Patent Law Practice Center

Recent drone patents focus on avoiding midair collisions

Recently on IPWatchdog.com, we published an article about how Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) have teamed up to support bipartisan legislation that seeks to take the first steps to regulate commercial drone use. See Senators Booker, Hoeven draw up bipartisan bill promoting commercial drone use. Whenever we cover a story relating to technology we always like to take a look at the recently issued U.S. patents in that particular area to get a sense of what is going on in the industry. With that in mind, we took a look at recent patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of drone technologies.

In this search, we found a fair number of patents being issued to foreign firms, which could be some evidence that drone R&D in other countries might be outpacing those inventions produced by American firms. Read the rest of this entry »

A Primer on the PATENT Act

The Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship (PATENT) Act, introduced on April 30, 2015, by Senator Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Leahy (D-VT), is the Senate version of the Innovation Act in the House. The PATENT Act would establish higher pleading standards for patent infringement complaints, which the sponsors say would give defendants real notice of the claims against them. The bill also contains a controversial “customer stay” provision similar to the one found in the Innovation Act. This could prove to be a huge stumbling block because, the way the provisions are written, even the largest tech companies could move to indefinitely stay patent litigation; they are often themselves consumers (i.e., they have purchased something from another manufacturing company). While the Senate Judiciary Committee’s summary of the PATENT Act says that the “customer stay is available only to those at the end of the supply chain,” like the coffee shop, the language found in the bill is actually far broader in scope. Read the rest of this entry »

Patent Reform in the House of Representatives

The Innovation Act (H.R. 9) has gotten the most publicity in the House of Representatives, but there are several other pending bills in the House, including the TROL Act, which has already been voted out of Committee.

What follows is a summary of the other patent reform bills pending in the House.

The TROL Act

The Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act, more commonly referred to as the TROL Act, was introduced during the 113th Congress and passed the House Commerce Subcommittee with bipartisan support. The TROL Act addresses sending bad faith patent demand letters, clarifying that such activity may violate the Federal Trade Commission Act. The Act defines bad faith as either false or misleading statements or omissions, whether knowingly false, made with reckless indifference to the truth, or made with an awareness of a high probability that the statements or omissions would deceive the sender intentionally. The TROL Act also further authorizes the FTC and state attorneys general to bring actions to stop the abusive behavior, but also provides a good faith affirmative defense. The Act would further preempt any state law or regulation expressly relating to the transmission or contents of communications relating to the assertion of patent rights.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Primer on the Innovation Act

It wasn’t so long ago that President Obama signed the America Invents Act (AIA) into law, on September 16, 2011. As with many complex pieces of legislation that will substantially revise an area of law, the AIA did not become immediately effective. The most dramatic changes became effective in two waves, one on September 16, 2012, and the other on March 16, 2013. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), along with the new post grant administrative proceedings to challenge patents, came into being in September 2012, and the U.S. changed from “first to invent” to “first to file” in March 2013.

Here we are, just over two years from the most significant change to U.S. patent law since at least the 1952 Patent Act, and there are more proposals for patent reform pending in Congress. There are four legislative proposals that are deemed “serious,” and a handful of marginal proposals, which make great sense, but which largely have no chance to be enacted.

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Two Near Misses in the History of Patents

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently issued U.S. Patent No. 9,000,000, entitled Windshield Washer Conditioner. The 9-millionth patent protects a system that collects and treats rainwater for replenishing a vehicle’s windshield wiper fluid. As I pointed out in an article here on IPWatchdog, it took less than 3 years and 8 months to reach this milestone after the last “million patent” was reached on August 16, 2011, when U.S. Patent No. 8,000,000, titled Visual Prosthesis, issued.

Do you remember who lost in the World Series last year? How about the Super Bowl? Do you know who was the second American in space? Unless you are a famous for being a runner-up, like the Buffalo Bills were during a 4-year run of losing in the Super Bowl, people tend to forget. See Super Bowl Results. I suspect that same tendency is also true with respect to patents. We tend to focus on these nice, round numbers when looking at significant points in history.

Today, however, we stick up for the little guy in this conversation, the contenders, or if you prefer, the “near misses.” So today, I thought we’d take a look at a couple of patents which will probably be lost to the annals of time simply because their issue number was off by one. Read the rest of this entry »