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…)

Whirlpool Challenge To Three LG Refrigerator Patents Among The Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of 2/28/11

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

Last year LG Electronics sued Whirlpool for selling refrigerators that infringe a series of LG patents.  Whirlpool has now replied by requesting reexamination of those patents (see inter partes Request Nos. (4), (5) & (6)).  Whirlpool has previously requested reexamination of at least four other LG refrigerator patents.  LG and Whirlpool have been in series patent infringement fights, including an ITC investigation.

There were also reexaminations requested by Google against two of the Oracle America patents in the JAVA infringement suit between the companies (see inter partes Request No. (3) and ex parte Request No. (9)).  A request was filed against another of the Intellectual Venturespatents from its case against Altera and other companies, probably by Xilinx, though the identity of the requester does appear in PAIR (see ex parte Request No. (22)).  Finally, a request was filed regarding one of the Ronald Katz telephone patents (see ex parte Request No. (3)). (more…)

Challenges To Two More Intellectual Venture Patents, Among The Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of 2/21/11

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

Last week Xilinx requested reexamination of one of the five patents that Intellectual Ventures has accused Xilinx and three other companies of infringing (here).  The same lawyer who filed that request for Xilinx has now requested reexamination of a second Intellectual Ventures patent – U.S. Patent No. 5,687,325 – from the same case, as well of a third Intellectual Ventures patent not in the case, U.S. Patent No. 6,252,527 (see ex parte Request Nos. (8) & (9)).  Since the requests are for ex parte, not inter partes, reexamination, the identity of the real party in interest need not be disclosed.

In August EVM Systems sued Cordis, Boston Scientific and Abbott for infringement of two patents related to stents having a “slotted memory metal tube,” U.S. Patent Nos. 6,780,175 and 7,037,321.  Last week, Cordis requested reexamination of the ‘175 patent and Abbott requested reexamination of the ‘321 patent (see inter partesreexamination Request No. (5) and ex parte Request No. (15)). Although inter partes reexamination was possible for both patents, lawyers for Abbott chose ex parte reexamination. The choice between ex parte and inter partes reexamination is sometimes complex and one addressed in a recent post (here). (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…)