Free Republic

Full title: "Sherry Knowles Scrutinizes an Activist Supreme Court and its Unconstitutional Approach to Patent Eligibility" “The Supreme Court has brazenly admitted it is not following Congress’ statutory instructions on patent eligibility in several cases. And it has carried out virtually none of the required statutory construction. It is judicial activism in the extreme.”Sherry Knowles is one of the best known patent attorneys you will find. She is a former Vice President and Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline, where she led the charge on behalf of the industry to fight back the claims and continuations rules package the United States...

I recently had the pleasure to sit on a panel with a number of incredible inventors and leaders on innovation issues in an experience that was both inspiring and infuriating. Discussing a new documentary on the patent system – Invalidated: The Shredding of the US Patent System – which I had the honor of being interviewed for, we discussed the state of the patent system and American innovation. I was inspired by these inventors who joined, and others who participated in this movie. Through ingenuity, creativity and persistence they have created inventions that save lives, increase productivity, make life easier...

Actual Title -- Nantkwest, Inc. v. Iancu This is an except because it is too long to post in its entirety. B As its name suggests, the American Rule is a “bedrock principle” of this country’s jurisprudence. Hardt v. Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co., 560 U.S. 242, 253 (2010). It provides that, in the United States, “[e]ach litigant pays his own attorney’s fees, win or lose.” Baker Botts L.L.P. v. ASARCO LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2158, 2164 (2015) (quoting Hardt, 560 U.S. at 253). The American Rule may only be displaced by an express grant from Congress. Id. And it...

Inventors' rights can be revoked through a controversial administrative process, the Supreme Court ruled by a seven-to-two margin on Tuesday, a move that promises to continue the trend of invalidation of hundreds of existing patents. The case, Oil States v. Greene's Energy, concerns an administrative tribunal called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). As the Free Beacon has previously reported, the PTAB is responsible for reviewing patents whose validity have been challenged. The PTAB runs on a host of procedures alien to federal court proceedings: lower evidentiary standards, the ability of anyone to challenge a patent right, and a...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling that patents owned by licensing company Smartflash, LLC are invalid. The finding kills Smartflash’s hope of restarting lawsuits against Apple, Google, and Samsung. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a set of rulings by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board which said that key claims in seven Smartflash patents relating to data storage technology were invalid because they described an abstract idea, not a patentable invention.

This article is on a jury decision about Apple infringing four patents that the patent office has already ruled are invalid. . . but that are being appealed to the appellate court which allowed this trial to go ahead anyway "because it was so far along." Link Only because of Bloomberg: Read the Article here.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported Tuesday on patents filed by Google that purport to show a bizarre plan to spy on you and parent your children. “In another patent application from September 2016, Google imagines how it could take control of your parenting, your relationship with your children,” Carlson explained. “Google’s smart home system could detect children near a liquor cabinet for example, or in their parents bedroom, infer that ‘mischief is occurring’ and deliver a verbal warning.” The Daily Caller co-founder said, “In another example, Google imagines a hypothetical child called Benjamin. Google’s cameras would be watching Benjamin at...

Challenges on both sides in Oil States oral arguments The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday morning in a case testing the legitimacy of a federal tribunal that has invalidated more than 19,000 patents during its brief existence. That case, Oil States v. Greene's Energy Group, concerns the constitutionality of a certain kind of review by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), an administrative law court established by the 2011 America Innovates Act. As the Free Beacon previously reported, the PTAB was set up to review and invalidate previously issued patents in the hopes of combatting "patent trolling." In...

Monday was Columbus Day, or as liberals have taken to calling, “Indigenous People’s Day.” Democrats love sowing division, blaming Europeans for all of the world’s ills, and elevating the status of Native Americans. Well, they usually do. When it’s a choice between a long-dead Italian guy and American Indians, the choice is easy. When the choice is between their own reelection and anything, everything else loses to self-preservation.Such is the case with Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.One of my first jobs in Washington was as a health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. While it may not sound exciting, it...

For decades, individual inventors were granted 25 percent or more of all U.S. patents. This creativity was the foundation of dozens of new industries, thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs. Yet beginning in the early 1980s, their portion of granted patents begin to drop like a rock in free fall. By 2015, individual inventors received only 5.8 percent. A decline so great and so fast has profound consequences and is not an accident or fluke. A useful place to begin the examination of this decline is a 1998 interview of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who was asked,...

