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
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Samsung Seeks Inter Partes Review of Unifi Scientific Battery Charger Patent, Week of April 1, 2013
| April 8, 2013
Last year, Unifi Scientific Batteries (USB) sued a number of companies in the Eastern District of Texas for infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 6,791,298 that claims a battery charger. Among those sued by USB, whose principal place of business is in Longview Texas, are Amazon, RIM, HTC, Samsung, Sony and Texas Instruments. The accused products include the Kindle Fire and Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus.
Last month Texas Instruments also requested inter partes review of the ‘298 patent (see IPR 2013-00213), and on Thursday Samsung filed its own inter partes review request against the ‘298 patent (see inter partes review Request Nos. (8)).
On Wednesday Geico field a 391-page request for ex parte reexamination of MacroSolve’s U.S. Patent No. 7,822,816 (see ex parte Request No. (8)). According to MacroSolve, the ‘816 patent covers a wide variety of “mobile information collection systems.” MacroSolve has sued Geico, as well as ten other retail companies, in the Eastern District of Texas for infringement of the ‘816 patent.
Eighteen Inter Partes Review Requests Filed, Week of March 25, 2013
| April 1, 2013
The initial sticker shock, caused by the high filing fees for inter partes review requests, appears to be easing – last week, requests were filed against 18 patents, a weekly number quite comparable to the number of inter partes reexamination requests filed in the pre-AIA Era. Notable requesters included Dell (see inter partes Request No. (1)), NuVasive (see inter partes Request No. (3)), Covidien (see inter partes Request No. (4)), Texas Instruments (see inter partes Request No. (5)), Butamax (see inter partes Request Nos. (6) & (7)), Hewlett-Packard (see inter partes Request No. (10)), and Sony (see inter partes Requests Nos. (11) & (12)).
The following inter partes review requests were filed:
(1) IPR2013-00202 (electronically filed) – U.S. Patent No. 5,434,562 entitled METHOD FOR LIMITING COMPUTER ACCESS TO PERIHPERAL DEVICES and owned by NovelPoint Security, LLC. Filed March 25, 2013 by Dell, Inc. The patent owner has asserted the ‘562 patent in at least 31 litigations against a host of defendants, including Dell (Case No. 2:2012-cv-105 (E.D. Tex.)); Samsung (Case Nos. 2:2012-cv-100, 2:2013-cv-079 (E.D. Tex.)); Hewlett-Packard Co. (Case Nos. 2:2012-cv-104, 2:2013-cv-083 (E.D. Tex.)); and Hitachi (Case No. 2:2013-cv-081 (E.D. Tex.)).
Ricoh Seeks Reexamination of Four Facsimile Circuit Patents
| March 25, 2013
Infinity Computer Products has sued 13 computer/printer companies – Toshiba, Oki, Samsung, Lexmark, Canon, Konica, Panasonic, Xerox, HP, Epson, Dell, Brother and Ricoh – for infringement of four patents related to interface circuits for linking operation of a facsimile device to a computer, and now latter company, Ricoh, has requested reexamination of each of those four patents (see ex parte reexamination Nos. (9) to (12)).
SAP America has requested inter partes review of two patents owned by Pi-Net International. Inc., (see inter partes review Nos. (1) & (2)). Both patents relate to “methods and apparatus for providing real-time, two-way transactional capabilities on the Web.” Pi-Net has sued quite a number of financial and auto-rental companies, presumably SAP customers, for infringement of the two patents.
Kimberly-Clark diaper wars against First Quality opened a new front on Friday, when ex parte reexamination requests were filed against the former’s U.S. Patent No. 5,745,922 and 6,098,203 (see ex parte Request Nos. (7) & (8).
Kimberly Clark Loses “Broadened” Patent Claim
| March 20, 2013
With all the activity surrounding the new AIA inter partes review trials, it is easy to forget that accused infringers are still getting good results from traditional ex parte reexamination, even where the patent emerges from the Patent Office with patentable claims.
Yesterday, for instance, Judge William Caldwell of the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted summary judgment in Kimberly Clark v. First Quality Baby Prods., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37493 (M.D. Pa. March 19, 2013), holding that claim 34 of U.S. Patent No. 5,496,298 was invalid because it had been broadened in reexamination. The Patent Statute states in part that “[n]o proposed amended or new claim enlarging the scope of a claim of the patent will be permitted in a reexamination proceeding under this chapter.” 35 U.S.C. § 305. To determine whether a claim has been impermissibly broadened, the courts “compare the scope of the original claim and the new claim [, and if] the new claim covers any subject matter that would not have fallen within the scope of the original claim, then the new claim is broader.”
