic of these patents, which deal with software and business methods. Critics of the recent expansion of patent subject matter into these areas might describe this “experiment” as a disaster on a par with the design patent fiasco of the 1860s."
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by: 13 Dec 2007 13:36 |
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NYU sued the software manufacturer Autodesk for infringement of two of the University’s gesture synthesizer software patents. Both patents stemmed from an original non-provisional application. (Serial No. 08/284,799). That application received a final office action in the Spring of 1997, but the PTO did not receive any response until November 1998 – 18 months later.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 13:30 |
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Mr Noble said the PIN-SME would help smaller firms speak with one voice on European technology policies, helping them to earn fairer rights on software patents. The association, which represents more than 50,000 small companies in eight countries, will also help to standardise einvoicing, e-health and e-skills.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 09:08 |
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A US district judge has penned the latest chapter in eBay's long-standing patent infringement battle with MercExchange LLC. Since 2003, eBay has been fighting a jury's decision that its Buy It Now feature infringes on two patents held by MercExchange, originally an auction site itself over a decade ago. eBay fought off an injunction earlier this year, but the judge's ruling today orders eBay to pay $30 million to MercExchange, LLC.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 09:06 |
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The hacker also took a shot at HP in the messages on milw0rm.com and Bugtraq. "I think the company so deeply involved in security software patents war should take a bigger care about the users' security than taking profits from the rights to the invention of the circle," said porkythepig. "After all, what are the security software patents worth if it is the user who has the final word about their own software security?" It was unclear what "patents war" porkythepig referred to, but HP recently settled with web application security vendor Cenzic to cross-license multiple patents that had been at the heart of two lawsuits filed by SPI Dynamics, a security testing tools developer acquired by HP in June. The settlement was announced by the two companies on 1 October, and the lawsuits were immediately dropped.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 09:05 |
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The belief at Philips – and it is one that I share and have written about frequently – is that at the moment the voice of European IP is too fragmented: there are a number of national groupings and industry organisations, but no highly visible one-stop shop putting the case for IP on a continent-wide basis. This puts IP owners at a considerable disadvantage when they come up against a well-organised opposition – as was the case in the software patents/CII debate and is so even now with regard to things such as the Community patent and the EPLA. To get politicians to take IP seriously, there needs to be a Europe-wide advocacy group with the muscle and resources no only to respond to issues but also to set the agenda. The European IPO would be that body.
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by: 13 Dec 2007 08:58 |
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"The new EPC can also be adapted to new legal developments, and in particular to future Community law, more easily than the old convention," says President Brimelow. Many amendments can now be adopted by the Organisation's Administrative Council itself, without the need for the member states to hold a full diplomatic conference.
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by: 12 Dec 2007 18:17 |
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Without guaranteed Ogg support (whose integration in user agents I think I already established to be sort of a weekend-level junior programmer project at NO COST, due to the ready availability of the technology in all platforms), authors *will be* forced to use patent-encumbered technology. Remember MP3? Well, with HTML5 it’s 1997 all over again.
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by: 11 Dec 2007 15:52 |
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EU-EPLA: from the press conference in Brussels, Belgium, November 22nd 2007.
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by: 11 Dec 2007 15:02 |
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This patent has priority going back to 1999 and includes some basic claims to pausing video on demand services. The patent examiner apparently fought hard to reject the claims since it was taken to the board of patent appeals twice but the rejections were insufficient (it was remanded both times).
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by: 11 Dec 2007 12:08 |
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EPO rules for full revocation after a hearing in the opposition of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII e.V.) against Amazon.com's infamous patent on the online purchase of gifts. The patent EP927945 is a descendant of the controversial One-Click Patent, which was granted to Amazon in the USA but was partially revoked there due to lack of novelty in October 2007.
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by: 11 Dec 2007 11:46 |
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A direct response to such an evolution is indeed to strengthen the selection process, in order to ensure that patents are granted only for high quality inventions and that bad or low quality applications enter the patent system as little as possible. In Guellec and van Pottelsberghe (2007) the following steps, amongst others, are suggested: [...] Open the examination process to external contributions, notably in areas where much of the prior art is widespread in the public instead of patent data bases. There is an ongoing experience in the US in the area of software that should be carefully observed; Increase the inventive step, notably in emerging technological fields (information technology, biotechnology).
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by: 10 Dec 2007 14:03 |
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Our primary goal in this campaign is to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision of 'In re Alappat'. Here, I will explain the history of what that ruling meant, and why that same history has shown us that it should be the focus of our campaign.
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by: 10 Dec 2007 13:57 |
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PIN-SME is made up of national federations and ICT clusters from 8 EU countries. The United Kingdom is represented by the UK IT Association (UKita), the national trade association for technology SMEs. [...] “We believe that European SMEs must speak with one voice on the development of European ICT policies – a voice that is becoming stronger today with the creation of PIN-SME. We fully support this new initiative, which is rooted in the past battles fought by small businesses on software patents, which reinforce monopolisation in the software sector, damage interoperability and act as a barrier to innovation by SMEs”.
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by: 10 Dec 2007 13:42 |
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This Kat gets quite annoyed at the way the EPO at all levels persists with this (to his mind at least) rather dishonest approach. What is wrong with saying that the advance over the prior art represented by an application (though it may be novel and inventive) is nevertheless purely within an area that is excluded from patentability? Even though the 'right' result may be achieved in most cases, the approach does result in some quite strained reasoning that tends to stray far from the clear wording of the Convention, and certainly doesn't help with letting a wider audience know where the line between patentability and exclusion lies.
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by: 09 Dec 2007 18:05 |
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This Article provides context for the ongoing debate on opportunistic licensing (or patent troll) litigation by pointing out that the same phenomenon occurred in the nineteenth century with respect to design patents on farm tools. [...] The Article then compares the remedies proposed in each era and concludes that curbing trolls through a comprehensive reform is bound to fail. A better approach would seek either to abolish software and business method patents or reduce the arbitrage spread by raising the maintenance fees charged to retain patents.
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by: 09 Dec 2007 17:55 |
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