IPBiz

John Whealan headed to GWU

2008-05-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Marcia Coyle reports: John Whealan, deputy general counsel for intellectual property law and solicitor for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, has joined the faculty of George Washington University School of Law as associate dean for intellectual property.

Whealan had been working on greasing the skids for patent reform. Since that isn't happening, he's moving on.

See also: http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-tafas-v-dudas-selected-excerpts.html

Remember: S.1145 is off the calendar.

2008-05-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Newsflash to Laura Newpoff: of your text: There's also a looming Patent Reform Act in the U.S. Senate that, if passed, will drastically change the IP law landscape, the Senate already took S.1145 off the calendar. It isn't happening this year, and it isn't "looming."

Ex parte Fu and obviousness rejections over a genus

2008-05-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

The 271 blog discusses the significance of the BPAI case Ex parte Fu to obviousness determinations, specifically as to the use of a genus to invalidate.

Invitrogen does deal with WARF on stem cell patents

2008-05-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

You won't find it on californiastemcellreport, but California-based Invitrogen has signed a deal with Wisconsin-based WARF to license WARF patents in the stem cell area. A May 8 article in the North County Times stated:

Invitrogen Corp. has deepened its involvement in the fast-growing field of embryonic stem cell research under a deal announced Thursday [May 8] with a holder of controversial patents to the technology.

Carlsbad-based Invitrogen gets the legal right to sell products made by using embryonic stem cells, under the deal with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation [WARF]. The foundation has been issued U.S. patents to the underlying technology for growing primate and human embryonic stem cells. Invitrogen would not disclose the terms of its deal.

If, hypothetically, the world was as portrayed by John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog (then FTCR), Invitrogen would not be doing a deal with WARF over the patents, supposedly significantly weakened according to Simpson. The North County Times article also mentions Jeanne Loring: A number of stem cell researchers, led by Jeanne Loring of The Scripps Research Institute, are suing to invalidate the patents. The researchers say the patents are unjustified and are slowing down their work, which they say may lead to new treatments for incurable diseases. It's not clear whether the article refers to Loring's declaration in the ill-fated FTCR re-exam of the WARF patents, or to some other effort. One recalls that Loring's declaration was tossed by the USPTO as conclusory, and the prior art she relied on was deemed not enabled. For all the smoke generated by Simpson, the re-exam was poorly thought-out and produced little. Given that Invitrogen did a deal with WARF, one sees what the business community thinks of Simpson's efforts.

Meanwhile at californiastemcellreport, one has debates on whether Klein did, or did not, violate CIRM policy. See for example:
Consumer Watchdog Rethinks Stand on Klein's Private Contact with Grant Applicants Anybody for re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

***
As a separate matter, californiastemcellreport has a comment by Dr. Kim on the "Cha plagiarism in Fertility & Sterility" matter:

- ... an author listed on both published articles explaining why Dr. Kim’s name was left off of the Fertility & Sterility article and why Dr. Cha’s name was left off of the Korean journal article.

The author, Lee SH, has been sentenced to 6-month jail term with 1 year of suspension of execution for Copyright infringement in Korea. Her above "explanation" was obviously not accepted by the criminal court.

- ...he first suggested that Fertility & Sterility publish an erratum saying Dr. Kim “should have been included among the authors of the F&S article,” and then he took no further action for nearly one year.

His such suggestion was irrelevant and therefore turned down by me right away. I rejected that offer as I was sure that it had not been merely an error. When asked to present, so-called, the first manuscript with my name listed on, he couldn't. Why? No answer from him so far.

IPBiz notes that apart from the plagiarism issue (and plagiarism is not a federal crime in the U.S.), there was an issue of violation of copyright law in South Korea, because the second paper (in Fertility & Sterility) copied text from the first paper in KJOG. Assuming the accuracy of the comment of Dr. Kim, the Korean court resolved this matter adversely to the interests of Cha's position.

***There was a separate comment on californiastemcellreport concerning Cha:

- The Cha Fertility Center and Cha RMI are located in the same Los Angeles office building, raising further questions about where and how Cha RMI will procure eggs for its CIRM-funded research on cloning techniques. As CGS's press statement put it, "Women's health advocates have warned about the health risks of egg retrieval, as well as about likely conflicts of interest between fertility doctors conducting egg retrieval and researchers who want the eggs for their experiments."

- The medical director of the Cha Fertility Center, another Cha Health Systems subsidiary, has been named in a lawsuit filed by a woman who says that he lied about the number of eggs he collected from her and other aspects of her medical care.

