Patent Law Practice Center

Top 5 Patent Law Blog Posts of the Week

Today we continue our weekly installment highlighting the best of the patent blogosphere from the past week. If there are any patent blogs you think should be highlighted by our Top 5, please comment on this post and we’ll check them out.

1) Patent Docs: Tomato Genome Determined – The recent news that the “entire genomic DNA sequence of the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has been deciphered” inspired this post. It takes an in depth look at the “interesting relationships between tomatoes and closely-related species.” No discussion of whether there will be a push to patent the tomato genetic sequence.

2) IP Watchdog: Mobile App Developers Gain Ally to Fight Patent Infringement – This post highlights the attempt to promote innovation within the mobile app industry. The world’s largest patent research community announced the formation of a partnership with a global trade organization for mobile software developers, which this post argues could in fact impact the mobile app industry in a positive way by benefiting the small businesses and individual entrepreneurs behind the technology. (more…)

Top 5 Patent Law Blog Posts of the Week

Today we continue our weekly installment highlighting the best of the patent blogosphere from the past week. If there are any patent blogs you think should be highlighted by our Top 5, please comment on this post and we’ll check them out.

1) Patents Post-Grant: Update from the Central Reexamination Unit – This post reports on the Central Reexamination Unit’s update on the USPTO’s efforts to refine the patent reexamination process, and that the stream line proposals of 2011 are still being reviewed.

2) Patent Docs: USPTO Seeks Comments on New Sequence Listing Standard – This post summarizes the notice published by the USPTO in the Federal Register regarding  an international effort to revise the standard for Sequence Listing submissions. The post also shares how comments regarding the proposed standard can be submitted for review.

(more…)

Federal Judge Posner to Use Court Appointed Experts in Apple v. Motorola

The patent litigation between Apple and Motorola has been stand out case among the many involving mobile device technology.  The matter of Apple Inc. and NeXT Software Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., is occurring in varying districts of the United States as well as in several European courtrooms.  The litigation of the case in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern District, appears to be the most watched within the United States. Federal Judge Richard Posner, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago, Illinois,volunteered to preside over the District Court trial. This move originally drew some attention as Judge Posner is of a quite distinguished status to be overseeing a jury trial.

In his March 10, 2012 Order, Judge Posner noted that his concern, “is that many of the proposed claims constructions are not in language intelligible to jurors…There is no point in giving jurors stuff they won’t understand.”

(more…)

Facebook Continues to Load Its Patent Arsenal

The patent wars are all the rage amongst tech companies these days. Not too long ago, Microsoft Corp. made news when announcing it purchased approximately 925 patents from AOL, Inc. for an estimated $1.1 billion dollars. The commentary regarding that purchase was equally focused on the impressive sale price for the amount of patents purchased as it was on the fact that tech companies are looking twice at their patent portfolios as litigation and licensing tools.

The latest development is that Facebook, who is currently in a patent infringement battle with Yahoo, recently purchased 650 of the AOL patents from Microsoft for an estimated $550 million dollars. This recent acquisition comes just one month after Facebook purchased 750 patents from IBM. (more…)

Twitter’s Innovator’s Patent Agreement: The Future or Foolish?

Tech companies’ battles over patent portfolios have become the new norm in patent litigation. Yahoo sued Facebook over the alleged infringement of 10 patents, Oracle and Google are battling over operating system patents, Apple and Samsung have patent litigation in 10 countries simultaneously, and Microsoft just purchased 800 patents from AOL for over $1.1 billion dollars. We have previously reported on the growing use of patents as more than just defensive tools. But last week, Twitter announced it would not participate in such litigation.

Twitter’s Innovator’s Patent Agreement proposes that if a patent is assigned to Twitter, Twitter promises it won’t use that patent to sue anyone, except for defensive purposes or unless the engineers grant permission to the company to do so. According to Twitter’s announcement,

The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.

Twitter’s proposed patent litigation model has received support as well as criticism. Supporters applaud Twitter for actively promoting creativity and innovation via its promise to not actively pursue legal recourse. Such a business model also reduces the amount of money spent by the company for litigation. Critics, including frequent PLI speaker Mark Radcliffe, on the other hand, question whether Twitter made a wise decision considering they could end up needing to pursue patent infringement litigation in the future. By granting technology engineers with the right to veto a legal action, Twitter would essentially be granting the power to make legal decisions to non-lawyers. Meanwhile Twitter’s plan gets implemented, the patent wars will rage on in courts all over the world. Time will tell what impact Twitter’s stance will have on patent litigation.