Featured Posts
- Facebook Loses Reexaminations of Pragmatus’ Patents
- How is Reexamination Treating Round Rock Research?
- Reexamination has not Saved Apple against MobileMedia Patents, So Far
- What is an “Involved Application” in IPR Practice?
- Apple Victorious over Affinity Labs of Texas’ Portable Audio Player Patent
- Think IP Strategy Offers 2011 News Almanac
- An Update on Oracle’s Infringement Case against Google
- PTO Requests Public Comment on Proposed Rules for AIA Post-Issuance Proceedings
- Microsoft-i4i, Oracle-Google & VirnetX-Apple-Cisco Updates
- Oracle Patent to Emerge from Reexamination
- VirnetX again Sues for Infringement, and again Faces Reexaminations
- How Strong are Google’s Requests for Reexamination of the Lodsys Patents?
- PTO Board Sides with NVIDIA on Two Rambus “Barth I” Patents
- Oracle ‘520 Moves toward Confirmation in Reexamination
- Google Gets Mixed Result against Oracle’s Seventh Patent
- Did Google Request Reexamination of Lodsys Patents?
- Two Updates
- Oracle v. Google Android® Update
- Rambus Wins Limited Exclusion Order at ITC against NVIDIA, despite Pending Reexaminations
- 最初が肝心：不備のない再審査請求書を作成するために
- That’s My Patent You’re Reexamining…
- “Why Wait for Oppositions?” by Scott Daniels, 47 IDEA 343 (Law Review of Franklin Pierce Law School)
- The Basics
Noteworthy Links
- "The Interplay between Reexaminations, Preliminary Injunctions and Stays of Litigation" - by Dennis Crouch at PATENTLYO.COM
Favorite Patent Blogs
- All Things Pros
- CAFC Alert
- FDA Law Blog
- IPWatchdog
- Patent Docs
- Patently-O
- PLI Patent Law Practice Center
- Think IP Strategy
- US Patent Post-Grant Opposition
Recent Requests
PTO Statistics
Damages Period Starts From Certificate Date, If Claims Are Substantively Amended In Reexamination
| February 25, 2010
A third party typically files a request for reexamination with the goal of invalidating the patent. But even if the patent survives and the PTO issues a Reexamination Certificate, the third party requester may benefit if the patent claims are amended during reexamination.
If the patentee makes a substantive change to a patent claim during reexamination, the patent owner can recover damages only from the date the Reexamination Certificate was issued. To determine whether a change is substantive, the Court determines whether the scope of the claim has changed. Laitram Corp. v. NEC Corp., 163 F.3d 1342, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 1998).
Read More/続きを読む
Requests Filed the Week of February 15th
| February 25, 2010
Reexamination requests are typically reported in the Official Gazette approximately three months after filing. Such a delay in reporting requests, particularly requests that involve copending District Court litigation, is too long. We will therefore report new ex parte and inter partes reexamination requests filed the previous week as they appear on the Patent Office EFS. In some cases, the information available from the Patent Office is still incomplete.
Notable among the filings were requests filed against a University of California microscopy patent and an Isis gene expression patent.
Read More/続きを読む
Sony Strikes At Trans Video Patent
| February 16, 2010
This past summer, Trans Video sued Sony in the Northern District of California for infringement of U.S. Patent 5,991,801. That patent claims a digital video news distribution system. Sony filed an Answer denying infringement, but also presenting a detailed allegation that the ‘801 patent had been obtained by inequitable conduct, specifically by the applicants’ failure to disclose the Hurt prior art patent to the examiner.
Read More/続きを読む
Samsung Again Attacks Murata Patent
| February 16, 2010
Samsung filed a request last Friday that the PTO conduct an ex parte reexamination of Murata’s U.S. Patent No. 6,377,439 which claims multi-layer ceramic capacitors.
In October, Murata sued Samsung at the U.S. ITC for importing into the United States ceramic capacitors that infringe the ‘439 patent, as well as three other patents belonging to Murata. The ITC’s Judge Gildea has scheduled trial for July 2010, and set March 4, 2011 as the target date by which the ITC will complete its investigation.
