Thursday, November 26, 2009

Apple sues Media Solutions over power adaptor

InformationWeek noted that Apple filed suit against Media Solutions Holdings, a company based in Anaheim, on 23 Nov. 09 concerning sales by Media of power adaptors for Apple computers.

InformationWeek noted: "Of the 15 or so patent lawsuits filed during the second half of 2009 that involve Apple, the company is the plaintiff only in this one case."

InfomationWeek also noted: "In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in April, David Simon, chief patent counsel for Intel -- a member of the Patent Fairness Coalition -- said, "This litigation effectively imposes a tax on the creation and use of innovative technology products. That is precisely the opposite of what we want in our economy."

InformationWeek did NOT note earlier testimony by David Simon, which was discussed in 4 CHI.-KENT J. INTELL. PROP. 108 :

In the present situation pertaining to patent grant rates, the impact of the first paper by Quillen and Webster,
which asserted a 97% patent grant rate, extended later in time than the second paper by Quillen and
Webster which withdrew the 97% patent grant rate and posited (among other numbers) an 85% patent grant
rate. Thus, the Harvard Law Review15and the chief patent counsel of Intel16 referred to the conclusions of
the first Quillen and Webster paper in the year 2003, after the conclusions had been modified in 2002.17

footnote 16:
Testimony of David M. Simon, Chief Patent Counsel, Intel; July 24, 2003, available at
www.house.gov/judiciary/simon072403.pdf


Of that earlier testimony, the Boalt biplog had noted in 2004:

David Simon of Intel (read his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and IP—it covers similar concerns) joined the chorus of businesses who hate the uncertainty that patent litigation presents. I fell out of my chair when I heard the size of his patent filing budget compared to Intel's research budget, and he said that he wasn't even counting the litigation budget. Simon presented the picture that an inordinate amount of time is being spent on these issues every year, siphoning away funds that could be going into giving your laptop a 40GHz processor that won't set fire to your pants. (OK, those are my words, but you get the idea.) [The blog was oblivious to the problem on patent grant rate.]

In passing, IPBiz notes some other commentary in the blog which has turned out to be quite inaccurate:

Post-Grant Review and Opposition Everyone loves this. They differ only on the details, such as how long a challenger should have to state her opposition, how to keep the discovery limited enough to keep costs low while allowing reasonable investigation, and the range of issues that are subject to opposition.

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/intels-sewall-publishes-patent-nonsense.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/05/science-daily-on-patent-reform.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/05/coalition-for-patent-fairness.html

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