Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Stiglitz predicts Obama win, but did he get the Wright Brothers right?

Breitbart: Joseph Stiglitz, who won the 2001 Nobel prize for economics and who advised President Clinton, said on September 30 that the United States faces a long recession and predicted that Democrat Barack Obama will win November's presidential elections.

Stiglitz opposed the $700 billion bailout: “We’re turning risk investment funds into the hands of taxpayers”, he added pointing out that since no private investor wants to take responsibility for “risk investments, we’re simply wall papering them on to the taxpayer, this is monstrous”.

Stiglitz is not known for getting it right in the patent area: [Stiglitz] went on to discuss intellectual property rights, stating that if you don't get the laws governing IP rights correct, you get all the disadvantages of restricting knowledge, without any of the incentives that you were trying to get by having IP property. For example, the Wright brothers got a patent on airplane after Kitty Hawk, but so did Curtiss, and no private company making planes could afford to pay both parties the patent fees, so it wasn't until World War I when the government set in and said that this was too important for you to hold up development that the aircraft industry got its real start.

More on the dog clone wars

Text in the Korea Times suggests the dog clone wars might be argued in terms of a theory in which the earlier Roslin patent claims encompass the scope of the later SNU claims:

However, BioArts claim that the Roslin patents are "foundational" patents and that the SNU patent could only be an "improvement," which needs the rights to the underlying foundational technology to avoid infringement.

Although a massive amount of ink and electrons will be used to cover the legal battle between Start Licensing and RNL, it remains debatable whether dog cloning is a market worth fighting for.

Lou Hawthorne, the chief executive of BioArts, who believes the dog cloning industry could eventually be worth a ``few hundred million dollars,'' said the international dispute over the patent rights has brought larger uncertainties to the market.

BioArts is currently working to diversify its business, looking to strengthen its presence in the fields of genetic testing, molecular diagnostics and stem cell research.



****See also


The dog clone wars



Patent fight looming over dog cloning; irony as to Hwang's Snuppy patents

Monday, September 29, 2008

Praxair gets a win at CAFC in ATMI case

The CAFC did more heavy lifting on inequitable conduct in the Praxair case:

Inequitable conduct in breach of this duty can be established by showing by
“clear and convincing evidence that the applicant (1) made an affirmative
misrepresentation of material fact, failed to disclose material information, or submitted
false material information, and (2) intended to deceive the [PTO].” Cargill, Inc. v.
Canbra Foods, Ltd., 476 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2007). The required showings of
materiality and intent are separate, and a showing of materiality alone does not give rise
to a presumption of intent to deceive. See Kingsdown Med. Consultants, Ltd. v.
Hollister, Inc., 863 F.2d 867 (Fed. Cir. 1988); see also M. Eagles Tool Warehouse, Inc.
v. Fisher Tooling Co., Inc., 439 F.3d 1335, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[A] failure to disclose
a prior art device to the PTO, where the only evidence of intent is a lack of a good faith
explanation for the nondisclosure, cannot constitute clear and convincing evidence
sufficient to support a determination of culpable intent.”). An inference of intent to
deceive is generally appropriate, however, when (1) highly material information is
withheld; (2) “the applicant knew of the information [and] . . . knew or should have
known of the materiality of the information; and (3) the applicant has not provided a
credible explanation for the withholding.” Ferring B.V. v. Barr Labs., Inc., 437 F.3d
1181, 1191 (Fed. Cir. 2006);


Praxair lost on the '115 but won other points; of the '115-->

Of intent:

Here intent to deceive may be inferred from findings: (1) that the RFO art was
highly material to the prosecution of the ’115 patent, (2) that the applicants knew of the
RFO art and knew or should have known of its materiality, and (3) that the patentee has
failed to come forward with any credible good faith explanation for the applicants’ failure
to disclose prior art use of RFOs to the PTO. See Pfizer, 518 F.3d at 1367;


(...)
the district court also explicitly found that the prosecuting attorney (Tolomei) and one of the
inventors (LeFebre) knew of the undisclosed RFO art. Praxair, 445 F. Supp. 2d at 480
(“Messrs. LeFebre . . . and Tolomei . . . admitted to an awareness of the RFO prior
art.”).10

Biden and plagiarism

The local Lawrence (New Jersey) Ledger had a letter-to-the-editor by one Newton E. Godnick which included the text:

Sen. McCain, for all his past heroism, has insulted the nation and put it in political peril by choosing Gov. Palin to be the proverbial “one heartbeat away” and has done her possibly budding career a disservice by putting her in a position of potential embarrassment.

Sen. Obama, conversely, chose Sen. Biden who adds substance, who could assume the presidency seamlessly if necessary and who augments his own qualifications for that office.


Of the many comments that followed Godnick's letter, there was just one allusion to Biden's plagiarism, which again shows that most people don't find plagiarism that big a deal. If Biden's plagiarism isn't a major concern to most voters, one begins to understand how the Harvard Business Review could publish an article with a sub-heading "Plagiarize with Pride." Allison Routman (symbolically) died for nothing.

There was an interesting comment on Daily Kos concerning Donald Trump's allusion to the Biden plagiarism, which was unknown to Wolf Blitzer:

I'm sure that a ridiculous charge about college plagiarism will be up there in the headlines, along with the meltdown of Wall Street and the banks.

The plagiarism was in law school, and was not a "ridiculous charge" but something that happened.

One comment to Godnick's letter was of interest-->

" Riddle

I am under 45 years old,
I Love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
I have many children,
I have a spot on the national ticket with less than two
years as governor of my state.

DID YOU GUESS??????? Scroll down to see the answer…..

I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900 "


***from a comment on Digg-->

From the NYT:

The file distributed by the Senator included a law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965, that concluded that Mr. Biden had ''used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution'' and that he ought to be failed in the legal methods course for which he had submitted the 15-page paper.

The plagiarized article, ''Tortious Acts as a Basis for Jurisdiction in Products Liability Cases,'' was published in the Fordham Law Review of May 1965. Mr. Biden drew large chunks of heavy legal prose directly from it, including such sentences as: ''The trend of judicial opinion in various jurisdictions has been that the breach of an implied warranty of fitness is actionable without privity, because it is a tortious wrong upon which suit may be brought by a non-contracting party.'' Just One Footnote

In his paper, Mr. Biden included a single footnote to the Fordham Law Review article.

In a letter defending himself, dated Nov. 30, 1965, Mr. Biden pleaded with the faculty not to dismiss him from the school.

"My intent was not to deceive anyone," Mr. Biden wrote. "For if it were, I would not have been so blatant."

IBM's application on "identifying white space"

IBM, which has left a bread crumb trail of questionable patents/applications for anyone who cares to look, came up with yet another:

METHODOLOGIES AND ANALYTICS TOOLS FOR IDENTIFYING WHITE SPACE OPPORTUNITIES IN A GIVEN INDUSTRY published application 20080235220 (September 25, 2008) based on application 12/132561 filed on June 3, 2008.

The abstract:

A method for analyzing predefined subject matter in a patent database being for use with a set of target patents, each target patent related to the predefined subject matter, the method comprising: creating a feature space based on frequently occurring terms found in the set of target patents; creating a partition taxonomy based on a clustered configuration of the feature space; editing the partition taxonomy using domain expertise to produce an edited partition taxonomy; creating a classification taxonomy based on structured features present in the edited partition taxonomy; creating a contingency table by comparing the edited partition taxonomy and the classification taxonomy to provide entries in the contingency table; and identifying all significant relationships in the contingency table to help determine the presence of any white space.

The first claim:

A method for use with at least one keyword retrieved from a first set of documents related to a predefined subject matter, the method comprising:

constructing snippets from textual material in said first set of documents, each of said snippets including at least one word appearing within a specified text distance of said at least one keyword;

defining a plurality of categories wherein each of said snippets is assigned to one of said categories, each of said categories designated for receiving similar snippets;

creating a respective mathematical model for each of said categories;

analyzing a second set of documents to determine an assignment for each document in said second set of documents to one of said categories, said assignment based on matching each of said documents in said second set of documents to said mathematical model for said assigned category;

and

identifying at least one white space in said second set of documents, said at least one white space including fewer than a specified number of documents.


This most interesting claim requires one of ordinary skill to create a mathematical model to practice the claim. In other words, one would have to invent something to practice the so-called invention.

***See also

IPBiz post of THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008 --> Patent reform and IBM's questionable patents

IPBiz post of THURSDAY, AUGUST 07, 2008--> IBM's 7,407,089 "paper or plastic" patent

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/patent-reform-2008-as-house-of-mirrors.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/02/ibms-patent-app-for-method-and.html

Goldstein's "A patent lie," and other IP-themed literature

Patent Baristas gives a thorough discussion of the book “A Patent Lie,” written by Professor Paul Goldstein. The protagonist is forty-seven year old attorney Michael Seeley, a solo practitioner patent attorney in Buffalo, NY [Tim Russert would have liked this.]

After finishing with the discussion of Goldstein's work, Baristas writes:

If you want patent law in more pulp fiction packaging, try Mission: Impossible 2 where IMF member Ethan Hunt must stop the villainous Sean Ambrose, a former fellow-agent gone bad who’s trying to make billions of dollars by unleashing a deadly virus on society while holding the patent on the antidote.

