Gametime IP
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
The Future Of Patent Licensing In Europe
For the time being, individual countries award patents as legal instruments, protecting property rights through enforcement of that country’s court system. Efforts to unify the European patent system continue, but the viability of this plan remains uncertain. In this vein, competition amongst the various patent system remains pertinent. Patents attract increasing investment amounts, and that … Continue reading
Bilski Was Just The Beginning, Showdown Over Patent-Eligibility Looms Large
Rader implicitly rejected the approach taken to rob Cybersource of its fraud detection patent by explicitly stating that a mathematical algorithm, if written as “an encoded tangible medium” is patent eligible. Cybersource will likely ask the full panel of CAFC judges to hear its case, and chances of reversing Judge Dyk’s flawed logic are looking a little better today. Importantly, Rader noted the importance of maintaining a broad understanding of patent eligibility, saying “The effect of eligibility restrictions can send innovation investment elsewhere.” Continue reading
O’Reilly Radar Desperately In Need Of Patent WD-40
Over at the O’Reilly Radar blog, writer Andy Oram asks “Should the patent office open its internal guidelines to the public?” The question in Oram’s blog title is the last thing that needs to be addressed, however. The first thing that needs to be addressed is the following paragraph: As a simple example of the … Continue reading
Damn The Injustice!
A bit belated, but in early January, Chief Judge Randall Rader (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit) spoke in Singapore about a CAFC advisory committee to revise electronic discovery rules. Judge Rader is concerned about the cost of litigation, and in particular the cost of patent litigation (although there was no mention of whether … Continue reading
On The Qwest For A Single Actor – Infringement Of Distributed “Systems”
Yesterday, the CAFC offered another look into how your patents will be interpreted years after they’re drafted. As I noted earlier regarding the Akamai decision, “there is a world of difference between the use or existence of a patented process, system, or product, and whether that use or existence actually infringes the patent.” Yesterday’s decision … Continue reading
USPTO Interprets Fed Circuit’s Bilski Interpretation – Everything Is Patentable (Again)
First the CAFC refused to invalidate RCT’s patent on halftoning greyscale images. Next, they broadly applied Bilski to uphold a medical diagnostic patent. While the rest of us wait to see if the Supreme Court will revisit the Bilski issue in 2011 (and while I’m apparently accused of “cheering” the earlier diagnostic opinion), it’s business … Continue reading
CAFC (Again) Refuses Chance To Give Bilski-test Teeth
The concept of “patentable subject matter” (also known as section ’101′ patentability) was addressed again by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) last week. As you may recall from my earlier discussion of a Microsoft-related patent case, this legal requirement is really focused on whether the patent claims something that is too … Continue reading
CAFC Prematurely Ends “Bilski” Hunting Season
Was it over before it started? Anti-patent advocates have been watching court filings closely, looking for situations where the Supreme Court’s recent case on patentability of abstract ideas could be used broadly against a class of so-called “software patents.” The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), through its Chief Judge Rader, may have … Continue reading
Punishment For Frivolous Patent Lawsuits
As the typically reluctant “participants” in NPE* patent litigation rejoice, Law.com proclaims “Federal Circuit Upholds $631,000 in Fees, Sanctions Against Patent Lawyer, Company.” According to Sheri Qualters, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a lower court’s order that patent lawyer Jean-Marc Zimmerman and patent holding company Eon-Net pay $631,135.18 in … Continue reading
Embattled Silicon Graphics Portfolio Now On The Warpath
Yesterday, thanks to PriorSmart‘s Daily Litigation Alerts, I noticed Dell, HP and Lenovo all targeted in the same Delaware patent lawsuit by Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc. The titles of the two patents at issue were both “Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering” (6,650,327 and 7,518,615). It sounded a bit familiar, so … Continue reading