***
The "Cha plagiarism" business is related to the suit brought by Cha against Bruce Flamm, which suit was tossed by a California Superior Court.

Science manuscripts submitted to journals to be checked for plagiarism

2008-05-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

from InformationToday :

The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com) announced that it will be incorporating the iThenticate checking tool into its submission and peer-review process in Manuscript Central’s online workflow system. Manuscript Central is a web-based, database-driven peer-review and online submission program for scholarly publishers. The program automates manuscript submission to journals for easy administration, editing, and review so customers can focus on the content instead of the process. Policies and guidelines will also be developed.

CrossRef recently signed an agreement with iParadigms, LLC to launch the CrossCheck service to help verify the originality of scholarly content. After the success of CrossRef’s recent pilot of CrossCheck, the service will be scheduled to go live in June via Manuscript Central, with more than 200 societies and publishers, 2,400 books and journals, 70,000 monthly submissions, and 5 million registered users.

On the demise of the lobbying effort by the Coalition for Patent Fairness

2008-05-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

In an article by John Letzing in MarketWatch titled Tech firms' millions get them a muddle on patent bill
Reform bill pulled despite rich lobbying effort; a motley opposition, one has the text:

Such [patent reform] legislation has now been pulled from the Senate's floor schedule, according to a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. If it isn't taken up during the current congressional session, critical momentum needed to carry it forward for consideration next year may be lost.

The companies, represented by the Coalition for Patent Fairness, say that they'll continue facing a growing number of frivolous and expensive patent lawsuits without the patent-reform legislation.

Letzing noted:

But in recent months, the Coalition for Patent Fairness has been confronted by mushrooming opposition from a surprisingly motley group -- including trade unions, blue-chip corporations such as General Electric Co. and even 83-year-old conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly.

IPBiz notes that Schlafly is not a newcomer to the patent reform wars, and has the distinction of being demonized multiple times in Jaffe and Lerner's Innovation and Its Discontents. As Letzing's piece illustrates (and as Jaffe and Lerner failed to understand), opposition to patent reform is not limited to political conservatives, AND the opposition by the conservatives is not of the wild-eyed variety.

Letzing gets into the significant amount of money expended by the Coalition for Patent Fairness:

That's helped lead to an impasse in the Senate, even after the coalition spent almost $1 million on lobbying in 2006 and nearly $2 million last year. This year, another $790,000 was spent in the first quarter alone, according to public filings and the Center for Responsive Politics.

John McCain's advisors on legal policy

2008-05-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

The hotline of the national journal discusses the members of the Justice Advisory Committee of John McCain. The list of members includes current senators Sam Brownback and Jon Kyl, both of whom earlier urged caution on the patent reform bill in the Senate. Lindsey Graham is also on the committee.

Professors John F. Duffy and Eugene Volokh are also on the committee.

Barack Obama has Mark Lemley advising him on patent policy.

Patently-O has a post on John McCain and patents.

Surf's up for stem cell scientists; San Diego to spend $40 million in faculty recruitment

2008-05-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

In an article titled State stem cell agency awards $271 million in grants, Terri Somers discusses an award by CIRM of $271 million in grants to 12 institutes. She particularly emphasizes a $43 million grant to the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine for the construction of a building in Torrey Pines, in the San Diego area.

As one progresses through the article, the amount of money at the San Diego facility goes up:

the proposed $115 million building to be built near the Torrey Pines Gliderport ...

The San Diego consortium, and the 11 other grant recipients, have committed to invest a total of $560 million from charitable donations and their internal reserves to construct the facilities ...

The San Diego consortium expects it needs to raise at least $72 million tocomplete funding for the center. And it expects to spend $40 million in faculty recruitment and other costs, bringing the total for the new San Diego Center for Regenerative Medicine to $155 million. ...

One notes that the amount of the grant from CIRM itself ($43 million) is of comparable magnitude to the amount of money being spent for "faculty recruitment" ($40 million).

The "deliverables" are placed in a very conditional form:

Because of the ability of stem cells to evolve into the more than 200 types of cells in the body, the field is believed to hold the promiseof curing diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. ...

“This will go a long way toward medical research that could save lives and improve them for people with chronic diseases,”

At least one part of the article was honest:

The center will be a highly visible symbol of the region's commitment to stem cell research, and a place where the taxpayers footing the bill can see what progress their money has fueled ...

Somers could have added that the buildings probably will be the only visible sign of "where the taxpayer money went."

