News picks
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After introductions by Sunil Abraham of CIS, the discussions were kicked off by Sudhir Krishnaswamy (an Assistant Professor at National Law School), who spoke about typology of laws; principle-based arguments for excluding software from patenting; policy-based arguments for the same; and lastly, strategies for combating the patent manual. About the rationale behind excepting software ("computer programmes per se") from patentability, he theorised that given the location of "computer programmes per se" in section 3(k) of the Act, surrounded as it is by "mathematical or business method" and "algorithms", the exception seems to be a principle-based one and not a policy-based one. He also talked about what he saw as the practical realities of the Patent Office, and questioned the role the Draft Manual would actually play in the decisions of Patent Examiners.
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by: 08 Oct 2008 08:39 |
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It looks like we are going to be entering a pretty sharp recession. And what happens during a recession? Companies go out of business. Many more than would be the case during times of growth. And a lot of those companies will own patents. These will be auctioned off along with other assets as administrators seek to raise cash for creditors. It’s one way trolls/NPEs have been building their portfolios for years. And now there are going to be more opportunities than ever before.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 22:48 |
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It's been a long, nearly two years of silence since CSIRO won a patent battle against Buffalo Tech, causing an injunction preventing the Austin company from selling wireless routers. On September 19, 2008, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that CSIRO patent claims are invalid and Buffalo is getting a new trial. With any luck, we will be able to get our grubby hands on low-cost Wi-Fi routers again!
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by: 07 Oct 2008 22:40 |
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Verizon Communications Inc. lost its patent-infringement case against Cox Communications Inc., signaling that Verizon may have a difficult time extracting royalties from cable providers for Internet-based telephony. A federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia found that Cox didn't infringe on six Verizon patents related to Internet telephony.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 21:25 |
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One of the last companies to jump on the VoIP bandwagon is Verizon. Yet -- our legal system allows larger companies with deep pockets who focus more on patents than providing users with new technology to easily sue new competitors into oblivion. This is the case with Vonage -- the company paying over a hundred million dollars for patent infringement to Verizon. Cable companies are another matter as they have large legal teams and deep enough pockets to defend themselves from patent suits which may or may not be frivolous.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 21:23 |
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A global petition designed to raise awareness of software patents has been launched September 24 as part of the World Day against Software Patents. Currently in draft format, the petition includes information about how software patents can affect business, research and development.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 21:20 |
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Comcast and Verizon Communications have inked a deal under which the two companies have agreed to not sue each other over patent claims for a period of five years, according to company sources and published reports. The pact was negotiated before Cox Communications won a key legal victory against Verizon, with a federal jury Monday finding Cox did not infringe the telco’s patents related to Internet telephony technologies.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 10:25 |
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What makes you think the Linux kernel is safe? Microsoft has claimed that the kernel has hundreds of patent infringements in it. What about Samba or Wine? I don't understand this focus on Mono. If you're really worried about Microsoft's software patents then I suggest you stop using any kind of software altogether.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 10:11 |
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Yangaroo argues that Destiny Media’s patent “narrowly claims” a certain process over the decryption for a single file transferred but doesn’t take into account a separate “key management service” to decode the media. It is advisable to read the specifics in their press release.
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by: 07 Oct 2008 10:08 |
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In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that DVRs distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., violated the software elements of Alviso,Calif.-based TiVo's patent. The ruling overturned the lower court's finding that Dish also infringed on the patent's hardware elements. TiVo sued in 2004, alleging that EchoStar, a satellite broadcaster, infringed on TiVo's patented technology that allows viewers to record one program while watching another. EchoStar Communications changed its name to Dish in late 2007.
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by: 06 Oct 2008 15:11 |
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Law doesn't get changed or strengthened unless someone challenges it, rather than settling out-of-court. A mistake by a court in the U.S. - not reading fully a ruling by a higher court - resulted some twenty years ago in Software Patents becoming valid. It will take someone else to stand up in court and force a review of that mistaken ruling - which ignored the higher court's ruling that software can only be included in a patent if it is part of a physical (hardware) device.
