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
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:
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‘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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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Sorenson ‘184 Patent Faces Final Rejection
| February 1, 2010
U.S. Patent No. 4,935,184 to Sorenson has been the subject of more law suits, to this author’s knowledge, than any other U.S. patent. It claims a method for injection molding “a thin-walled, hollow plastic product,” and has been asserted against processes for making numerous commercial products.
Two ex parte reexamination requests were filed against the ‘184 patent in 2007 and later merged into a single proceeding. The three primary examiners in that merged proceeding have now issued a final rejection of claims 1-2, 4, and 6-10 (claims 3 and 5 not being under reexamination).
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Rambus v. NVIDIA, An Updated Scorecard
| January 28, 2010
In our post dated December 1, 2009, we reported on the struggle between Rambus and NVIDIA at the ITC and in reexaminations at the PTO. Since then, Rambus has won a major victory at the ITC – Administrative Law Judge Essex has ruled that the ‘353, ‘405 and ‘109 patents are valid and infringed.1
Rambus, however, has not fared well in the reexaminations, as can be seen from the following chart.
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Inter Partes Requests Filed the Week of January 18th
| January 28, 2010
Reexamination requests are typically reported in the Official Gazette approximately three months after filing. Such a delay in reporting requests, particularly for inter partes requests, often involving copending District Court litigation, is unfair. We will therefore review the Patent Office files each week to identify inter partes reexamination requests filed the previous week. In some cases, the information available is incomplete.
This past week, the following requests were made:
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Design Patents Scrutinized in Reexamination
| January 26, 2010
Last week in Patently-O, Dennis Crouch described the “registration-like” approach that the PTO takes to design patent applications — only 1.2% are rejected on the basis of prior art, 18.2% are rejected for § 112 or other reasons, and 81.6% receive no rejection at all.
How does this routine prosecution treatment compare with reexamination? We looked at each of the twelve reexamination requests filed in 2008 for design patents. Each of the twelve requests was ex parte; eleven were filed by a third party, only one by the patent owner. Four of the patents were involved in concurrent litigation, eight were not.
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The Pending Legislation: What It Means for Oppositions & Reexaminations
| January 21, 2010
The proposed Patent Reform Act of 2009 introduces a post-grant opposition procedure, as well as several changes to the current inter partes reexamination system.
Post-grant oppositions would be similar to the procedure currently used in Europe, which allows a third party to challenge the validity of a patent within one year of issuance. Here are the key points of this new procedure:
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