The comments to the Somers' article were highly partisan, yet did not even get into all the issues with how Proposition 71 is going to fail. Seeing how Proposition 71 is turning into an employment cushion for a small sector of science, which sector is likely not to deliver much in ten years, one is glad to be in New Jersey, where voters wised up to this scam.

More on issue with BPAI judges

2008-05-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

ADAM LIPTAK of the NYT discusses Duffy's law review article on the appointments clause in a piece titled:
In One Flaw, Questions on Validity of 46 Judges

A blog at usatoday cited the NYT article, multiplying its impact.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/05/constitutional.html

Law&Order does mortgage crisis, trade secrets

2008-05-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

Subthemes in the May 6 Law & Order SVU (with Stephen Collins) involved trade secrets (on buying a coffee plantation) and the mortgage crisis (bribing a juror who faced homelessness).

In the end, in this one, the lawyer did it.

Albert Einstein and the Swiss patent office

2008-05-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

Of Mike's comment on blogging/invention:

Care to comment on what happened in the Netherlands and Switzerland in the 1800s when both countries went without a patent system?

Gee, Mike, I already did. Is Alzeheimer's setting in? That "myth" was taken apart long ago.

Also, it's a good thing that Switzerland was so impressed with the success of the "no patent" system that they got rid of it,
thereby giving Albert Einstein a job opportunity.

****
For those who don't remember, apparently including Mike Masnick, LBE discussed the Switzerland issue on TechDirt, back in the year 2005:

Re: Missing the Pointby Lawrence B. Ebert on Nov 12th, 2005 @ 2:43pm
Let's see, you meant to say both economies thrived by becoming piracy centers.

From George Monbiot's 2002 "Patent Nonsense":

But in 1859 a small company based in Basel "borrowed" the aniline dying process which had been developed and patented in Britain two years before. The company, later called Ciba, soon became a massive industrial enterprise, swiftly outstripping competing firms in Britain. Monbiot neglects to mention that the giants of dyes (later I.G. Farben) were located in Germany, with strong patent protection.

In the 1890s, Gerard Philips, unhampered by intellectual property laws, started manufacturing the incandescent lamps developed by Thomas Edison in the United States.

Monbiot gives the periods of "no patents" as 1850-1907 in Switzerland; 1869-1912 in the Netherlands.

Given that this is Einstein's "centennial" year of the three big papers, we know that there was a Swiss patent office in 1905, because Einstein was working there. Thus, the numbers may be a bit suspect. Otherwise, it might be a bit surprising that the Swiss and the Dutch didn't steal the Wright Brothers work, too. They certainly were after pharma.

And, of course, somewhere along the line they decided to cease being patent-free.

***

Thus, Mike was re-cycling an earlier theory proposed by Monbiot, which didn't even get the facts right. This is very similar to Jaffe and Lerner, who copied their prior art argument from Greg Aharonian, who didn't get the facts right. Kind of funny to have the advocates of copyists copying their arguments from other people, who had the arguments wrong in the first place.
Funny indeed, but welcome to the wacky world of patent reform!

Apple patent application on videoconferencing

2008-05-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

US published application 20080100693, titled Method, System, and Graphical User Interface for Making Conference Calls,

first claim: A computer-implemented method, comprising:establishing a first communication link between a first party and a user in response to a first action by the user;displaying a first image corresponding to the first party at an intensity that is greater than a threshold;while the first communication link is ongoing, establishing a second communication link between a second party and the user in response to a second action by the user;switching the user from the first communication link to the second communication link;while continuing to display the first image, displaying a second image corresponding to the second party; andvisually highlighting the second image so as to facilitate visual differentiation of the first and second images.

first inventor: Steven P. Jobs

P&G sues J&J over tooth strips in WD Wisc

2008-05-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports:

The lawsuit, filed on May 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, alleges that the Listerine strips infringe P&G patents related to the tooth whitening active ingredient and delivery systems.

P&G has asked the court to stop J&J and its company, McNeil-PPC, from making, selling, and importing allegedly infringing products.[ie, P&G is seeking an injunction; it also wants damages]

The IHT reported: The case is one of several lawsuits P&G has filed against competitors in the past year over product, packaging and marketing disputes.

Patent reform: doing the same thing repeatedly?

2008-05-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

From a discussion of Oreos in China: Back then, Kraft was selling the U.S. version of Oreos in China. Albert Einstein's definition of insanity -- doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results -- "characterized what we were doing," says Mr. Warren, vice president of marketing for Kraft Foods International.