In the end, this fictional plot was not unrelated to what was actually going on in the real anthrax scare.

Baristas also relates MI2 to patent trolls:

In the only movie I can think of where the super-villain in a (so-called) patent troll, director John Woo delivers all the explosions, bullet fire, car crashes and adrenaline-fueled visuals without being bogged down with details like plot lines and dialog.

If one were to take the definition of patent troll within the New York Times of 28 Sept 08, then Robert Kearns was a patent troll. The movie "Flash of Genius" (scheduled for release in Oct. 08) might then be the first movie wherein a patent troll is the hero and the big corporate infringer the villain. [see IPBiz post of SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2008 Story of intermittent wiper patent becomes a movie

Of course, various intellectual property themes are to be found in many older movies.

Elvis Presley was a virtual professor of trademark law in his role as Vince Everett in Jailhouse Rock.

Tyrone Power was cast as inventor Leonard Vole in "Witness for the Prosecution," in which he proved to be a better legal inventor than a technical inventor. See IPBiz post
"Twenty plot twists" misses the boat: Witness for the Prosecution


And, if one really wants to learn how bio/pharma research works, Arrowsmith remains a good starting point.

Wachovia taken over by Citigroup; the fear of the times?

On September 26, CNN Money had a post on Wachovia, of which two points fascinated IPBiz:

#1. Regardless, Wachovia looks to be in substantially better shape than Washington Mutual before WaMu failed. Wachovia has a loyal and largely affluent banking clientele, and a sizable business of offering investment services to clients through financial advisors. WaMu, by contrast, was a saving-and-loan, and had far fewer business lines.

What's more, Wachovia is hardly running out of capital, says Bush. [Nancy Bush, a bank analyst at NAB Research]

But a bank's being well capitalized, she said, "is no longer enough" to reassure nervous depositors.


AND

And yet Wachovia's bread-and-butter retail banking business, by contrast, may be moving in the opposite direction of WaMu's, even as Wachovia's stock slides amid fear.

Wachovia added 226,000 retail checking accounts in the second quarter, a Wachovia spokeswoman said, and a brow-raising 745,000 since June - or nearly a million new checking customers since the second quarter began. Wachovia held average deposits of $435.5 billion in the second quarter.

"We are focused on managing our company and serving our customers with excellence," a spokeswoman for the company said. "We are aggressively addressing our challenges and are working to strategically strengthen and manage capital and liquidity in this challenging environment."


#2. "Pick-a-pay"

But Wachovia also holds more than $122 billion in so-called Pick-A-Pay or Option ARM mortgages, as of July 22. Pick-A-Pays are an unwieldy type of loan that have fast become notorious for producing high levels of losses, as well as high levels of risk for banks that wrote them.

Wachovia's Pick-A-Pay loans give some borrowers the option of deferring portions of their monthly interest payments, thereby increasing their loans' balance. While Wachovia has stopped writing the loans altogether, Pick-A-Pays have proved highly problematic for both WaMu and Wachovia since home prices have fallen around the nation even as many Pick-A-Pay loan balances have risen.

Wachovia famously acquired the Pick-A-Pay business in 2006, when it purchased West Coast lender Golden West, at the height of the housing boom, for $25.5 billion.

That deal quickly has quickly come to haunt Wachovia's franchise. Defenders of Golden West, a pioneer in offering Option ARM mortgages, say that Wachovia changed the product's underwriting standards, and issued the loans to riskier borrowers. But employees at Wachovia who marketed Pick-A-Pays say that the loans do not deserve to be lumped with other risky loans, including now-infamous subprime loans.


Of course, as of Monday, September 29, this is all so much history. The New York Times reported the takeover of Wachovia by Citigroup:

The F.D.I.C. said that the agency would absorb losses from Wachovia above $42 billion and that it would receive $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants from Citigroup in return for assuming that risk.

“Wachovia did not fail,” the F.D.I.C. said, “rather it is to be acquired by Citigroup Inc. on an open-bank basis with assistance from the F.D.I.C.”

Under the deal, Citigroup will acquire most of Wachovia’s assets and liabilities, including $400 billion in deposits and will assume senior and subordinated debt of Wachovia, the F.D.I.C. said. Wachovia Corporation will continue to own the retail brokerage firm AG Edwards and the money management arm Evergreen.

New York Times discusses Rambus saga

A Sept. 28 piece titled Chip Maker Rambus Wins Battles, but Faces Bigger War notes the troubles faced by Rambus, in spite of its court victories. One recalls Jaffe and Lerner savaged Rambus in Innovation and its Discontents, and praised Qualcomm. In the time since the book, Rambus has been winning its cases, and Qualcomm has been losing most of its cases [Some of Qualcomm's lawyers were disciplined, and its chief counsel departed.]

But, as the Times points out, winning cases isn't always enough:

Craig Hampel, the Rambus’s most senior engineer, says it has not always been easy to work for a company that many people consider the bad guy. “I personally worry if we have the support of enough of the industry to take these great products to the market,” Mr. Hampel said. “I feel impacted by the lack of validation from the industry. So I try to focus on the technology as vindication.”

The injunction issue [recall the eBay case] comes up:

Some analysts think the recent court victories could lead some of the bigger chip makers to settle with Rambus and become paying customers, particularly if the court issues an injunction in the Hynix case. They have estimated Rambus could collect hundreds of millions, if not several billion, dollars from chip makers over the next 10 years.

The New York Times portrays an overly-expansive definition of patent troll:

Jared Bobrow, a partner with Weil Gotshal & Manges, represents Micron, a chip maker that has tangled with Rambus. “This isn’t about the industry making payment. In my view, this is nothing short of patent troll activity.” Patent troll is a derogatory term used to describe companies or individuals who make their money suing companies for patent infringement.

That Rambus’s business model has evoked such hostility in some quarters of Silicon Valley is no longer a surprise. “It’s the industry not wanting to pay someone a fee when they didn’t make anything,” said Jeff Schreiner, an analyst with Capstone Investments who has followed the litigation closely.


Of course, there is no requirement in patent law that the inventor "make" the invention. The inventor has to describe it and enable it, but does not have to make it. Once the patent is issued the inventor can exclude others from making that which he claimed. If people want to act as if the law says something else, that's a problem. Part of the problem may have been magnified by the book by Jaffe and Lerner, which incorrectly portrayed so many aspects of the patent system.

***
See also


The Magnitude of the Jaffe/Lerner Patent Misunderstanding Examined


Qualcomm sanctioned $8.6M on 7 Jan 08; lawyers referred to State Bar

***
For an additional story on the tough times for smaller chip guys, see patenthawk's story on transmeta.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

"The 'scilence' is deafening"

An editorial in the September 19 issue of Science titled Scilence on page 1605 noted ...there are five times as many people in the United States with a degree in science or engineering currently working in those fields than there are either practicing lawyers or doctors. The "scilence" is deafening. [This line was in the context of the refusal of the recent presidential candidates to engage in a "conversation" on science policy.]
HOWEVER elsewhere in the issue is an article with a subheading A decade after 26 members of the entering class of 1991 earned their Ph.D.s from Yale's elite molecular biophysics and biochemistry program, only one holds a tenured faculty position. Page 1625 gives a listing of "where they ended up," which includes Tori Willliams Reid, now of Right at Home (home care for seniors), Jennifer Holmes, a patent lawyer at Ropes & Gray, G. Koji Sonoda, library manager at Amgen, Albert Crescenzo, a consultant to Symyx (Iselin, NJ), and Michael Reifler, of Whole Foods.
[321 Science 1622]

The 19 Sept 08 issue of Science also has a "Perspectives" piece titled: Illuminating the Modern Dance of Climate and CO2 which notes "Currently, the amount of CO2 emitted as a result of human activities is about double the amount required to explain the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2." [Did Al Gore mention this?] Noting a historical correlation of 40 ppm CO2(volume)/K, the authors state: However, given the discrepancies between different temperature reconstructions, and the uncertainties associated with interpreting Northern Hemisphere climate proxies in terms of mean global temperature, we estimate a gradient of 20 to 60ppmv per kelvin of global warming.
[321 Science 1642-1643]

One has a short mention of nanoparticle shape shifting. p. 1601

Appreciating fluorine chemistry, LBE notes the article Fluorous tags unstick messy chemical biology problems which includes the text: "Recent innovations suggest a range of potential applications of fluorous tages could be realized in chemical biology..." One has the line: Fluorous tags behave more like molecular "Post-it notes. The article mentions benefits in mass spectrometry (but curiously not NMR): [in fluorous proteomics] the fluorous tags are not prone to fragmentation, so the spectra [sic: patterns] are less complicated.

In passing, note the article "Apoptosis [cell death] Turbocharges Epithelial Morphogenesis." p. 1641.

Plagiarism, self-plagiariam, and "idea salmon"

Mike Masnick talks about Scott Adams (Dilbert) in a post Self Plagiarism And The Creative Process.

