Patent Law Practice Center

VW Challenge to Flexible Car Warning Light Among Reexamination Requests Filed Week of 9/6/11

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

In January, the company Effectively Illuminated Pathways, LLC. sued Aston Martin of North America, Bentley and Volkswagen of America (Bentley’s parent company) for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,520,669 for a flexibly mounted warning light for cars, presumably rather up-scale cars.  VW has now replied to that law suit by requesting reexamination of the ‘669 patent (see inter partes Request No. (1)), the request asserting 92 substantial new questions of patentability and weighing in at 1630 pages counting claim charts.

Cisco requested reexamination of a VirnetX patent (see inter partesRequest No. (10)) in a dispute described in greater detail in our second item posted today.  And SanDisk sought reexamination of a flash memory Netac patent (see inter partes Request No. (11)).

Also of interest last week was the fact that there were 16 inter partes reexamination requests and only 6 ex parte requests.  Normally, the ex parte cases exceed the inter partes.  Perhaps requesters are coming to the conclusion that full participation in the reexamination outweighs the risk of statutory estoppel attaching tointer partes requests. (more…)

Cisco Attack On VirnetX On Network Security Patent Among Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of 7/5/11

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

Late Friday, Cisco requested reexamination of VirnetX’s U.S. Patent No. 6,502,135 entitled “Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability” (see inter partesRequest No. (6)).  The two companies are parties to an infringement action over the ‘135 patent in the Eastern District of Texas.

Shell Oil and Alcoa also countered infringement allegations by requesting reexamination of the patents-in-suit (see inter partesRequest Nos. (3) & (4)). (more…)

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…)

What Happens After A Case Is Stayed Pending Patent Reexamination?

Scott A. McKeown, Partner at Oblon Spivak and Practice Center Contributor, sent in this article discussing what happens to a district court/ITC litigation when the Court stays the ongoing case pending the outcome of a parallel reexamination.  According to the article, a large percentage of these cases end favorably for the defendants.  McKeown examines whether or not this reality will ultimately result in increased reexamination filings.

42% of 2007 Cases Remain Stayed

Patent reexamination parallel to a district court/ITC litigation is often initiated in an attempt to stay the more cost prohibitive court proceeding. Court’s will stay the ongoing litigation pending the patent reexamination outcome in the interests of judicial economy.

But, what happens to these cases? Are they ultimately dismissed altogether? Do the majority of these cases resume? Do the answers to these questions vary based upon the type of patent reexamination request? (more…)

Xilinx Attack On Intellectual Ventures Patent Among Reexamination Requests Filed Week OF 2/14/11

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from our friends at Westerman, Hattori, Daniels & Adrian….

Intellectual Ventures shook up the patent world in December when it filed three separate infringement suits against a series of large electronics companies.  In one of the cases, Intellectual Ventures accused Altera, Microsemi and Lattice Semiconductor of infringing four patents programmable logic devices.  On Tuesday of last week, Intellectual Ventures filed an amended complaint to add Xilinx as a defendant.  Well, Xilinx is wasting no time, and on Friday it asked the Patent Office to reexamine one of the five patents-in-suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,272,646.  Requests for reexamination of the other four patents may come soon (see inter partes Request No. (8)).

The other big news, which we reported in two posts last week, were requests by Google for reexamination of five of the seven Oraclepatents-in-suit in the their case in California.  (See inter partes Request No. (6) and ex parte Request Nos. (4) to (7)). (more…)