Quote at IAM: In spite of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, there is no hard empirical evidence that patent quality has substantially deteriorated in the last five or 10 years. Frequently cited indicators such as opposition or revocation rates have to be treated with great caution as they do not provide statistically sound data. With regard to the timeliness characteristic of quality, which is not covered by legislation, there has been deterioration. Alison Brimelow, President of the European Patent Office

A comment at patenthawk: Whether you believe it or not, a good portion of the claims I see (I would say more than Mr. Dudas quotes) aren't even in the ball park. Attorneys dont need a salty searcher with a vitriolic blog, they need Google. I've stopped bitching about searching because I can reject 90% of my cases with Google & Google scholar. Its almost laughable.

Note mention of IPBiz on BRIC

Blogging as a model for invention?

2008-05-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

The blog overcomingbias has an entry of relevance to inventors, as well as to bloggers:

So where will blog posts fit in? While most academic papers and books are long, many ideas worthy of academic attention can be clearly explained in a short blog post. In fact, many academic papers and even books consist of a short good idea and then a lot of other not especially useful material that shows the author can do impressive hard work. So in principle, blog posts could fit into the world of academic work.

But, if social norms allow academics to ignore blog posts, by not citing clearly relevant and influential blog posts just because they are blog posts, then blog writers will have little incentive to offer insightful comments that can be fit easily into an academic network of cited insights. Blog writers will instead have the incentives of newspaper columnists, to provide an engaging style with little expectation of originality or cumulative expert influence. Such blog writers might well cite each other, but more as a way to create an engaging multi-character show for their readers.

And if inventors received no protection against copyists, they would have no incentive to offer inventions. The Venetians figured this out in 1474. Mike at Techdirt has not figured this out in 2008.

Accused plagiarist Pukas gets reprimand

2008-05-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

KIRA GOLDENBERG of theday wrote:

The Board of Education late Wednesday [April 30] reprimanded Superintendent of Schools Natalie J. Pukas for allegedly plagiarizing a document distributed to the board in February.

In a press release issued around midnight after a marathon executive session, the board announced the reprimand and said it considers the matter closed. It urged the community to move on.

Also released was a written apology signed by Pukas addressed to board Chairman Darren Robert in which she stated, “I realize that offering the Board of Education an unattributed draft was an error in judgment. I apologize to you and to the members of the Board of Education for this misunderstanding. However, it was never my intent to deceive the board, nor would I ever plagiarize.”

NY Times on patent reform, inequitable conduct

2008-04-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Within a New York Times article titled Patent Law Battle a Boon to Lobbyists, one finds the recent argument by Jon Dudas:

Jon W. Dudas, the under secretary of commerce for intellectual property, said: “We are getting more and more unpatentable ideas, worse and worse quality applications. Historically, in the last 40 years, the allowance rate — the percentage of applications ultimately approved — hovered around 62 percent to 72 percent. It went up to 72 percent in 2000, but dropped to 43 percent in the first quarter of this year.”

Of various discussions involving Mike at TechDirt, one notes that the Dudas statement is based on the low allowance rate of the first quarter of 2008. There was a high allowance rate in 2000, which was all right for Dudas, but not all right for Jaffe and Lerner. The Dudas position is that bad applications have always been rejected, but that is not at all what Jaffe and Lerner said. What Jaffe and Lerner said does NOT presage the comments of Dudas, which are based on a phenomenon of first quarter 2008 (and which may have been "artificially" created by the USPTO).

The Times piece by ROBERT PEAR, although titled about lobbyists, begins:

A fight has erupted in Congress over the question of whether drug makers and other companies should be allowed to keep patents they obtained by misrepresentation or cheating.

Although patent reform involved issues about inequitable conduct, the major point of contention was apportionment of damages. The article by Pear got to damages in the 24th paragraph [!]. It did at least get to lobbyists in paragraph 3:

The legislation, affecting a wide swath of the American economy, has been a boon to lobbyists. In 15 months, two dueling business coalitions have spent $4.3 million lobbying on the legislation, which calls for the biggest changes in United States patent law in more than 50 years. Companies from almost every major industry have joined the battle.

Pear gave dollar numbers suggesting the Coalition for Patent Fairness outspent the 21st Century Patent Reform, $2.5 million to $1.8 million. IPBiz notes that the Coalition for Patent Fairness was very effective in its manipulation of the news surrounding various Congressional hearings.

