Today, there is significant public debate over patents on the digital processes and machines that comprise computer software programs. These are often referred to as “software patents,” but this is an odd moniker. Aside from the similarly mislabeled debate over “DNA patents,” nowhere else in the patent system do we refer to patents on machines or processes in a specific technological field in this way; for instance, people do not talk about “automobile brake patents” or “sex toy patents” as their own category of patents deserving of approval or scorn. Read more
Category: Uncategorized
Teleforum Panel on End-User Lawsuits in Patent Law on August 29 (free and open to the public)
End-User Lawsuits in Patent Litigation: A Bug or a Feature of Patent Law?
A Teleforum Panel
(Free and Open to the Public)
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Noon – 1pm (EST)
In the patent policy debates today, one issue that has proven a flash point of controversy is patent infringement lawsuits against consumers and retailers, such as coffee shops, JC Penney, and others. Read more
Anti-Patent Bias in Applying Injunction Test Results in Another District Court’s Reversal – Aria Diagnostics v. Sequenom (Fed. Cir. Aug. 9, 2013)
[Cross Posted to Truth on the Market]
In its recent decision in Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir., May 21, 2013), the Federal Circuit was forced to reverse a district court’s abuse of its discretion because the trial judge injected an anti-patent bias into the legal test for determining whether a patent-owner should receive a permanent injunction against an infringer. Read more
The Myth of the “Patent Troll” Litigation Explosion
[Cross posted at Truth on the Market]
In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong. As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are not only consistent with historical patent litigation rates in the nineteenth century, there is actually less litigation today than during some decades in the early nineteenth century. Read more
“Funny Math” Still Infecting Scholarship on Patent Cases in the ITC
Those claiming that we’ve seen an “explosion of patent litigation” in recent years have proven resilient to counterarguments, continuing even to generate questionable “statistics” to buttress their assertions.
Given the Obama Administration’s recent reversal of the International Trade Commission’s exclusion order against Apple in its patent dispute with Samsung, we are hearing once again that there has been an “explosion” of patents cases at the ITC. Read more
Guest Post by Richard Epstein: The Dangerous Adventurism of the United States Trade Representative – Lifting the Ban against Apple Products Unnecessarily Opens a Can of Worms in Patent Law
The Dangerous Adventurism of the United States Trade Representative:
Lifting the Ban against Apple Products Unnecessarily Opens a Can of Worms in Patent Law
In ordinary times, the business of the International Trade Commission does not appear as the lead story in the Wall Street Journal, predicting massive changes in the high-stakes patent battles. Read more
The Value of Injunctions – Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013)
The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Douglas Dynamics, LLC, v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013) is very important given the widespread, albeit mistaken, belief today that the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange (2005) established that damages and not injunctions are the presumptive remedy for patent infringement. Read more
Guest Post by Wayne Sobon: A Line in the Sand on the Calls for New Patent Legislation
On June 9-11, the IP Business Congress sponsored by Intellectual Asset Magazine (IAM) hosted a debate on the resolution: “This house believes that the America Invents Act should be a legislative line in the sand and that no more reform of the US patent system is needed.” Read more
Some Recommended Books on Scientists, Inventors and Innovators
I am an avid reader of books about scientists, inventors and innovators. I’ve been particularly happy about the evolution of the narrative nonfiction genre that has occurred since the publication in 1995 of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel’s award-winning book on John Harrison’s invention of the first truly mechanical clock. Read more
A Critique of a Recent Article Which Found That Sequence Patents Cover the Entire Human Genome
By Professor Christopher Holman
[The following is a blog posting by Christopher Holman, a patent law scholar at UMKC School of Law, that he originally posted on April 5, 2013 at his blog, Holman’s Biotech IP Blog, where Professor Holman regularly blogs on important issues in biotech and IP law. Read more