IPBiz notes that what's good for the comics may not be the best way to promote invention. We want people to dwell on things; thus,

If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don't dwell on it.

is a problem. And, re-cycled salmon tend to smell bad.

More on the papers of Hwang Woo Suk

Authorship issues in the publications of fraudster Hwang Woo Suk are discussed in Kevin Strange, "Authorship: why not just toss a coin?, Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 295: C567-C575, 2008

Reprised: universities as trolls?

A recent article on patent trolls contains the lines:

These patent owners do not use (i.e. licence or assign) or manufacture on the basis of their patents or patent portfolio. Many instead see patent ownership as a means of hijacking another’s success in their field, with minimal effort or expense. (...)
These parties have no manufacturing or research base, no intention to use the patents, and only seek to enforce their Intellectual Property Rights once another company or individual has independently come to the technology, and have committed themselves to the enterprise.


Of course, everything in these lines describing a "troll" applies to the University of Rochester in its unsuccessful infringement suit against Searle.

See also


Missing the point on Bayh-Dole

Google's "bidding for cell phone service" patent application

Google's new patent application, Flexible Communication Systems and Methods (published application 20080232574, ap no 11/688145) has first claim:

A method of initiating a telecommunication session for a communication device, comprising:
(a) submitting to one or more telecommunication carriers a proposal for a telecommunication session;
(b) receiving from at least one of the one or more of telecommunication carriers a bid to carry the telecommunications session; and
(c) automatically selecting one of the telecommunications carriers from the carriers submitting a bid, and initiating the telecommunication session through the selected telecommunication carrier.

[The application as published did not have "(d)" before --initiating--]

CNET wrote:

Google's vision of tomorrow's wireless network is in stark contrast to how wireless operators do business today, setting the two sides on a possible collision course.

Earlier this week, the search giant filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent Office describing its vision of an open wireless network where smartphones aren't tied to any single cell phone network. In Google's open wireless world, phones and other wireless devices would search for the strongest, fastest connection at the most competitive price. Essentially, wireless operators' networks would be reduced to "dumb pipes."


Of course, CNET is wrong in writing: Earlier this week, the search giant filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent Office. The application was FILED last year, but published last week.

WIRED states of the new Google patent application:

Google's patent filing describes "devices, systems and methods" that would automatically poll nearby wireless services to find the best price for a voice or a data connection for a "portable communications device." That connection might come via a cellphone carrier, a WiMax provider, or even a Wi-Fi hotspot. According to the patent, users can either manually select the bid they like best or they can allow the device to connect automatically with the lowest-cost provider.

The upshot? Just as advertisers know they're always getting the market price for keywords on Google's AdWords system, wireless users would always get the market price for wireless data service -- or phone calls. The system could potentially free users from cellphone contracts and locked phones that tie them to one service provider and allow them to switch from one carrier to another, seamlessly, based on which carrier had the lowest price at that moment.

"It is an interesting notion," says Neil Strother, mobile analyst for Jupiter Research. "The idea would be that the device or system is smart enough that the switching could be invisible and in the background and, if they could patent it, it could be very disruptive."

Saturday, September 27, 2008

CAFC affirms Microsoft win over Alcatel-Lucent in mp3 area

Of Microsoft's victory over Alcatel/Lucent, the Boston Globe had a quote: The ruling is "a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system," Tom Burt, deputy general counsel for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said in an e-mail.

The CAFC merely affirmed the district ruling, in which one patent was found not infringed and the other validly licensed: The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday affirmed the lower court's decision that one of the two patents wasn't infringed and that Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, had a valid license for the second one. The valid licensing came through licensing by a joint owner.

Of the joint ownership matter, AT&T entered into a "joint development agreement" [JDA] with Fraunhofer in 1988. The JDA explicitly stated "All New Work is treated as joint work." In 1997, Microsoft obtained a license from Fraunhofer for an mp3 decoder and incorporated the technology into Windows Media Player.

Various lawsuits developed. At one point in the district court proceedings, it was determined because certain patent claims arose from "New Work", Lucent lacked standing to sue without joining Fraunhofer. On appeal, Lucent challenged the finding that these claims arose from "New Work," and even if they did, the district court erred in finding that Fraunhofer was co-owner of the patents in question.

Of the first point, the CAFC stated: "We cannot adopt Lucent's strained interpretation of the JDA."

Of the second point, the CAFC noted: "According to Lucent, by law a patentee may only assign title to an entire patent; a transfer of less is only a license." The CAFC noted the issue in the Lucent case was determining ownership of the patent in the first instance.

The CAFC brought up the case of Israel Bio-Engineering, 475 F.3d 1256. In that case, there was a five year contract between Israel Bio-Engineering Project [IBEP] and Yeda. Yeda would apply for patents, but IBEP would be the owner of the patents. AFTER the contract ended, a patent issued, naming Yeda as assignee. One of the four inventors (Rubinstein) had joined the research project AFTER the contract ended. The subject matter of claims 2 and 3 of the patent arose from work by Rubinstein. Rubinstein had assigned his rights to Yeda. IBEP sued Amgen over claim 1. The question became: did IBEP have to join Yeda? The CAFC held that Rubinstein was a presumptive co-owner of the patent because he was an inventor of claims 2 and 3 (and was indeed listed as an inventor). Thus, IBEP lacked standing to sue in the absence of joining Yeda, even though the claim at issue in the litigation was covered by the five year contract.

The CAFC determined that Fraunhofer was co-owner of the patents in question, and Lucent lacked standing to sue without joining Fraunhofer.

The CAFC then stated in the Lucent case: Israel Bio-Engineering holds that an inventor of one or more claims of the patent is the owner of all claims in the patent.

One notes that the legal issue determined was that Lucent had no standing to sue because Lucent had not joined a co-owner of the patent. It is separately true that a co-owner of the patent has the right to license the patent.

Friday, September 26, 2008

"On Aspects of Barack Obama’s Technology Policy"

A draft of LBE's article On Aspects of Barack Obama’s Technology Policy is on the net. [some improvement on the HTML is needed.]

**Separately

The LA Times says a complete copy of the transcript of the 26 Sept 08 McCain-Obama debate is
here.

**Separately,

on importation of workers, in a different context, note How China has created a new slave empire in Africa

Electoral landslide predicted for November 2008

The [Rochester] Democrat and Chronicle had an article with text:

"Essentially the election is at equilibrium," said John Zogby, president of Zogby International. "This election will stay close until the end."

Zogby said he thinks the race will turn in the last weekend before Election Day and though the popular vote will be tight, the successful candidate will win in a landslide.

He likened this year's election to the contest in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter.


CURIOUSLY, although an electoral landslide was predicted, there was NO prediction of "who" was going to get it:

Despite two books by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Americans still don't know enough about him. And if they don't think they know him well enough by the time they vote, they'll go with the "comfortable old shoe," Republican Sen. John McCain, Zogby said.

If Obama can convince voters, he'll increase turnout among young people and minorities, Zogby said.


Obama as a candidate was designed perfectly to strongly challenge, and ultimately defeat, Hillary Clinton WITHIN the Democratic party. Strategic execution was great. Obama has an interesting strategy for McCain (eg, Virginia) but one wonders how Ohio and Pennsylvania will play out. Will "blue collar guy" Joe Biden save a bad position in those states? How many stupid things can Joe Biden say, or does it even matter?

Of polling itself, the COMPLETE MELTDOWN of all polls in the New Jersey stem cell vote should not be forgotten, however much the pollsters don't like to talk about that one.

**See


Why are pollsters doing so badly?
[pollsters got NH primary wrong]


Star-Ledger fails to rationalize defeat of NJ stem cell bond question
[pollsters got NJ stem cell vote basically backwards]

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-york-times-on-failure-of-nj-stem.html

Stealing Harvard, or Harvard Stealing?

Recalling the 2002 movie Stealing Harvard (with Dennis Farina and Megan Mullally), and noting the recent episodes of Harvard plagiarism, one wonders if a coming attraction will be captioned, Harvard Stealing?

See


Plagiarism at Harvard, again?



Harvard Business Review article: Plagiarize with Pride


**Did Harvard's rep play any role in the change of title from

Stealing Stanford (USA) (working title)

More on blog ranking by blawgsearch

IPBiz slipped to number 3 in today's ranking of IP blogs on on blawgsearch:

IP Thinktank [feed]
Covers intellectual property strategy around the world. By Duncan Bucknell.
Last Updated: September 25, 2008 - Rank This Week: 11
http://duncanbucknell.com/blog

Patent Troll Tracker [feed]
Tracks patent litigation.
Last Updated: March 25, 2008 - Rank This Week: 17
http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/

IPBiz [feed]
Intellectual property news affecting business and everyday life. From patent lawyer Lawrence B. Ebert.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank This Week: 24
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com


It's interesting to be beaten by Patent Troll Tracker which hasn't had a post since March 25, and can be accessed only by invitation.