New database of Australian patent applications

2008-04-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

Marcus Browne of zdnet notes on May 1:

The AusPat database, launched this week as part of a joint initiative between the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and IP Australia, will allow researchers and the innovation industry to crosscheck patent applications with records dating back as far as 1979.

(...)

IP Australia's Johnson said that the database is divided up according to types of technology, and employs some search approximations similar to Google — such as a fuzzy logic — which takes into account potential spelling mistakes in a user's search terms.

(...)

IP Australia will also be working on uploading historical patent opposition data on to AusPat, with Johnson saying his aim is to include "as much information and as much specific detail about individual patents on the database as possible".

Patent law "survived" Edison?

2008-04-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

Text by Brad Smith of Microsoft:

And none of us claim to have anything even remotely approaching all of the answers, but as we thought more about this it struck us that a few things may be pertinent. And one is what we really need is that there is a multifaceted approach. I can stand up here as a lawyer and say the law will continue to be important. It always has. It has survived inventions that began in 1878 when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, and continues to this day, and it will continue to be important in the future.

Also

And finally let me introduce the other two speakers. We wanted to provide you with some perspective about what were doing as a company in the technological space and give you a sense of where our technology fits in. We as a company are really in two very different spaces when you think about it. On the one hand the market will give you this description that we are a platform and tools provider. We are creating DRM tools for other content holders to use. I think its fair to say that our philosophy is that we need to create technology that is broad and flexible enough to meet their needs, but not dictate their choices.

Google patent application filed by New Jersey firm

2008-04-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Google's published patent application 20080097833 , titled RENDERING ADVERTISEMENTS WITH DOCUMENTS HAVING ONE OR MORE TOPICS USING USER TOPIC INTEREST INFORMATION , was filed by STRAUB & POKOTYLO of Tinton Falls, NJ. The first claim states:

A computer-implemented method comprising:
a) providing, responsive to a received search query, a document with a plurality of search results, the plurality of search results including a first search result associated with a first document having content concerning a first topic and a second search result associated with a second document having content concerning a second topic;
b) determining which of the first topic and the second topic a user is most interested in;
c) selecting one of a first set of one or more ads relevant to the first topic and a second set of one or more ads relevant to the second topic using, at least, the determination of user topic interest; and
d) serving, for rendering to the user, in association with the document, the selected one of the first and second set of one or more ads.

Note that this application of Google is a continuation application --> This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/610,322 (incorporated herein by reference), titled "RENDERING ADVERTISEMENTS WITH DOCUMENTS HAVING ONE OR MORE TOPICS USING USER TOPIC INTEREST INFORMATION," filed on Jun. 30, 2003, and listing Krishna Bharat as the inventor.

Note that the parent application (10/610322) received a notice of allowance on 20 Sept. 2007. In the world of Quillen and Webster, Google would be trying to patent the same invention in 11/962,846. An RCE was filed in 10/610322 on 28 March 2007.

Paragraph 5 of the published application states: Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.

Graphene (single layer graphite) in nanoelectronics

2008-04-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

The 18 April 2008 issue of Science has an article "Graphene Nanoelectronics" which introduces a paper by Ponomarenko et al. (page 356), which discusses quantum dots.

A figure on page 324 has a pyrene fragment, which along with other graphene fragments, is postulated to be a graphene-based single electron transistor.

UPDATE:

From Synchrotron Radiation News, 21(2), 2008:

The Shirley Award for outstanding scientific achievement went to Alessandra Lanzara and Eli Rotenberg, "for their groundbreaking work measuring the electronic structure of graphene and the use of high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to understand the unusual transport properties of graphene associated with Dirac fermions."

April 08 press release from "peer to patent"

2008-04-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

The first non-final rejection by the USPTO in the "peer to patent" program pertained to a rejection of a claim of an HP patent based on prior art of an IBM employee (the second non-final rejection pertained to a claim of an IBM patent )

In sending the program’s first non-final rejection, the USPTO examiner used prior art and commentary submitted by Steven Pearson, a senior software engineer at IBM, to reject claims of an HP application. The second non-final rejection relied upon prior art and commentary submitted by Rob Cameron, a Professor of Computer Science at Simon Fraser University, to reject claims of an IBM application. As a result, Pearson and Cameron have been awarded the title “prior artist” on the pilot Web site.

The release also noted:

Because the USPTO agreed to examine patent applications in the pilot ahead of other applications, the time between application filing and the onset of examination shrank from four to two years.

The problems faced by a pioneering inventor

2008-04-28T07:05:00.001-07:00

Further to an earlier IPBiz post related to the aluminum engine of the Wright Brothers, note the difficulties a "first inventor" faces.

