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
Attack on Helferich Patent Licensing/Wireless Science Patent, among the Reexamination Requests Filed Week of May 7, 2012
| May 7, 2012
Helferich Patent Licensing has been extremely aggressive and extremely successful in asserting its portfolio of mobile wireless communications patents against the world’s media and retail giants. According to the patent search outfit M-CAM, Helferich has sued licensed 42 companies, including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, Nissan, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba. In a case filed in 2010, Helferich sued CBS for infringement of 21 patents. This February, it obtained U.S. Patent No. 8,116,741, adding it to the CBS litigation and to six other infringement actions. On Friday CBS and the other defendants in those cases, requested reexamination of the ‘741 patent (see inter partes Request No. (1)).
This is by no means the first reexamination asserted against Helferich, who so far appears to have been quite adept at overcoming the prior art asserted against and adding numerous claims to its patents in reexamination.
Think IP Strategy Offers 2011 News Almanac
| May 3, 2012
Think IP Strategy is likely the world leader in collecting information of interest to IP practitioners across the globe. Each Friday it compiles in its “Global Week in Review” stories and comments on significant developments in patent, trademark and copyright law.
These weekly compilations from 2011 have now been collected in a new book, the 2011 IP Think Tank Almanac. The Almanac pulls together all the news reported in Think IP Strategy’s Global Week in Review posts for all of 2011 in a searchable, clickable format. The book is only available in digital format because it is designed for search. We encourage our subscribers to learn more about the 2011 Almanac on Think IP Strategy’s blog post covering its release.
The Risks of Inconsistent Arguments in Parallel Proceedings
| May 3, 2012
A patentee, who is simultaneously pursuing an infringement in District Court and defending its patent in a reexamination proceeding at the PTO, often faces the temptation to construe its claims broadly in court but narrowly at the PTO. The risks of yielding to that temptation are illustrated in Judge Susan Illston’s claim construction decision Tuesday in Kilopass Technology v. Sidense (2102 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60973).
There, in an earlier Markman hearing, the patentee had argued that the terms “column bitline” and “row wordline” (in claims for a semiconductor memory cell) were interchangeable, and further that they should be defined identically as “a line that connects to one terminal of each memory cell in a memory array.” The effect of the patentee’s proposed claim construction was to overcome: specifically, the fact that the arrangement of the “column bitline” and “row wordline” in the accused semiconductor was precisely opposite the arrangement of those components recited in the asserted claims. Judge Illston initially construed the claims in favor of the patentee.
Challenges on Intellectual Ventures Computer Circuit Patents among the Reexamination Requests Filed Week of April 23, 2012
| April 30, 2012
An undisclosed party requested reexamination of two computer circuits patents owned by Intellectual Ventures (see ex parte Request Nos. (13) & (14)). IV patents in this technology have come under attack by Xilinx in recent times, and it was quite possibly Xilinx that filed these requests. Incidentally, one of the IV patents was originally owned by LG Semicon and the other by Motorola.
Requests were also against four auto-navigation patents owned by Beacon Navigation (see ex parte Request Nos. (8) to (11)). Beacon has sued quite a few auto-makers in Delaware for infringement of those patents, including Honda, Porsche, BMW and Ford.