IPBiz did whip the UofC Law Blog -->

The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog [feed]
Covers constitutional law, copyright/technology, corporate law, criminal law, free speech, genetic testing, international law, national security and more.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank This Week: 466
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/


and PatentHawk-->

Patent Prospector [feed]
Offers an open forum for patent practitioners. Sponsored by Patent Hawk.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank This Week: 866
http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/


and LessigBlog-->

Lessig Blog [feed]
Covers copyright, creative commons, politics, telecom, good/bad code and good/bad laws. By Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank This Week: 1358
http://www.lessig.org/


and EVEN X-rated patents-->

X-Rated Patents [feed]
Features patents for adult-oriented products.
Last Updated: March 8, 2007 - Rank This Week: 1443
http://x-ratedpatents.com


***See also


Blog Ranking on Blawgsearch


***An updated ranking on 26 Sept 08 placed IPBiz a bit higher -->

IP Thinktank [feed]
Covers intellectual property strategy around the world. By Duncan Bucknell.
Last Updated: September 24, 2008 - Rank Today: 8
http://duncanbucknell.com/blog

TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime [feed]
Provides liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank Today: 9
http://talkleft.com

IPBiz [feed]
Intellectual property news affecting business and everyday life. From patent lawyer Lawrence B. Ebert.
Last Updated: September 26, 2008 - Rank Today: 10
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com


***IPBiz noted some kind of link from businessroadtrip

On answering the question you want to answer

In the context of an unfavorable review of Palin's interview with Couric, one finds the text:

One of the first things taught to anyone – especially politicians – in addressing the media is not to answer the reporter’s question but to answer the question you want to answer. Sure, it is maddening to the viewers. Screams of “they’re not answering the questions” are hurled at the television. But there’s a reason for this. You can avoid the above.

It doesn’t have to be as nefarious as it sounds. Watch Joe Biden. He doesn’t have an answer to every question. But he’s been around long enough to know how to dance when he doesn’t have an answer and focus the issue on where he wants it focused. Even when he messes up, he does it with enough confidence that many times it’s overlooked.
[As an aside, patent attorneys might contemplate "how well" the approach of answering the question you want to answer plays with patent examiners. Yes, Mr. Lemley, there is such a thing as a final rejection.]

In Biden's interview with Couric on Monday, Sept. 22, Biden confidently spoke of President Franklin Roosevelt appearing on television to discuss the stock market crash in 1929. Either Couric didn't perceive the factual problem, or she decided to overlook it.

Jimmy Orr in the Christian Science Monitor hit Palin on the following exchange:

Palin: “He’s also known as a maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party.”

Couric: “I’m just going to ask one more time, not to belabor the point – specific example in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.”

Palin: “I’ll try to find you some, and I’ll bring ‘em to ya.”


Which is worse: not knowing something, but promising to get the information, or simply making something up?

As an aside, did Couric ask Biden for examples of of his own pushing for more bank regulation? Could he have given SPECIFIC examples? Would he have included counter-examples? Biden did look pretty good on "Meet the Press" in handling Brokaw's question about MBNA, but that was more because of Brokaw's ineptitude than Biden's skill. Brokaw did identify a specific bill (apparently from a Delaware newspaper), but Biden knew more about it than Brokaw did, and Biden did a masterful job of focussing on Biden's issues. Brokaw was left without anything to say, mainly because of Brokaw's lack of knowledge.

Of what McCain tried to do on regulation, in a commentary by Kevin Hassett , one has the text:

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

(...)

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

Kyl patent reform bill: only for show

Perhaps only to illustrate that there are alternatives in patent reform, we now have Senator Kyl's "Patent Reform Act of 2008."

Section 5 concerns POST-GRANT REVIEW PROCEEDINGS, and basically substitutes "oppositions" (with two windows) for inter partes re-examinations.

Note-->

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—The presumption of validity set
forth in section 282 of this title shall apply in post-grant
review proceedings instituted under this chapter.
‘‘(b) BURDEN OF PROOF.—The petitioner shall have
the burden of proving a proposition of invalidity by a pre-
ponderance of the evidence in a first-period proceeding
and by clear and convincing evidence in a second-period
proceeding.


Section 7 is titled SUBMISSIONS BY THIRD PARTIES AND OTHER QUALITY ENHANCEMENTS. It notes: Any person may submit for
consideration and inclusion in the record of a patent application, any patent, published patent application,
or other publication of potential relevance to the examination of the application, if such submission is
made in writing before the earlier of (...)
One notes that Rule 99 already allows third parties to submit prior art to the USPTO.

Section 8 pertains to venue, and limits venue to places meeting one of six conditions. Condition 4 is where the invention claimed in a patent in suit was conceived or actually reduced to practice.


Section 13 concerns patents on check imaging methods.

Section 14 deals with USPTO funding, and would create a USPTO Public Enterprise Fund, the funds of which are available to the Director without fiscal year limitation.

***
IPWatchdog noted the immediate praise from Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) President and CEO Jim Greenwood. One might say this was about timing, but the Sept. 08 news cycle is not going to be about patent reform.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Pondering confusions: Biden vs. Britney

IPBiz has noted that Joe Biden told Katie Couric on Monday, Sept. 22 that President Franklin Roosevelt made television appearances in 1929 about the stock market crash. Biden is 65 years old and probably remembers the beginnings of commercial television in his lifetime, and, as a University of Delaware graduate should know Herbert Hoover was president in 1929 and that Roosevelt was famous for his fireside chats on the radio.

A blog recently noted:

Picking on Britney Spears is kind of like shooting Cheetos-eating fish in a barrel, but her cover of the made-famous-by Joan Jett song “I Love Rock ’N Roll” does exactly what it should: adds gratuitous scratching, unnecessary beats, kewpie-doll vocals, and the least rock arrangement ever. Britney, c’mon, you don’t love rock ’n’ roll — you probably don’t even know how to spell it! Bonus fact: Britney thought it was Pat Benatar who made the song famous. Classic!

The query: which confusion was worse, Biden's or Britney's?

**
Previous IPBiz post:

Blog: Biden's blovia beginning to bother?

**For those interested, there is a

Biden-gaffe-o-meter

Disasters with Word's "track changes"

Further to an earlier post on IPBiz about Word's "Track Change" feature, IPBiz re-affirms that people, ESPECIALLY ATTORNEYS, need to be careful about using this feature.

One horror story is reproduced on the mathewingraw blog:

Some of you may have seen this already, since it has been passed around on Twitter, but I just had to point to Rick Segal’s hilarious blog post about a startup that did everything right in its business plan — right up until it sent the document without clicking the “accept changes” menu item in Word. So when Rick (who is a VC with J.L. Albright in Toronto) looked at the impressive business plan, what he saw in the margins were all the edits and comments made by the team and their advisors, including:

“Segal used work for Microsoft so skip the name dropping, save it for the afternoon meeting, they are clueless about Redmond.”

“When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them”

“I’d delete this section since we don’t have these features on the roadmap and haven’t figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won’t catch this.”

“VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard.”


IPBiz wonders if the section VCs were stupid about concerned intellectual property (or underlying technology).

**Also
Gawk for Windows (and DOS editors) can do what MS Word cannot:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gawk.htm

**UPDATE. UMissouri selling cell phones with messages still on them (from Eamonn Brennan at rivals.com)-->

Bellman bought the cell phones earlier this year at a university surplus sale with the intent of reselling them for parts. He paid $190 for 25 old cell phones, figuring he'd sell the parts for around $1,000. Turned out the information on the phones might be worth more than the hardware. No one at the university had deleted the text messages, e-mails and contact numbers from the phones.

The Tribune reported last week that among other things, one Sprint Treo previously used by basketball coach Mike Anderson still had text messages between Anderson, football coach Gary Pinkel and Athletics Director Mike Alden. It was nothing controversial — well wishes for upcoming games and congratulations after wins. Still, the university has caught some flak from several online sites for not being more careful with information that could fall into the wrong hands — someone affiliated with Kansas, Nebraska or some other Big 12 rival, for example.

**Also on "track changes"

Microsoft Word ‘Track Changes’ : The Track Changes feature received some updates in Word 2003; most notably in how the printing of Tracked Changes was handled. In Word 2003, the ability to view/hide tracked changes in a printed document is not saved with the document itself; instead it is a global setting which must be manually set by each individual user when viewing the file. The Editorial Manager PDF builder machines are set to always print tracked changes because of this new feature. If the PDF Builders were not set up this way, users would not be able to see any of the tracked changes within a PDF.

from the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry:

Special Note for users of 'Track Changes' or similar features: If you use the Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word, or another word processor, before submitting your manuscript document file you must accept or reject all of your changes and turn the change tracking option off for the manuscript document file. If our Editorial Office is prompted by software to accept or reject alterations when your file is handled, we will accept all changes, and the authors will be responsible for any errors this generates.

Microsoft Word: track changes color won't change

from Princeton :

Choose menu option Tools/Track Changes/Highlight Changes… and check Track changes while editing. You can choose whether or not you want the tracked changes displayed on screen and on printed copies of the document by checking the appropriate box in the Highlight Changes dialog box.
Note: For the original author, inserted text and spelling errors are both shown in red and underlined, making it hard to distinguish between the two. One solution is to turn off change highlighting when you’re checking for spelling errors. Choose menu option Tools/Track Changes/Highlight Changes… and uncheck Highlight changes on screen. Now only spelling errors will be highlighted.