Impression Products, Inc. V. Lexmark International, Inc. Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit No. 15–1189. Argued March 21, 2017-Decided May 30, 2017 A United States patent entitles the patent holder to "exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling [its] invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States." 35 U. S. C. §154(a). Whoever engages in one of these acts "without authority" from the patentee may face liability for patent infringement. §271(a). When a patentee sells one of its products, however, the patentee can no longer control...

U.S. Supreme Court limits where patent-infringement cases can be filed; decision could limit venue-shopping “The Supreme Court on Monday limited the ability of patent holders to bring infringement lawsuits in courts that have plaintiff friendly reputations, a notable decision that could provide a boost to companies that defend against patent claims,” Brent Kendall reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The high court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled unanimously that a lower court has been following an incorrect legal standard for almost 30 years that made it possible for patent holders to sue companies in almost any U.S....

Litigation challenges system that has led to concentration of patent cases in plaintiff-friendly districts WASHINGTON—Businesses, particularly those in the tech sector, are watching closely a case to be argued in the Supreme Court next week challenging a system that has led to a concentration of patent cases in plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions such as eastern Texas.The companies, often defendants in a patent-litigation boom of the last decade, are looking to the high court to curb what they say is “pervasive and pernicious forum...

Pollante summarily removed as Register of Patents and replaced immediately by Karyn Temple Claggett. Hayden, the new Librarian of Congress, performed the dismissal without comment. Pollante has a stellar record in the patent office. Karyn Temple Claggett has not even a biography of of her life...just a list of jobs held in the USA. Conyers on the House Judiciary Committee who must have known of this but has had no comment. The big question is why? https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/unprecedented-removal-register-copyrights-causes-consternation-copyright-community/

Samsung Gear came to market in 2013 and it offered a camera and speaker built right into its one and only band and clasp design. After Apple introduced the Apple Watch with multiple band options and its quick and easy install mechanism for changing the bands, Samsung set out to copy that idea as quickly as they possibly could. In a patent application that surfaced today at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office titled "Wearable Device," they discuss their new "exchangeable" strap mechanisms. What struck me was that a great number of their form factor patent figures were actually Apple...

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled that a 2011 law designed to make it easier to defeat new patent trolls were legal. The law had been challenged by a company attempting to patent something which had long been done by other companies. The case before the Supreme Court focused on a patent held by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC that claims an invention for alerting drivers when they are speeding. GPS technology company Garmin brought a challenge at the Patent Office, which invalidated the Cuozzo patent after concluding its claims weren’t innovative when viewed against other prior technologies. The ruling will be of particular benefit to...

Google knows that its self-driving cars are going to get into accidents — maybe even accidents involving pedestrians — and so the company has patented a unique solution to minimize injuries if this happens: human flypaper. The patent, granted earlier this week, describes "an adhesive layer positioned on the front end of the vehicle" that pedestrians will simply stick to "in the event of a collision."

During the fourth Republican debate, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina correctly noted that "big government has created a big business called politics. And there are lots of people invested in the status quo of that big business called politics." What Fiorina did not say was that, particularly in the tech sphere, the big business of politics loves to attempt hostile takeovers, often in the guise of trying to stop genuinely predatory behavior. Ironically, the biggest beneficiaries of such takeovers are usually the predators themselves. No better example of such disingenuous action exists than the current proposed FCC enforcement action...

So why are Republicans sponsoring this? Under consideration in Washington, D.C. is legislation that will fundamentally transform our patent system. It will render this Constitutionally protected intellectual property product – dramatically less protected. The bills to which I refer are the Innovation Act (House) and the Patent Act (Senate)…. These “reformers” are…considering another really, REALLY TERRIBLE idea. That sets the stage for near-limitless government-caused damage to not just patents – but the entire private economy….They want to “pierce the corporate veil.” “(A) legal decision to treat the rights or duties of a corporation as the rights or liabilities of its...

Chumship pact pie carve-up details kept under wraps Google and Microsoft have inked a secret deal in which all patent disputes between the mammoth companies will be abandoned. The exact terms of the agreement – as in, who gets what – were not disclosed. Your guess is as good as ours. "Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues," the companies said in a joint statement that was sent to El Reg via email. "As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility."...