Patent Law Practice Center

Auburn V. IBM Among The Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of March 14, 2011

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott Daniels, of Reexamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor….

Auburn v. IBM is not a “sweet-sixteen” match-up.  It’s an infringement litigation pending in the District Court in Alabama since 2009.  IBM has now requested reexamination of Auburn’s patents – U.S. Patent Nos. 7,194,366 & 7,409,306, both claiming ways of estimating the reliability of integrated circuits and thereby reducing the cost of making chips (see inter partes Request Nos. (2) & (3)).

Xilinx continued its assault on Intellectual Ventures’ patents – this week requesting reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 7,080,301 (see inter partes Request No. (7)), and perhaps U.S. Patent Nos. 6,065,880 and 6,687,865 (see ex parte Request Nos. (16) & (18)). The PTO records are, as yet, unclear regarding the requester of the latter two requests, but it appears to have been Xilinx.

Apple, the clear leader in recent times in the number of requests filed, continued its practice of seeking reexamination of each patent-in-suit whenever it is sued (see ex parte Request Nos. (10), (11) & (13)).  Other noteworthy requests include those filed against Lincoln Globaland 3M patents (see inter partes Request Nos. (1) & (11) and ex parteRequest No.(1)). (more…)