Read More/続きを読む
Requests Filed the Week of February 8th
| February 16, 2010
Reexamination requests are typically reported in the Official Gazette approximately three months after filing. Such a delay in reporting requests, particularly requests that involve copending District Court litigation, is too long. We will therefore report new ex parte and inter partes reexamination requests filed the previous week as they appear on the Patent Office EFS. In some cases, the information available from the Patent Office is still incomplete.
Notable among the filings were two ex parte requests, one filed by Samsung against a Murata patent, and one filed by Sony against a Trans Video patent.
This past week, the following inter partes requests were made:
Read More/続きを読む
‘Patent Buster’ Attacks C2 Communications Patent
| February 9, 2010
Two requests for reexamination have been granted against U.S. Patent No. 6,243,373 which broadly claims a method for routing a call between two telephones over a public computer network, a so-called “voice-over-Internet protocol.” The ‘373 patent is owned by C2 Communications which successfully enforced against the major telephone companies, among them AT&T, Verizon and Qwest.
One request was filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which identifies itself as a “patent buster” and which solicits contributions to challenge patents that unfairly restrict or burden public use of the Internet. EFF also asks the public for prior art to attack such patents. The PTO has concluded that EFF’s request raises a substantial new question of patentability (SNQ) regarding claims 1-8 and 13-18 of the ‘373 patent.
Read More/続きを読む
Requests Filed the Week of February 1st
| February 9, 2010
Reexamination requests are typically reported in the Official Gazette approximately three months after filing. Such a delay in reporting requests, particularly requests that involve copending District Court litigation, is unfair. We will therefore review the Patent Office files each week to identify both ex parte and inter partes reexamination requests filed the previous week. In some cases, the information available from the Patent Office is still incomplete.
Notable among the filings were an inter partes request filed jointly by Google and Microsoft and two ex parte requests filed by Texas Instruments for two of its own semiconductor patents.
Read More/続きを読む
Civix Case Returns With a Bang
| February 4, 2010
Trial judges typically stay a patent case pending resolution of a reexamination, with the expectation that the reexamination will simplify the issues. That has not happened in Civix v. Hotels.Com and Yahoo!, from the Northern District of Illinois, which involves systems for remotely locating stores, hotels, etc.
It is true that Complainant Civix has now dropped two of the four patents asserted in its 2006 Complaint – U.S. Patent No. 6,408,307 now on appeal and U.S. Patent No. 6,473,692 where certain independent claims were canceled. Defendants Hotels.com and Yahoo!, however, have amended their pleadings to accuse Civix of various acts of inequitable conduct before the PTO. Defendants’ allegations echo the cyber-space kerfuffle touched off by the comments of Dennis Crouch and Ken Burchfiel in PatentlyO last week regarding the citation of 900+ references in U.S. Patent No. 7,651,688.
Read More/続きを読む
Microsoft Gets Mixed Result at PTO
| February 4, 2010
As we have previously reported, Microsoft has asked the PTO to conduct inter partes reexaminations of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,502,135 and 7,188,180, both claiming “a method of transparently creating a virtual private network (VPN) between a client computer and a target computer.” The ‘135 and ‘180 patents are assigned to VirnetX and are the subject of VirnetX’s pending infringement suit in the Eastern District of Texas against Microsoft.
Although the PTO has now granted the reexaminations, it has rejected only certain of the ‘135 and ‘180 patent claims.
Read More/続きを読む
All Reexamination Requests Filed the Week of January 25th
| February 4, 2010
Reexamination requests are typically reported in the Official Gazette approximately three months after filing. Such a delay in reporting requests, particularly inter partes requests that often involve copending District Court litigation, is unfair. We will therefore review the Patent Office files each week to identify both inter partes and ex parte reexamination requests filed the previous week. In some cases, the information available from the Patent Office is still incomplete.
This past week, the following inter partes requests were made:
Read More/続きを読む
