THE PLUS IP FIRM
We are board-certified intellectual property attorneys, inventors, and engineers that help small-size inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses register and protect patents, copyrights, and trademarks so you can profit from them faster.
Call Now: 786.443.7720
Written by Mark Terry I came upon a super interesting Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision issued today. I found the Smucker v. Mack-Ray case interesting for both educational and entertainment reasons. The decision involves the effect an infringement action may have on a re-exam. But the BPAI used uncharacteristically harsh words to reject the Appellant’s arguments, which made it amusing. It’s rare to see any emotion in a BPAI decision, so when you see Jones Day get a verbal spanking, you can’t help but write about it. In the Smuckers v. Mack-Ray case, the patent owner had sued the defendant for patent infringement
Written by Mark Terry Today the Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision that plainly answers the question of who is a person of ordinary skill in the art – Extreme Networks v. Enterasys Networks (Fed. Cir. 2010). As a Florida Patent Attorney who routinely deals with this question, I found it refreshing to read a Federal Circuit decision that tackles this issue head on. The case of Extreme v. Enterasys involved a two-way patent dispute over router-based technologies. At issue was whether the lower court erred in excluding one party’s expert because he was not a person of ordinary skill
Written by Mark Terry The Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (Bill, S. 1720), seeks to improve transparency and to remedy problems associated with patent trolls and others that file frivolous lawsuits using their patents. Trolls are turning out to be a formidable opponent to the patent reform process by engaging in some heavy lobbying. Trolls have cost companies billions of dollars due to weaknesses in the patent system. As a practicing patent attorney I walk a fine line between writing a claim that is so broad it is enforceable, and writing a claim that is so narrow, an infringer can
Written by Mark Terry Today’s first Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision involved an eloquent exposition of the relationship between claim construction and ordinary dictionary meaning. The case of Ex parte Benson involved a 35 U.S.C. 102 rejection of a claim that turned on the construction of the claim term “embedded.” As a Patent Attorney in Miami with a full docket of patent cases, BPAI decisions that involve claim construction are highly topical for me. In Ex parte Benson, the BPAI explored the issue of how the claim term “embedded” should be construed. The Applicant argued the claim term should be given the
Written by: Mark Terry Yesterday’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision in Ex Parte Lin reveals a common patent prosecution error -especially before the BPAI – failing to properly address a rejection. The case of Ex Parte Lin involved a photolithography invention. The Examiner rejected the claims under the 1st paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 for failing to comply with the enablement requirement. According to the Examiner, the Specification disclosure would not enable a person with ordinary skill in this art (POSITA) to make or use, without undue experimentation, a “photomask with wavelength-reducing material throughout the full scope of the claimed
Written by: Mark Terry Yesterday’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision in Ex Parte Zurcher highlighted the problems associated with using functional language in claims, especially when claiming an apparatus. I, a Patent Lawyer in Miami, have written about this before in my article about intended use claim language. The Ex Parte Zurcher case involved an electrical-type socket invention. The claim element at issue included functional language. The Examiner asserted a prior art reference that included structure that performed the same function as described in Appellant’s functional language. I.e., the Examiner found the claimed functional language inherent in the prior art reference. The ensuing arguments can be separated
Written by: Mark Terry The high-tech world is continuing its 20-way patent infringement war, but it’s not the usual suspects – it’s Yahoo vs. Facebook. Yahoo’s lawsuit claims that Facebook is infringing on Yahoo’s social networking patent (US7599935), which may be the basis of Facebook’s networking platform. As of late, the superstar high tech companies have been aggressively taking it to their competitors to protect their current revenue streams, but also, more importantly, to secure a dominant position in the future. Yahoo, which has been struggling over the last three years, recently lost ground to Facebook in the online advertising market. There is
Written by Mark Terry This Friday, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a notice stating that Mitsubishi does not infringe GE’s wind turbine patent, thereby ending a long-running legal dispute between the two companies at the ITC. The patent infringement dispute dates back to early 2008 when GE claimed that Mitsubishi infringed upon GE’s wind turbine patents in a complaint filed with the ITC, in an effort to block the importation of Mitsubishi’s wind turbine products into the U.S. The effort, however, backfired and exposed the weaknesses of using the ITC as a forum for a patent infringement dispute.
Written by Mark Terry Yesterday’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision in Ex Parte Peng highlighted the most effective way of reversing a Patent Examiner’s 103 obviousness type rejection – contesting the presence of one of the claim elements in the cited prior art. I, a Patent Lawyer practicing in the City of Miami, am always interested in reading about how other attorneys have gotten rejections reversed at the BPAI. The Ex Parte Peng case involved a method claim performed by a GPS receiver. The claim element at issue involved the storage of certain data in sample RAM, followed by a reallocation of
Written by Mark Terry On Monday, Kodak and Samsung settled a long-running patent infringement dispute spanning several years and multiple continents. The settlement includes a patent license agreement wherein each side gains a patent license for the other’s patents. The license agreement, which provides appreciable benefits to both parties, is royalty bearing to Kodak. Additional financial details were not disclosed. As a Florida patent lawyer that frequently deals with patent infringement disputes, this case illustrates various important aspects surrounding patent litigation. This case illustrates how a legal dispute can easily escalate into a world-wide battle requiring enormous resources. This disagreement
THE PLUS IP FIRM
We are board-certified intellectual property attorneys, inventors, and engineers that help small-size inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses register and protect patents, copyrights, and trademarks so you can profit from them faster.
Call Now: 786.443.7720