***Also, Hidden text shows SCO prepped lawsuit against BofA -->

A feature in the word-processing software tracks changes to documents, who made those changes, and when they were made. These notations typically are invisible to someone reading a Word document. But as some lawyers, businesspeople and politicians have learned the hard way, Word can also display so-called metadata in the document--including the original version and all subsequent changes. This information is available by viewing the document under "original showing markup" or "final showing markup."

The presence of hidden text in the SCO document is just the latest example of this workplace issue. According to a study by market research firm Vanson Bourne titled "The Cost of Sharing," 90 percent of documents in circulation began as something else, but 57 percent of respondents were not aware that metadata may still exist in the their document. Microsoft addresses the issue on its Web site but adds that its 2003 version of Office provides a feature that lets users "permanently remove" the hidden text from Word.

In the case of SCO's lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler, the Word document identified Bank of America as a defendant until Feb. 18--at 11:10 a.m., to be exact. The location for filing the suit also was switched from Bank of America's principal operations in California to Michigan, DaimlerChrysler's home state, on Feb. 27.

(...)
Examples of the changes made to the Word document that later became SCO's lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler include the following:

• On Feb. 18 at 11:10 a.m. "Bank of America, a National Banking Association" was removed as a defendant and "DaimlerChrysler Corp." was inserted.
• Three minutes later, this comment was removed: "Are there any special jurisdiction or venue requirements for a NA bank?"
• At the end of the lawsuit, "February" was listed as the filing date, although no exact date was given. SCO previously had said that it expected to file a lawsuit against a Linux user by mid-February.

Use of fraudulently obtained data all right to get an Australian patent? [!]

IPBiz noted on 21 Sept 08 the impending issue of an Australian patent to stem cell worker/fraudster Hwang Woo Suk. In the context of final deliberations, a most memorable quotation was issued: "There is no statutory basis to refuse to grant a patent on the basis that the scientific data in a patent application is a misrepresentation or fraudulently obtained."


within the text-->

In a statement released on Wednesday [24 Sept. 08], Mr Johnson [David Johnson, IP Australia] confirmed no opposition had been filed, and addressed the controversy surrounded Mr Hwang's research.

"There is no statutory basis to refuse to grant a patent on the basis that the scientific data in a patent application is a misrepresentation or fraudulently obtained," Mr Johnson said. "In accepting the application in question, IP Australia is not endorsing the research that underpins the application." He said only a court could revoke a patent.


The article by the Press Association also stated:

IP Australia said earlier this week that Hwang Woo-suk's patent was to be "sealed" - or granted - on Thursday [25 Sept 08], but the acting commissioner of patents said the government agency has since backtracked on that deadline.
"IP Australia is investigating the matter and the sealing date is not known at this time," David Johnson said in a statement. IP Australia is responsible for administering patents, trade marks, designs and plant breeders' rights.


Separately, no word on this latest Hwang matter from californiastemreport, which is bogged down in the usual internecine squabbles of CRIM (aka CIRM).

Plagiarism at Harvard, again?

According to NewsBusters, Al Franken prepared the book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, while at Harvard. Also according to NewsBusters, there is plagiarism within Franken's book. One example given:

In "The Most Biased Name in News," FAIR's Seth Ackerman wrote in 2001:

Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game ...

Now check this out. Two years later, Al Franken published a bestselling book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. On page 63 (first edition, hardcover), Franken wrote,

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it's a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.


NewsBusters invokes Harvard's policy of academic honesty (cited at Harvard's Department of Continuing Education). To define plagiarism, Harvard released WRITING WITH SOURCES: A Guide for Harvard Students in 1995. It says:

Plagiarism is passing off a source's information, ideas, or words as your own by omitting to cite them, an act of lying, cheating, and stealing.

IPBiz notes that NewsBusters did not mention the Laurence Tribe affair at Harvard. Plagiarism at Harvard has become "custom and practice." Refer also to
Harvard plagiarism 2008: live and let live

Press reports on Qualcomm loss to Broadcomm at CAFC

Recalling that Jaffe and Lerner praised Qualcomm for its proper use of patents, one finds discussions of Qualcomm's loss at the CAFC on 24 Sept 08 to be of interest. Bloomberg noted:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington on Sept. 24 upheld a lower court decision that Qualcomm infringed a Broadcom patent on the technology [QChat push- to-talk technology]. It affirmed an infringement finding on another Broadcom patent for a method used to allow mobile phones to operate on multiple wireless networks. The court also overturned a jury verdict against San Diego-based Qualcomm finding it infringed a patent for video compression.

"We have continued to develop workarounds related to the patents related to QChat," Qualcomm attorney Alex Rogers said, adding that the company is reviewing the ruling and has been seeking technology that would allow it to continue operations.


Sprint is a loser in this also. Bloomberg noted:

Qualcomm claimed it helped Sprint without knowing Broadcom had patented a feature that uses a phone's Internet connection to deliver quick voice messages without a dial tone. Verizon Wireless is also developing its own walkie-talkie feature.

Of course, in the patent infringement business, intent is not an element of the "crime." Infringement is strict liability. Separately, the Bloomberg piece did not get into elements of willful infringement or inducement to infringe. The Bloomberg piece did allude to an earlier CAFC decision in a different Qualcomm/Broadcom case, reviving a claim involving a patent for transmitting radiofrequency signals.

CNN Money reported:

A Washington, D.C., federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a permanent injunction that bars chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) from selling certain third-generation cellphone chips because they infringe two patents held by rival Broadcom Corp. (BRCM).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Qualcomm's popular walkie-talkie feature infringed one Broadcom patent, and it found that Qualcomm also infringed a Broadcom patent involving technology that allows cellphones to participate on multiple wireless networks.


The San Diego Union Tribune got into other aspects. Qualcomm had been saying they expected to win on appeal BUT they replaced the technology on the ONLY PART of the case they did win [!]:

Qualcomm had said several times that it was optimistic that its appeals would prevail.

“Obviously, we're disappointed with the rulings that were upheld and pleased with one that was overturned,” Qualcomm attorney Alex Rogers said.

The effect of the decision is to keep in place a deadline that gives Qualcomm until the end of January to stop selling the QChat and multiple network technologies.

The infringement that was overturned was not part of the sunset period and has already been replaced Rogers said.


Returning to the opening sentence of this post, the outcome of this case is further evidence of how totally clueless Jaffe and Lerner are about the patent system. Innovation and its Discontents can be hazardous to your patent health.

More on WSJ piece on Intellectual Ventures

Erick Schonfeld, not known for wisdom in the area of patents (see More confusion on patent reform? and
TechCrunch wrong on reform
), commented on 17 Sept 08 about the WSJ article on Intellectual Ventures and observed:

It is a virtuous cycle. Intellectual Ventures recently closed a $1.5 billion patent fund, and is now raising another $2.5 billion one. And copycat companies like RPX Corporation (headed up by a former Intellectual Ventures executive and backed by Kleiner Perkins and Charles River Ventures) are beginning to pop up.

But like I said: Don’t get mad at Myhrvold and his ilk for capitalizing on a broken patent system. Instead, we should fix the patent system so that it rewards invention over litigation.


Whether RPX is a copycat of Intellectual Ventures remains to be seen. Further, Intellectual Ventures, as a factual matter, has not litigated against anyone (yet).

See also the 16 Sept 08 post WSJ discusses Intellectual Ventures, Myhrvold

and

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/09/eetimes-focuses-on-patent-buying.html

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Jack Welch: 1st quarter 2009 will be brutal

Reuters reports on "Neutron Jack" Welch, once of General Electric:

"I now believe we are in for one hell of a deep downturn," Welch told the World Business Forum in New York on Sept. 24, adding that the first quarter of 2009 will likely be "brutal."

Until recently, Welch said, he had believed the U.S. economy could avoid recession, but he has changed his mind.

"I am now caving," he said. "Get ready for real tough times. They're coming. There is no credit available."


***Separately

Of other enduring sagas, the CAFC ruled in Broadcom v. Qualcomm (see http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1199.pdf).

Qualcomm did get some traction: Because the district court erred in its
construction of claim 3 of the ’686 patent, we reverse the jury’s determination of
infringement of that patent and conclude that claim 3, as properly construed, is invalid.


BUT

we affirm the judgment of infringement of the ’317
and ’010 patents, and the injunction as it pertains to those patents.
[Bedtime for Qualcomm]

***Some words of wisdom from the CAFC-->

As this court has noted, “each claim does not necessarily cover every feature disclosed
in the specification. When the claim addresses only some of the features disclosed in the
specification, it is improper to limit the claim to other, unclaimed features.”
Ventana Med. Sys., Inc. v. Biogenex Labs., Inc., 473 F.3d 1173, 1181 (Fed. Cir. 2006).

“A patent is invalid as anticipated if every limitation in a claim is found in a single
prior art reference.” Nystrom v. TREX Co., 424 F.3d 1136, 1149 (Fed. Cir. 2005).

Cordis Corp. v. Medtronic Ave, Inc., 511 F.3d 1157, 1174 (Fed. Cir. 2008)
(noting that “a construction that renders the claimed invention inoperable should be
viewed with extreme skepticism”).