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by: 06 Oct 2008 10:59 |
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AWARE, against this background, of the need to give innovative companies the means to obtain the best protection for their inventions and to profit from them more efficiently; points out the advantages of a Community patent and a patent court system in order to give users the means to enforce their intellectual property rights throughout the Union;
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by: 06 Oct 2008 10:26 |
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Away from the negotiating table, the French are hosting a conference in Strasbourg in the middle of October on patent harmonisation. But looking at the programme, this seems to be about going over old ground, rather than finding solutions to the problems that are holding talks up. Looking at the list of speakers, I noticed just one from Spain and not one from Italy. Given that these are two of the countries that have been most opposed to the introduction of a unitary system that strikes me as quite telling. Now, it could well be that in the next three months everything will change and momentum towards a deal will build again. But right now, looking at the evidence, I am inclined to believe that my source is correct. Patents are no longer a French priority. And because of this, the French government will not seek to use up political capital which could be spent elsewhere on getting a meaningful deal done on either the Community patent and/or the Community patent court.
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by: 06 Oct 2008 09:50 |
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But so far everyone is still trying to reform individual egoism failed, criticized the EU representative Jens Gaster: "We have the egoism of national patent and trademark offices. About half of the patent and trademark offices have too little money and too little work. We have the interests of the European Patent Office and European Patent Organization, which wants to remain autonomous. We have the interests of translators . (…) We have political interests, their beautiful national language is more important than jobs." […] We must once again say, Microsoft and SAP have become big without patents. It must also keep in mind. (…) We have made an investigation which lead to the protection of innovation success, and because it is so, the 20 Percent of German companies that are innovative, even without any protection mechanism successful innovations in the market. It goes without!
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by: 05 Oct 2008 08:23 |
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Blackboard has been called overly aggressive in asserting its patent rights. How do you continue to deal with that? This is core to our technology, core to what we do, and we showed in court that [a competitor was] infringing on that patent that we had filed and proudly won. We work in the academic community, so I can understand that some may have different views of the role of the patent office and the importance of patents and trademarks. Blackboard uses third-party software that we license from other people. We pay rights and royalties for that software, and we expect other companies that utilize our technology patents to do the same.
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by: 04 Oct 2008 13:05 |
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They merely fear the end of an era which lies ahead. A lot of patent attorneys and patent holders are likely to be disappointed to see sanity restored. The bursting of any bubble is inevitable.
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by: 04 Oct 2008 12:53 |
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The new issue of IAM is now available on-line to the magazine’s subscribers. The cover story focuses on Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk. Written by James Bessen and Michael Meurer, the book has attracted a great deal of attention across the world because of its central message; namely, that the US patent system is failing to incentivise innovation and, in fact, is actually acting as a disincentive to the inventive process. While many have praised Bessen and Meurer’s work, others have been fiercely critical; claiming that the two authors fail to understand how patents work and that because of this the book is fundamentally flawed. We decided to put Bessen and Meurer in contact with one of their critics, Silicon Valley-based lawyer Craig Opperman. The result was a fascinating discussion.
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by: 04 Oct 2008 12:50 |
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Although I am nowhere near an expert, it seems to me that, as with all intangibles, one of the fundamental problems you face with IP is finding valuations that make sense to more than a few experts. We have got to where we are today because too few people understood exactly what was going on. That will not be allowed to happen again. Surely, therefore, the whole concept of IP valuation needs to become much more transparent. There will have to be generally accepted means to undertake valuations that can be communicated in a comprehensible manner to a wide constituency composed of board members, analysts, share owners and other kinds of investor. To my knowledge, these means do not currently exist.
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by: 04 Oct 2008 12:49 |
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An unusual number of patent lawsuits are being filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas which includes Marshall, Tyler, and Texarkana. Marshall has a reputation for plaintiff-friendly juries for the 5% of patent lawsuits that reach trial, resulting in 78% plaintiff wins. The number of patent suits filed in 2002 was 32, and the number for 2006 has been estimated at 234. Only the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles will have more patent suits filed than Marshall.
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by: 03 Oct 2008 13:14 |
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The Patents Bill 2008 was introduced into Parliament on July 9 2008. With an election imminent in November this year, there is some doubt as to the timeframe for enacting the legislation. However, in view of the significant differences that the bill introduces, it is worthwhile briefly summarising the main aspects of the proposed legislation. [...] Methods for medical treatment of humans by surgery or therapy, and methods of diagnosis practised on human beings are specifically excluded from patentability.
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by: 03 Oct 2008 13:02 |
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