Bits and Bytes No. 113: PTO Director

  • Nothing to report on the quest for a new PTO director. Although the Obama administration's "fast start" has been reported by the media, he is now slower than President Clinton who nominated Bruce Lehman in April of his first year in office. President Bush nominated Jim Rogan in May of his first year in office. President Obama has two more days to match that benchmark. (My prediction of a May 8 nomination has come and gone...)
  • Albritton v. Cisco: The Patent Troll Tracker case continues. Trial in the defamation case is set for September 14 in Tyler Texas. Defendants include Cisco, Richard Frenkel (the Patent Troll Tracker) Mallun Yen, and John Noh.
  • Ward v. Cisco: Johnny Ward Jr. (son of Judge Ward) has a parallel case running against Cisco in Texarkana (Arkansas). Ward voluntarily dismissed Frenkel from the lawsuit after Cisco "admitted agency." Discovery is ongoing and the parties have asked for trial to begin December 30, 2009.
  • Speaking of EDTX: Last week, the Canadian company i4i won a $200 million verdict for willful patent infringement against Microsoft. Apparently i4i's xml editing software was completely undercut when Microsoft included xml editing software in MSWord. The patent is here. Joe Mullin has more.
  • Voting continues for the "best patent blog." (I don't like this survey, but it is still nice to make a good showing.)
  • Singulair Patent Reexamination: Earlier this year, ArticleOne asked for prior art on Merck's Singlair patent and two of its "community members" offered seemingly important references. ArticleOne then filed for reexamination of the patent, which was granted on May 20. Today ArticleOne issued press releases related to the reexamination. Peter Ludwig (Darby & Darby) is representing ArticleOne before the PTO. Singulair garnered $4 billion+ in sales last year.
  • Information Query: The Singulair patent's reexamination number is 90/009,432. If you were an investor, how would you go about closely following the prosecution history in that case?
  • Patent Jobs:
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