If true, these facts
permit Broadcom to antedate the Burson reference, which was filed in December
1993—subsequent to both the lab notebook and the 1993 patent applications. See
generally Mahurkar v. C.R. Bard, Inc., 79 F.3d 1572, 1577 (Fed. Cir. 1996)

Qualcomm relies on our recent holding
in PowerOasis, Inc. v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., 522 F.3d 1299, 1305 (Fed. Cir. 2008)
(holding that once a defendant established prior art anticipating the asserted claims,
“the burden was on [the patentee] to come forward with evidence to the contrary”), and
argues that Broadcom failed to carry its burden at trial in demonstrating entitlement to a
filing date prior to that of the Burson reference. We disagree.

See Johnston v. IVAC
Corp., 885 F.2d 1574, 1581 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (noting that “[a]ttorneys' argument is no
substitute for evidence”).

Qualcomm’s eleventh-hour attempt to litigate a newly minted claim construction
controversy falls squarely within our holding in Eli Lilly & Company v. Aradigm
Corporation,

In so holding, we reject Qualcomm’s additional contentions that Broadcom has
presented a post-trial claim construction in contravention of our holding in Hewlett-
Packard Company v. Mustek Systems, Incorporated, 340 F.3d 1314, 1320-21 (Fed. Cir.
2003).

This instruction comports with our holding in Knorr-
Bremse Systeme Fuer Nutzfahrzeuge, GmbH v. Dana Corp., where we held that there
is not “a legal duty upon a potential infringer to consult with counsel, such that failure to
do so will provide an inference or evidentiary presumption that such opinion would have
been negative.” 383 F.3d 1337, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (en banc).

That is,
Qualcomm argues that opinion-of-counsel evidence is no longer relevant in determining
the intent of an alleged infringer in the inducement context. We disagree.

it is incorrect in arguing that Seagate altered the state of
mind requirement for inducement. Our en banc holding in DSU remains the relevant
authority on that point. Despite Qualcomm’s assertion that the intent standard for
inducement is higher than that for willful infringement, a lack of culpability for willful
infringement does not compel a finding of non-infringement under an inducement
theory. Qualcomm’s argument reflects a misunderstanding of our holding in DSU.

Qualcomm seems to argue that the jury’s verdict
cannot stand because Broadcom failed to produce direct evidence of intent to induce
infringement. That is not the law. “A patentee may prove direct infringement or
inducement of infringement by either direct or circumstantial evidence. There is no
requirement that direct evidence be introduced, nor is a jury’s preference for
circumstantial evidence over direct evidence unreasonable per se.” Liquid Dynamics
Corp. v. Vaughan Co., 449 F.3d 1209, 1219 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (internal citation omitted).

It remains an
open question “whether there remains a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm
following eBay,” Amado v. Microsoft Corp., 517 F.3d 1353, 1359 n.1 (Fed. Cir. 2008),

see also Rite-Hite Corp. v. Kelley
Co., 56 F.3d 1538, 1547 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc) (noting that “[t]here is no
requirement in this country that a patentee make, use, or sell its patented invention”
(citing Cont’l Paper Bag Co. v. E. Paper Bag Co., 210 U.S. 405, 424-30 (1908))).

this difficulty in estimating monetary damages reinforces the inadequacy of
a remedy at law. Cf. Jacobsen v. Katzer, 2008 WL 3395772, at *6 (Fed. Cir. Aug 13,
2008) (noting, in the copyright license context, that “because a calculation of damages
is inherently speculative, these types of license restrictions might well be rendered
meaningless absent the ability to enforce through injunctive relief”).

At the outset, we note that “[o]ne who elects to build a
business on a product found to infringe cannot be heard to complain if an injunction
against continuing infringement destroys the business so elected.” Windsurfing Int’l,
Inc. v. AMF, Inc., 782 F.2d 995, 1003 n.12 (Fed. Cir. 1986).

***On Bard, 2 April 2009 from Bloomberg-->

W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. was told to pay $371 million to C.R. Bard Inc., doubling a December 2007 verdict where a jury found Gore infringed a patent over tubes that reinforce blood vessels.

The case is Bard Peripheral Vascular v. W.L. Gore & Associates, 03cv597, U.S. District Court, District of Arizona (Phoenix).

AstraZeneca wins over Teva on Pulmincort in DNJ

Bloomberg reports: The decision by U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to deny a request by Teva to throw out the case means the dispute will now go to trial, probably in January, London-based AstraZeneca said in a statement Sept. 24.

The ruling may postpone the introduction of cheaper copies of the Respules version of Pulmicort in the U.S. The brand brought in $1.45 billion for AstraZeneca last year, while U.S. sales of Respules gained 20 percent from 2006.

Blog: Biden's blovia beginning to bother?

A Washington Post blog, in a post titled The Biden Paradox: Help or Hindrance?, lays out some of Biden's recent screw-ups. IPBiz notes that all of this was foreseeable, from the time Biden answered "Frank's" question with the memorable line that Biden had a higher IQ than Frank. This is the same Biden that would later talk about television appearances by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1929. What does the University of Delaware require in terms of degrees?

The Washington Post blog didn't mention the Roosevelt incident, but did state:

Telling CBS's Katie Couric that an ad hitting John McCain on his lack of computer literacy, an ad sponsored by Barack Obama's campaign, was "terrible", and adding that he was unaware the campaign had done it and wished they hadn't. (Biden later sought to clarify his position in a statement last night; "Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize," Biden said.)

The blog alludes to a rumor:

In light of the recent spate of bad national headlines for Biden, some within the party's professional class are wondering whether the equation involved in picking Biden is starting to not add up. [IPBiz: duh!]

(For the record, The Fix is well aware of the rampant blogosphere rumor that Biden is planning to step aside as vice president early next month to make room for Hillary Rodham Clinton. That will happen, to quote Montgomery Burns, "when pigs fly.")

The Fix spoke with several unaligned Democratic strategists over the last 24 hours and several expressed serious concern about the impact Biden has had on the race in the last weeks.


See also
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/09/yale-law-school-to-network-for.html

****
Biden gaffe clock

The LA Times covered some Biden-isms -->

Biden made one mistake last week, when NBC's Meredith Vieira asked him whether the federal government should bail out ailing....

...insurance corporation AIG. Biden said no, the same position as his old colleague John McCain took.

That would have been fine, except for the little bitty fact that Obama had already endorsed the bailout, saying that he would not "second-guess" the government's attempt to save AIG. This morning, "Today's" Matt Lauer called Obama out on the contradiction. Obama patiently but firmly suggested Biden should have waited to respond.

A few days later, Biden had audiences cringing when he acknowledged on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the wealthy would pay higher taxes if Obama was elected president and that doing so would be "patriotic." He repeated the remark again on the campaign trail, and soon after, the Republicans were out with a TV spot deriding Biden and Obama for being tax-and-spend Democrats.

And last night, in an interview with “CBS Evening News,” Biden misspoke when he told anchor Katie Couric that today's leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to a previous national financial crisis.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Ta-tah to Quillen/Webster/Lemley?

Just-a-patent-examiner takes a whack at Lemley, James W. Beard, and Quillen/Webster in a 22 Sept. 08 post titled: The 'Wearing Down Examiners' Fallacy.

The 'Wearing Down Examiners' Fallacy post directly tackles some "examiner count" urban legends (aka law review fantasies)-->

Myth: "Examiners are only rewarded for the initial response to a patent application and for finally disposing of an application..."

Wrong. Every time an applicant files an RCE (or a straight continuation), the examiner receives a count for the express abandonment, and another count for the first action after RCE. If they are doing their job right, the examiner will get a count for every single action they write (excluding advisory actions), the abandonment count acting as a 'deferred' count for the final rejection.

Myth: "Disposing of an application requires granting a patent..."

Wrong. Abandonment and appeal will also dispose of an application.


Quillen and Webster don't make out well -->

But really, the debate should be limited to facts, and the tired old 'wearing down examiners' argument is pure fiction (to my experience).

Yet, like a bad penny, this argument has been used again and again in scholarly papers as evidence of the need for continuation reform. (It is somewhat reminiscent of that 97% allowance rate figure that Quillen and Webster came up with in 2002; the figure has been thoroughly debunked [even by the original authors!] yet the figure keeps rearing its head as evidence of the abuse of continuations.)


It is true that Lemley did a 180 between footnote 22 of "Ending Abuse..." and "Rubber Stamp" without offering any explanation for dropping his outrageously wrong position of footnote 22. Quillen, however, never actually recanted, and considers the 97% number to be correct for the assumptions he made. The problem of course is that a footnote in Quillen/Webster acknowledged the assumptions to be wrong.

-->One commenter wrote-->

I want to forward this to Lemley and his acolytes, including Ms. Moore. I do wish that the people who proposed patent policy would have at least minimal patent prosecution experience, on either side of the table. Instead, we get academics who seem to have no idea about the realities of the practice. And for some reason, the political structure of the PTO listens to these folks, and ignores the examiners and the patent prosecutors.