After having returned to Dayton and caught up on work, the brothers sent out letters to the leading internal combustion manufacturers around the world, soliciting information on obtaining an engine producing at least 8 horsepower and weighing no more than 180 pounds. Most companies ignored the inquiry or sent at best dismissive or overly optimistic replies. At worst the brothers found this an annoyance, for they had, after all, already designed and built the engine that powered the bicycle "factory."

[from Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight, Oxford, 2003, page 200]

***Of Langley

As a result of [of the War Department's interest in an airplane because of the Spanish American War in 1898], Congress granted Langley $50,000 and asked him to go ahead and build such a machine.
Langley was now convinced that a gasoline engine offered more promise of powered flight than steam. He went to one manufacturer after another, asking for an engine that would deliver 12 horsepower and weigh only 100 pounds. When these requirements proved too formidable, he turned the problem over to his gifted assistant, Charles M. Manly.

[from the American Heritage History of Flight, page 84]

Langley was a great pioneer, but --like Maxim and Ader-- he was too concerned with power plants and wing surfaces. It was not enough. The line of endeavor that finally resulted in victory did not go through these ground-based engineers; rather it went through those men who had not only mechanical ingenuity but also the skill, imagination, and daring to seek, first of all, control in the air through gliding experiments: through Lilienthal, Pilcher, and Chanute to the Wright brothers.

[from the American Heritage History of Flight, page 85]

**
In contrast, Heppenheimer, "First Flight" wrote of Langley:

"He wanted 12 horsepower--with a total weight of less than 60 pounds, a demanding specification indeed for that day. It was to run for three hours without overheating, with the cost for the research and development being under $2,100.

No one responded." [p.175]

Heppenheimer described the efforts of the Wright Brothers:

"To provide a suitable reserve of power, leaving 5.5 horsepower for useful thrust, the motor was to put out 8 to 9 horsepower.

Even in 1902, such performance did nto seem difficult to attain. Accordingly, the Wrights sent letters to a number of engine manufacturers, presenting their request. They wanted considerably less power than Langley's specification of 12 horses, four years earlier, with the Wrights being willing to accept twice the weight. Even so, no one has a stock engine that was ready for sale." [pages 181-2]

There is a discussion of Charlie Taylor's work for the Wrights:

The body of the first engine was of cast aluminum, and was bored out on the lathe for independent cylinders. The pistons wer cast iron, and these were turned down and grooved for piston rings. The rings were cast iron, too...

Dry batteries were used for starting the engine and then we switched onto a magneto bought from the Dayton Electric Company. There was no battery on the plane...

[pp. 182-3. T.A. Heppenheimer, First Flight, Wiley 2003]

Controversy over attorney billing in RIM v. Visto: mowing the lawn with your teeth?

2008-04-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

Ben Moshinsky in an article titled A&O's BlackBerry patent win soured as costs inquest criticises hours tally noted:

One source said: "It's a generalisation, but North American clients do like to spend three hours every night going through the documents to make them more American. They spend hours on it, and it's a bit like mowing the lawn with your teeth." The context is important. It is not the first time RIM's legal piggybank has been smashed. In 2006 the company had six firms working flat-out for almost two years on its patent dispute with NTP, and it still had to pay out more than $600m (£302.83m) to settle the case. Opposing US firm Wiley Rein & Fielding grabbed a third of the settlement in fees, putting A&O's £5.2m in the shade.

Separately, of billing differences between an IP firm and a GP firm:

But what has made the most impact is the discrepancy in fees between A&O, a magic circle firm, and Taylor Wessing, a true IP heavyweight. The quantity of hours, rather than the rate, was the problem.
Market sources put Taylor Wessing's hourly IP partner rate at around £475 and A&O's at between £550 and £600, which implies that the two firms' prices are closer than their different bills suggest. But Floyd J noted that A&O had two associates who together worked more than 4,500 hours on the case, billing £2m.

A Mylan connection in improper WVU degree matter

2008-04-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

A panel at West Virginia University [WVU] determined that there was no academic justification for retroactively granting Heather Bresch, the daughter of Gov. Joe Manchin III.

The Mylan connection, as reported by the New York Times, is as follows:

Ms. Bresch, 38, works for Mylan Inc. It is the world’s third-largest generic drug company and employs 2,000 people in Morgantown, W.Va. The company’s chairman, Milan Puskar, is a major campaign contributor to Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, and is the university’s largest donor, having given it $20 million in 2003.