Followup on Jonathan Cheng's article on BraBaby

Further to the IPBiz post entitled More on Jonathan Cheng, BraBaby, and BraBall, IPBiz submitted a letter to StartUp Journal, and now received a response, of sorts.

Letter to StartUp Journal:

Of the July 6 article by Jonathan Cheng titled Small Firm Takes on Japanese Pirates, the text "earlier patent" and "Thus far, Mr. Engel says, he has spent about $125,000 registering the BraBaby for patenting, copyright and trademark in the U.S., the European Community, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as in China," might imply that Engel has a US patent on BraBaby. Investigation of the USPTO database shows no patent. If there is no issued patent, there are no patent rights upon which to assert an infringment or piracy. What's the deal here?

Separately, investigation of the USPTO database reveals patents and published patent applications on articles similar to the BraBaby, which are discussed on the IPBiz blog,
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/piracy-of-brababy-wall-street-journal.html

Lawrence B. Ebert
July 7, 2007


Response from StartUp Journal:

Hi, Thanks for writing. I'll make sure the editors see your note. We appreciate your interest in StartupJournal.com.
Regards,
Laura Lorber

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Recall that there is one relevant DESIGN patent, assigned to Angel Sales, which lists the inventor as Victor Wai of Kowloon, Hong Kong. This is D524,500, issued July 4, 2006, and which cites to (among other patents) Phan's US 6742683, which issued more than two years earlier. Phan's patent has been cited by four patents, including Peska's US 6,973,808.

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The Wall Street Journal entirely missed "where" the "piracy" was here.

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At least IPBiz got a response from StartUp Journal, quite a contrast to the situation with Terri Somers and the San Diego Union Tribune, who simply stonewall their bad reporting on stem cells.

See
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-bad-reporting-in-stem-cell-area.html