Patent Law Practice Center

YouTube Attacks On Pragmatus’s Media File Storage Patents Among Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of 6/6/11

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

Earlier this year, Pragmatus sued Facebook, LinkedIn, Photobucket, and YouTube for infringing three patents for systems for storing media files.   YouTube has now requested reexamination of those patents (see inter parte Request Nos. (6), (8) & (9)).

Apple has requested reexamination of Softview’s U.S. Patent No. 7,831,926 related to systems for “zooming and panning” images from the Internet on mobile devices.  Softview has sued Apple and AT&T Mobility in Delaware for infringing the ‘926 patent.  Softview is also involved in a separate case with HTC in Washington state regarding the ‘926 patent.

IDT requested reexamination of Alexsam’s U.S. Patent No. 6,000,608 which relates to activation of “stored value” card (see ex parte Request No. (3)). In February, Alexsam won a $9.06 million jury verdict against IDT in the Eastern District of Texas for infringement of the ‘608 patent and a second patent. (more…)

Delaware District Court Protective Order Practice

The following post comes from Scott A. McKeown, partner at Oblon Spivak, Practice Center Contributor and writer for Patents Post Grant.

The Federal District Court of Delaware seems to have a different idea when it comes to patent reexamination concurrent with litigation.   In my article, Protective Orders: Patent Reexamination & Concurrent Litigation in Delaware, I explain that protective order issues can be quite contentious in litigation between direct competitors. In many district courts, the simple solution to this issue is to forbid trial counsel from participating in an ongoing patent reexamination. The concept is simple, since claims are being amended or added in reexamination, confidential product data of competitors can unfairly steer the claim drafting process, providing significant leverage to the Patentee.

In Delaware, the protective order issue has been viewed differently.

Last week, this trend continued in the case of Xerox Corp. v. Google, Inc. et al. In Xerox, the court once again cited the same familiar local decisions on the issue, all of which appear grounded on arguably flawed perceptions of patent reexamination. (more…)