Ta-tah to the Tata?

from timesonline :

Thousands of violent protesters recently forced Tata, the Indian conglomerate that owns Land Rover and Jaguar, to halt work on a plant being built to produce the world’s cheapest car, the £1,250 Nano. The move could result in £200 million in investment costs being written off.

Tata stopped work three weeks ago, saying that it could not guarantee its workers’ safety at the factory in the state of West Bengal. The billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani said that the Nano crisis showed how protesters were creating “a fear psychosis to slow down certain projects of national importance”. Other companies, including Vedanta, the London-listed mining company, have encountered similar problems in India.



[post 4,247 on September 23, 2008]

En banc Federal Circuit rules on design patent infringement criteria

There were many references to Gorham, including:

The Gorham Court then set forth the test that has been cited in many subsequent
cases: “[I]f, in the eye of an ordinary observer, giving such attention as a purchaser
usually gives, two designs are substantially the same, if the resemblance is such as to
deceive such an observer, inducing him to purchase one supposing it to be the other,
the first one patented is infringed by the other.” 81 U.S. at 528.


This consumer-oriented test sounds in trademark law (likelihood of confusion) rather than in
the skilled-artisan, the standard of patent law.

The CAFC noted the departure from the Gorham test:

In a number of cases decided after Litton Systems, this court has interpreted the
language quoted above to require that the test for design patent infringement consider
both the perspective of the ordinary observer and the particular novelty in the claimed
design. See, e.g., Bernhardt, L.L.C. v. Collezione Europa USA, Inc., 386 F.3d 1371,
1383 (Fed. Cir. 2004); Contessa Food Prods., Inc. v. Conagra, Inc., 282 F.3d 1370,
1377 (Fed. Cir. 2002);


(..)

Several of the amici make essentially the same point, referring to the proper
approach as calling for a three-way visual comparison between the patented design, the
accused design, and the closest prior art. The amici point out that courts, including this
one, have on occasion applied that approach in design patent cases, without identifying
it as a separate test. See, e.g., Brief of Amicus Curiae Apple, Inc., at 19 (citing, inter
alia, Elmer v. ICC Fabricating, Inc., 67 F.3d 1571 (Fed. Cir., 1995); Braun, Inc. v.
Dynamics Corp. of Am., 975 F.2d 815 (Fed Cir. 1992); and Bergstrom v. Sears,
Roebuck & Co., 496 F. Supp. 476 (D. Minn. 1980)).

(...)

Applying the ordinary observer test with reference to prior art designs also avoids
some of the problems created by the separate point of novelty test. One such problem
is that the point of novelty test has proved difficult to apply in cases in which there are
several different features that can be argued to be points of novelty in the claimed
design.


-->The bottom line-->

On the basis of the foregoing analysis, we hold that the “point of novelty” test
should no longer be used in the analysis of a claim of design patent infringement.
Because we reject the “point of novelty” test, we also do not adopt the “non-trivial
advance” test, which is a refinement of the “point of novelty” test. Instead, in
accordance with Gorham and subsequent decisions, we hold that the “ordinary
observer” test should be the sole test for determining whether a design patent has been
infringed.

***Oddzon was cited-->

distinguishing between those features of the claimed design that are
ornamental and those that are purely functional, see Oddzon Prods., Inc. v. Just Toys,
Inc., 122 F.3d 1396, 1405 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (“Where a design contains both functional
and non-functional elements, the scope of the claim must be construed in order to
identify the non-functional aspects of the design as shown in the patent.”).

Yale Law School to network for intellectual property knowledge

Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh says Yale Law should be a place where many scholars from many places interact and collaborate to advance new ideas. “The best thing is to bring as many ideas as possible in and let this network of informed people sort it out.” Sounds something like peer-to-patent [?]

Of course, Mark Lemley was in on the action: “Yale has lagged behind in this respect [IP],” said Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley, who specializes in this area. “Intellectual property and Internet law issues are among the hottest issues in law schools and in practice today.”

Mark Lemley, who is not a registered patent attorney, wrote in the Stanford Law Review that Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit. In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.

***
Of other interesting views of history, from Brit Hume -->

While the focus has been on Sarah Palin since she was announced as John McCain's running mate, Barack Obama's number two has had quite a run. Joe Biden told CBS he thought an Obama campaign ad mocking John McCain as a computer illiterate was "terrible." Later, after actually seeing the ad, Biden said it was OK.

Then, Biden spoke of President Franklin Roosevelt's having gone on television after the stock market crash of 1929. But Roosevelt was not president in 1929, and television was not present.

Biden also said neither he nor Obama supports clean coal technology in America. But Obama does support clean coal. Obama also said of Biden's instant criticism of the government's big loan to insurance to AIG, "I think Joe should have waited ..."

Earlier, Biden said Hillary Clinton may have been a better vice presidential pick than he and said that paying more taxes is the patriotic duty of the rich. And, he encouraged wheelchair-bound Missouri State Senator Chuck Graham to stand up at a campaign rally.


AP noted:

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,'" Barack Obama's running mate recently told the "CBS Evening News."
Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn't introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World's Fair.

FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term. The Democratic challenger appealed to the "forgotten man" by promising a "new deal" to solve the Depression era.
[IPBiz notes that the AP story does not say whether Couric corrected Biden; now that would be networking.]

One blog wrote:

Katie Couric didn't call him on it.

So, was she a) being polite, b) in the tank for the Dems and didn't want to point it out or c) didn't even see a problem with anything he said, being as historically ignorant as he is?

I think it's either (b) or (c), which are pretty much mutually exclusive, and I'm not sure which is worse. And I think that (c) is the most likely.

Nasty thesis plagiarism problem at Bangalore University

ExpressBuzz has a report including the text:

After receiving a number of complaints against Dr Venkataramappa for plagiarism, under the guidance of Dr B C Mylarappa, who was then a Professor at Department of Sociology, Bangalore University, Governor T N Chaturvedi had constituted an inquiry committee headed by retired IAS officer K V Irniraya. His guide Dr Mylarappa was suspended from service as per the High Court order issued in 2007. Although Dr Venkataramappa was equally involved in the crime, his doctorate degree was not withdrawn.

Yes, it does seem to say the thesis advisor was suspended but the plagiarized thesis was NOT withdrawn.

Hmmm, that kind of approach would have altered the outcome of the Poshard matter at SIU...

The coffee patent wars heat up; Kraft to be the next Albie's?

The Chicago Tribune wrote:

Procter & Gamble claims that a new four-pound plastic container for Maxwell House violates patents on Folgers' containers. Procter & Gamble filed a similar suit in federal court in August 2007 when Maxwell House was introduced in a 39-ounce plastic container.

Of course, it would be more accurate to say that P&G asserts that Kraft's four pound plastic container for Maxwell House coffee falls within the scope of a claim (or claims) of patents of Procter & Gamble. There are no patents on "Folgers'" containers. There may be patents with claims that "cover" Folger's containers. The AP coverage was worse: P&G says Maxwell House's new four-pound plastic container infringes upon Folgers' lightweight plastic container that was introduced five years ago. RTT News was better: The lawsuit alleges that the new four-pound plastic container for Maxwell House coffee, now being introduced in the U.S., directly infringes key Procter & Gamble patents on Folgers Coffee.

Whether the following statement from P&G added light may be questioned: "They introduced a new canister using the same technology which infringes on the same patents so there is a new lawsuit," said Jen Becker, a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman.

Note the use of the word "valid" in the following: Kraft spokeswoman Susan Davison said in an e-mail that the firm hasn't yet reviewed the new suit. "But Kraft does not infringe the valid patent rights of others," she added. "We will vigorously defend ourselves in this matter."

-->But here's the rub-->

P&G struck a deal earlier this year to sell its coffee operation to J.M. Smuckers. Remember Smuckers? They're the ones that sued Albie's over the infamous "peanut butter and jelly" sandwich patent!

Tate and Lyle loses on sucralose at ITC

Online WSJ noted: A U.S. International Trade Commission judge ruled late Monday [Sept. 22] against Tate & Lyle in a patent-infringement case related to sucralose, the generic version of Splenda, Tate & Lyle said.

See also
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/04/tate-lyle-files-itc-action-over.html

Another story on the Martin mess at NMSU

Within a followup story on the Michael Martin saga at New Mexico State University, one has the text:

“While we never look forward to a lawsuit, we do look forward to resolution of this issue,” Ben Woods said. “The courts are the proper venue for the facts to come out. We will let the courts do their job and make a decision based on the merits.”


See also
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/07/flap-concerning-incoming-lsu-chancellor.html

Monday, September 22, 2008

The 65 mpg diesel of Ford

BusinessWeek discusses Ford's 65 mpg diesel car:

Ford's 2009 Fiesta ECOnetic goes on sale in November. But here's the catch: Despite the car's potential to transform Ford's image and help it compete with Toyota Motor and Honda Motor in its home market, the company will sell the little fuel sipper only in Europe. "We know it's an awesome vehicle," says Ford America President Mark Fields. "But there are business reasons why we can't sell it in the U.S." The main one: The Fiesta ECOnetic runs on diesel.

[More later]

Ariad plans appeal of loss in Amgen case in D. Del.

