Tag Archives: PatentlyO Blog

The Effort to Make and Keep Patents Correct and Clear.

08 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bad Legal Writing, Intellectual Property, Legal Writing, Legalese, Patent Law, Plain Language, Readability

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Director Michelle Lee: Moving toward Patent Clarity, posted by Dennis Crouch, PatentlyO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/q4dvog7

The following is a post from Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee and was published on the PTO Director’s blog.

Patent quality is central to fulfilling a core mission of the USPTO, which as stated in the Constitution, is to ‘promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ It is critically important that the USPTO issue patents that are both correct and clear. Historically, our primary focus has been on correctness, but the evolving patent landscape has challenged us to increase our focus on clarity.

Patents of the highest quality can help to stimulate and promote efficient licensing, research and development, and future innovation without resorting to needless high-cost court proceedings. Through correctness and clarity, such patents better enable potential users of patented technologies to make informed decisions on how to avoid infringement, whether to seek a license, and/or when to settle or litigate a patent dispute. Patent owners also benefit from having clear notice on the boundaries of their patent rights. After and after successfully reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications, our agency is redoubling its focus on quality.

We asked for your help on how we can best improve quality—and you responded.

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Attorney Fee Awards For Misconduct On A Winning Streak In Federal Court.

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in Intellectual Property, Legal Ethics, Patent Law, Sanctions

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Federal Circuit: Bad Lawyering! = Sanctionable Litigation Misconduct, by Dennis Crouch, PATENTLYO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/qylp9zq

“The opinion here was authored by Judge Dyk and joined by Chief Judge Prost and Judge Bryson.(Read the decision: Gamma v. CSU).”

Attorney fee awards have been on a hot-streak since the Supreme Court’s 2014 Octane Fitness decision lowering the standard for proving an ‘exceptional case’ under 35 U.S.C. § 285.

Under the statute, a district court judge is empowered to award ‘reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party’ to a patent infringement lawsuit, but only in ‘exceptional cases.’ Id. In Octane Fitness, the Supreme Court gave the lower court fairly wide latitude in deciding exceptional case judgment and the award of fees. In particular, courts are given authority to consider the totality-of-the-circumstances when determining whether a fee award is appropriate. In the parallel case of Highmark, the court held that those lower-court determinations should be given deference on appeal. . . .

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Patent Law’s Most Influential Supreme Court Decisions From 2005 through 2015.

12 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in Appellate Law, Case of First Impression, Intellectual Property, Patent Law, United States Supreme Court

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Most Cited Supreme Court Patent Decisions (2005-2015), by Dennis Crouch, PATENTLYO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/mpd5ue

The list below considers all of the U.S. Supreme Court patent cases decided during the past decade (Since January 2005) and ranks them according to the number of citations.  Citation offers some insight into the influence of decisions, but is obviously limited for a number of reasons. Cases may be cited because of their importance in changing the doctrine (KSR, eBay) or simply as the court’s most recent statement of the law on an important issue (Microsoft v. i4i and KSR) or for a narrow procedural issue that applies in many cases (Unitherm). Bay’s high citation rate is also boosted because its principles have been applied broadly to injunctive relief across many areas of law. Some cases with low citation counts may also have major impacts. They may, for instance impact a small number of very important cases (Caraco) or perhaps they cause folks to change behavior so that the issue stops arising.

With this list we also have the timeline problem where older cases are more likely to be highly cited since there has been more opportunity for those cites. I Alice Corp to rise in the ranks Nautilus and Teva, on the other hand, may well flounder (based upon the Federal Circuit’s treatment of those cases thus far). . . .

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Which Party Bears The Responsibility For The High Cost of Litigation? Plaintiff or Defendant?

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Intellectual Property, Litigation, Patent Law

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Who Is To Blame For High Litigation Costs: Plaintiffs For Filing The Lawsuits Or Defendants For Refusing To Deal And Instead Fighting?, by Dennis Crouch, PatentlyO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/l7peu4h

The recent WSJ op-ed by John Chambers (CEO Cisco) and Myron Ullman (CEO JCPenny) is interesting, but largely not compelling. What the article does do is indicate that patent lawsuits is the avenue being by non-practicing patent holders and it is pretty clear that manufacturers and retailers would be better off (at least in the short term) without being charged with patent infringement. The core of their argument is here:

A 2012 study by Boston University researchers estimated that companies spent upward of $29 billion a year defending patent lawsuits, and the problem has not let up. According to RPX Corp., more than 3,600 companies and named defendants were sued by so-called patent-assertion entities in 2014, triple the number in 2006. Patent-assertion entities—aka non-practicing entities, or as some would call them, trolls—that own patents but do not make products or sell services based on them file more than 60% of patent litigation in the U.S.

A civil lawsuit generally comes about based upon a failure of the parties to negotiate a just solution. Of course, for any given lawsuit, we don’t know beforehand whether it is the plaintiff or the defendant who is being more unreasonable.

The op-ed suggests that the plaintiffs are to blame for filing the lawsuits, but there is also a strongly compelling case for arguing that the defendants are to blame for refusing to deal and instead fighting every lawsuit tooth-and-nail. When reach a point where out-of-litigation resolutions are rare, we should recognize that it is a systemic problem. And, at this point – where the primary complaint is high litigation costs – the solution is not to favor one side or the other, but instead to look for systemic changes that substantially decrease the cost of resolution.

Gene Quinn provides his take on the op-ed at IP Watchdog.

Statute of Limitations And Copyright Infringement.

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Copyright, Intellectual Property, Patent Law

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Supreme Court: In Copyright, Laches Cannot Preclude Actions Taken Within Three Year Statute of Limitations, by Dennis Crouch, PatentlyO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/pqwudqa

Petrella v. MGM (Supreme Court 2014)

Frank Petrella wrote a screenplay back in 1963 based on the life of Jake LaMotta and assigned rights to UA/MGM who made the movie Raging Bull. Under the old renewal system, renewal rights went to Petrella’s heir, Paula Petrella, who renewed the copyright in 1991 in a fashion that (seemingly) eliminates the prior license. In 1998 she informed MGM that its continued exploitation of the Raging Bull movie violated her copyright. Finally, in 2009, she did sue – alleging copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement has a three-year statute of limitations indicating that ‘No civil action shall be maintained under the [Act] unless it is commenced within three years after the claim accrued.’ 17 U.S.C. §507(b). However, as in patent law, copyright follows a ‘separate-accrual rule’ that sees each successive violation of a copyright as a new infringing act with its own statute of limitations. Thus, under the statute of limitations, MGM could be liable for its post-2006 actions such as copying and distributing the work. . . .

IP Law Professors Send Letter to Congress Seeking Anti-Troll Patent Legislation.

07 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by in Intellectual Property, Patent Law

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IP Law Professors Rise-Up Against Patent Assertion Entities, By Dennis Crouch at PatentlyO Blog

http://tinyurl.com/n7qrg7a

A group of sixty US intellectual property law professors have signed a letter to Congress supporting anti-troll patent reform legislation. This effort was driven by Professor Love of Santa Clara and is also signed by Professors Bessen, Goldman, Ghosh, Lemley, Meurer, Samuelson, Sprigman, and others. [Download ProfessorsLetterOnTrolls].

A key introductory line from the letter:

Despite our differences, we all share concern that an increasing number of patent owners are taking advantage of weaknesses in the system to exploit their rights in ways that on net deter, rather than encourage, the development of new technology.