Patent Law Practice Center

Reexamination Request against Wireless Game Controller Patent among those Filed Week of September 20th

Here is this week’s  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor….

The most interesting reexamination request last week was filed against a patent that claims a radio frequency remote game controller and is owned by the Canadian company Eleven Engineering (Ex parte No. 22).  Last November Eleven Engineering and its U.S. subsidiary sued Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft for infringement of that patent and two others.  The accused games are Nintendo’s Wii Remote and Wii Balance Board, Sony’s Playstation3, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.  The case is before Judge Stark in Delaware and has not progressed beyond the pleading stage.

Another notable request was filed by Volkswagen against a car brake safety patent (Inter partes No. 3).  The patent is owned by 55 Brake LLC who sued 12 major automobile companies for infringement of that patent.  The case is in Idaho and a trial is scheduled to begin in March 2011. (more…)

Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of September 13th

Here is this week’s  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor….

Perhaps the most important reexamination request last week was filed by Google against a Xerox patent (Ex parte No. 6).  The patent is the subject of a pending law suit in Delaware between the parties.  Earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge issued a decision in that case allowing Google to use counsel from its litigation team for any reexamination – essentially, she concluded that the potential harm to Google of limiting its choice of reexamination counsel outweighed the risk of improper use by Google’s reexamination counsel of Xerox’s protective order information.

Another interesting request was filed against an Amylin patent (Ex parte No. 13) for exendins which are peptide hormones that regulate blood glucose levels.  A reexamination (95/000,276) has been pending since 2007 against similar Amylin extendins patent – the ‘276 reexamination is noteworthy in that it features that rare creature: the reexamination continuation.  The earlier Amylin reexamination was filed by competitor ConjuChem.  (more…)

Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of September 6th

Here is the latest  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor which includes the requests for the week of September 6th….

Last week saw two blockbuster sets of filings – Shared Marketing Services filed ex parte requests against five eComSystems patents (6) to (10), and Illinois Tool Works filed ex parte requests against seven patents belonging to Digi-Star (13) to (19).  Illinois Tool has appeared in many reexaminations over the years.  In both instances, the respective parties are in litigation.

Two other ex parte reexamination requests may prove to be commercially significant, one filed against a Hitachi semiconductor patent (25), and another filed against a Kubota tractor patent (30).  The names of the companies that filed these requests are not apparent from the files.

Finally, information regarding the last of the eight PubPat requests against Abbott, inter partes (8), became available last week. (more…)

Microsoft’s Renewed Challenge to i4i Patent is among Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of August 30th

Here is the latest  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor which includes the requests for the week of August 30th…

Most notable among the new requests is one filed by Microsoft against i4i’s U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449 – that’s the famous XML patent that Microsoft was found to infringe last year.  Microsoft was enjoined and ordered to pay i4i $290 million.  A more detailed description of the case is in our posting Saturday on IPWatchdog.

Also quite interesting are requests filed by Public Patent Foundation (PPF) against eight Abbott patents for retroviral protease inhibiting compounds.  PPF is known for targeting pharmaceutical patents that it believes are contrary to the public interest.  Information for seven of the requests appears below; information for the eighth request is not yet available from the Patent Office.  Gene Quinn comments on these requests this week on IPWatchdog. (more…)

Reexamination Requests Filed the Weeks of August 16th and 23rd

Here is the latest  installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott M. Daniels, of Reeaxamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor which includes the requests for the weeks of August 16th and August 23rd….

Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of August 16^th

Most notable among last week’s requests is one filed by Sprint attacking an EMSAT patent for a cellular telephone system.  EMSAT’s patent is the subject of no less than eight separate law suits.  Let’s not forget Rambus, whose patents are reexamined more often than those of any other company.  Last week the requester was Hynix, not NVIDIA.

The following inter partes requests were made:

(1)  95/001,420 (electronically filed) – U.S. Patent No. 6,163,816 owned by FlashPoint Technology, Inc. and entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RETRIEVING CAPABILITY PARAMETERS IN AN ELECTRONIC IMAGING DEVICE.  Filed August 18, 2010.

(2)  95/000,562 (paper filed) – U.S. Patent No. 7,002,533 entitled DUAL-STAGE HIGH-CONTRAST ELECTRONIC IMAGE DISPLAY.  Filed August 2, 2010 by Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (more…)