The Boston Globe noted: Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge said Sept. 22 that it plans to pursue the "appropriate legal action" after a federal judge ruled against it in a patent dispute.

See also

More on Ariad/Lilly

Remembering Schon

Recall the article In the Matter of J. Hendrik Schon , published in Physics World about six years ago (1 Nov 02). The Beasley report has since vanished from the "Bell Labs" website.

However, there is a discussion on YouTube of Jan Hendrik Schon.

see The Dark Secret Of Hendrik Schön (4 of 5)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l7Ulx0Bozg&feature=related

***
ARTICLES ABOUT J HENDRIK SCHON

***
Query: what is the first citation in the paper -->

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1066171
Science Express Index
REPORTS
This article has been retracted
Submitted on September 12, 2001
Accepted on October 25, 2001
Field-Effect Modulation of the Conductance of Single Molecules

Jan Hendrik Schön 1*, Hong Meng 1, Zhenan Bao 1
1 Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hendrik@lucent.com.

Field-effect transistors based on two-component self-assembled monolayers of conjugated and insulating molecules have been prepared, the conductance through which can be varied by more than three orders of magnitude by changing the applied gate bias. Using very small ratios of conjugated to insulating molecules in the two-component monolayer, devices with only a few "electrically active" molecules can be achieved. At low temperatures the peak channel-conductance is quantized in units of 2e2/h. This behavior is indicative of transistor action in single molecules. Based on such single-molecule transistors inverter circuits with gain are demonstrated.

******
Note the book Crystal Fire: the birth of the information age by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Norton, 1997. Lilienfeld is discussed at pages 145 (showing Fig. 1 of US 1,745,175), 160, 176-77, 185 and 271.

The open atmosphere of Bell Labs is discussed at pages 84 and 128 (among other places).

CAFC discusses obviousness in CSIRO v. Buffalo

In an earlier post on the CSIRO patent case in ED Texas, IPBiz had noted:

Previously, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Netgear had taken legal action against the CSIRO in an attempt to break its US patents for wireless LANS, including elements of the 802.11a/g Wi-Fi technology that has since become an industry standard, and CSIRO still faces major hurdles in California with two separate cases taken against it by Intel and Dell, and Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Netgear a year ago.

In the appeal of the ED Texas case before the CAFC, one finds an amicus brief from Microsoft: Ruffin B. Cordell, Fish & Richardson P.C., of Washington, DC, for amicus curiae Microsoft Corporation. The CAFC uses the CSIRO case to give an exposition on the current law of obviousness, and does give Buffalo a chance on obviousness, because that portion of the ED Texas decision was vacated.

Of the permanent injunction portion of the case, the CAFC wrote:

Buffalo challenges the district court’s decision to enter a permanent injunction in
this case, and several amici have filed briefs supporting and opposing the issuance of
injunctive relief rather than remitting CSIRO to its legal remedy of an award of damages.
Because we are remanding this case to the district court for further proceedings on the
issue of obviousness, we do not reach the question whether the entry of a permanent
injunction constituted an abuse of discretion.



In reviewing the ED Tex decision, the CAFC noted:

After construing the disputed claim terms of the ’069 patent, the district court addressed the
parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. In its order on those motions, the court
granted summary judgment in favor of CSIRO on the contested issues of patent validity
and infringement.

(...)

Following the district court’s entry of summary judgment of infringement, CSIRO
moved for the entry of a permanent injunction. After a hearing, the court entered an
injunction against Buffalo, as requested.


CSIRO had a problem at the CAFC:

With respect to the issue of obviousness, however, we conclude that the district court erred
by entering summary judgment against Buffalo because we hold that there was a disputed issue of material
fact as to whether the prior art references that were before the district court were
combinable in a manner that would have rendered the asserted claims of the ’069
patent obvious.


A rub in the case:

The summary judgment proceedings in this case were unusual in that the parties
stipulated that the district court could make findings of fact with respect to disputed
factual issues in the course of deciding the cross-motions for summary judgment.


TSM came up:

Invoking the so-called “teaching, suggestion, and motivation” (“TSM”) test,
the district court held that the
evidence was insufficient to show a sufficient teaching, suggestion, or motivation to
combine those references.


KSR [127 S. Ct. 1727 (2007) ]came up:

In KSR, which was decided after the district court entered its summary
judgment order in this case, the Supreme Court criticized this court’s application of the
TSM test for being unduly rigid. The KSR case involved the same kind of problem that
is presented here—the question of obviousness as applied to an invention that consists
of a combination of elements, all of which are found in prior art references.

(...)
In light of the analytical framework set forth by the Supreme Court in KSR, the
district court’s analysis of the summary judgment dispute was flawed.
(...)
CSIRO’s contention that the
prior art deals with a problem that is not directly analogous to the problem facing the
inventors of the ’069 patent is a factual question that has been put into issue by Mr.
Bagby’s declaration and report and cannot be resolved on summary judgment.


Note also the text of the CAFC:

Even before KSR, this court had made clear that the motivation to combine
particular references could be found in the nature of the problem to be solved. In re
Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 1320-21 (Fed. Cir. 2000); Pro-Mold Tool Co. v. Great Lakes
Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (motivation to combine “may also
come from the nature of a problem to be solved, leading inventors to look to references
relating to possible solutions to that problem”). In that regard, this court’s decision in
Cross Medical Products v. Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Inc., 424 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir.
2005), is instructive.
(...)
See In re Translogic Tech., Inc., 504 F.3d 124, 1262 (Fed. Cir. 2007)
(“court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary
skill in the art would employ”; a person of ordinary skill in the art “would have solved this
design need by pursuing known options within his or her technical grasp”); In re Dillon,
919 F.2d 688, 694 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (en banc) (a reference is not from non-analogous art
if “the reference is reasonably pertinent to the particular problem with which the inventor
was involved”).



A side issue in the case is "incorporation by reference" as it impacts anticipation analysis:

To support its contention that Bingham is incorporated by reference, Buffalo cites
Advanced Display Systems v. Kent State University, 212 F.3d 1272 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
That case sets forth the rule as to when a document will be deemed incorporated by
reference in another document for purposes of validity analysis.


It didn't work here:

At the point that Wilkinson refers to COFDM, it contains a
footnote citation, without comment, to Bingham. The footnote citation in Wilkinson could
provide a justification for combining the references for obviousness purposes, but there
is nothing about the reference to Bingham that appears to constitute an incorporation of
any or all of the information from the Bingham reference under the standard set forth in
Advanced Display Systems.


Of "how" scientific organizations, such as CSIRO or University of Rochester, are spending
resources, refer to a previous IPBiz post:


Has CSIRO spent about $10 million in the WiFi wars?


Cross-reference to the thread Educational Savvy on PatentHawk, wherein Kevin Noonan writes:

The basic question remains: do we let corporations take the fruits of academic research for free or do we promote university patenting to provide payback for commercialization? Setting aside post hoc arguments, that was the question I was discussing. What's your answer?

AND LBE responded as to the Rochester case:

As the CAFC noted: it is undisputed that the '850 patent does not disclose any compounds that can be used in its claimed methods. A method claim that requires the use of an undisclosed and untaught compound is invalid under patent law of 2000 or of 1790. Nevertheless, the University of Rochester, who had created nothing, sued Searle, who had brought such a compound to the marketplace without the help of Rochester. What "fruits of academic research" or commercialization is Kevin Noonan thinking of? In the short time since this thread developed, the University of Iowa sued Amgen AND Forbes ran a story on the "highest yielding" Bayh-Dole universities, which showed partnerships of universities with large corporations, not small ones.

Francis Curry to head WIPO as of October 1, 2008

Australia's Francis Gurry received the full vote of the general assembly of WIPO on Sept. 22, and will replace a scandal-plagued Kamal Idris on October 1, 2008 as WIPO director-general.

Coincidentally, some of the problems of Kamal Idris tied back to scandal-plagued Ohio University. As IPBiz noted earlier:



Idris' 1982 application [to WIPO] said he obtained a master's degree in international law from Ohio University in 1978. But Jessica Stark, spokeswoman for the university, told the AP Idris attended from Sept 12, 1977, to June 10, 1978, when he received a Master of Arts in African Studies.

Idris later issued a statement saying that he received a Master of Arts in International Affairs at Ohio University, omitting the reference to a law degree originally mentioned in the 1982 job application."


If WIPO can't perform "prior art" searches on its own employees, how are they going to get patents right? Of course, the Trump organization screwed up on the resume of E. J. Ridings, but even Donald Trump himself had a recollection of Joe Biden's law school plagiarism. Sometimes, people remember what they want to remember.

Of Curry and Idris, the Guardian noted:

The Australian patent lawyer beat rivals from Brazil, Pakistan and elswehere in the selection committee vote, which was formalised at a Monday general assembly meeting of WIPO's 184 member states. He will take over as WIPO director-general on Oct. 1.
Idris has denied any wrongdoing in the birth-date controversy, which stretches back to when he joined the United Nations agency 25 years ago and signed documents indicating he was nine years older than he actually was.


Separately, recall Allison Troutman, who was tossed off of Semester at Sea for "plagiarism" of wikipedia, was a student of Ohio University.