Recent Headlines in the IP World:
- William Foxley: IBM Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Web Browser (Source: Coin Desk)
- Amina Zafar: Cancer Doctors are Calling for a Permanent Fix to Drug Shortages in Canada (Source: CBC)
- Jerome Santos: Apple Patent Reveals Upgraded Macs With Presence Sensing, Facial Recognition Technologies (Source: International Business Times)
- Ashley Carter: Universal Files Patents for Tower Rides (Source: Spectrum News)
Commentary and Journal Articles:
- Natalie Raffoul: How Patents Really Work in the Innovation Economy (Source: The Globe and Mail)
- Dean Jon Garon: Ownership of University Intellectual Property (Source: SSRN)
- Prof. Michael Heller: Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (Introduction) (Source: SSRN)
New Job Postings on Patently-O:
link to threadreaderapp.com
Nice summary explanation for why the magical fantasy of “self driving cars everywhere!” didn’t happen and never will. It would be a good read for those deluded patent attorney types who used to come here and argue that we needed more patents on “use logic to drive a car” (as if nobody had ever used logic to drive a car before). Also a good read for those ultra-arrogant dinosaur techbros who made millions writing code back in the late 70s and early 80s who somehow have convinced themselves that they have “expertise” on this topic. Painful news flash, dudes: you never were that smart in the first place. You were lucky. Stop pushing this con game on everybody and get back to smoking pot and listening to Kitaro in your hot tub.
Anyone else having trouble with PAIR today?
PAIR working fine for me Greg. Of course, since I live in the SWSC (Socialist Welfare State of California) we all get special privileges here.
I live in CA as well (SoCal, in particular). Where do I register for my special privileges. PAIR is back up and working for me know, but there was about an hour there that I would have been glad to show my SoCal lapel pin and get it to function.
Comrade Soros will be in touch shortly.
And here we go again with the down time. I really wish I had my super-special SoCal decoder ring.
It’s working sometimes, other times not.
Hong Kong’s billionaires are calling for order to be restored
“I’m sorry, Hong Kong’s billionaires, I didn’t quite hear that over these explosions. Can you please talk slower and enunciate?”
>> fifty patent owners are blocking a major drug company from creating a cancer cure;
From (which is from 2010) Prof. Michael Heller: Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (Introduction) (Source: SSRN)
Really? So, again, some wa nk professor makes things up to try to push an agenda.
From Columbia Law’s webpage:
Michael Heller is Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School and has served as the school’s vice dean for intellectual life. He writes and teaches on private law theory, with a focus on property, contract, and land use.
He has an AB from Harvard, and his JD from Stanford (Lemley influence indicator), and has written on Takings and the “anti-commons.”
This man has zero actual ties to innovation, and most likely does not even recognize the value of patents come from BOTH a carrot and a stick angle.
The scary thing is that Lemley has influenced the hiring and promoting decisions of dozens of law schools where the ones that toe the Lemley line make and those that don’t have a hard time.
Flashback to law school (which I attended after developing an extensive background in innovation and innovation management) and the level of academic groupthink and lack of critical thinking when it came to certain overarching philosophies…
Having first been trained in the rigors of engineering, I have always been somewhat amazed and disappointed at the lack of critical thinking present with some otherwise very intelligent people. Unfortunately, law school is heavily afflicted with scores of undergrads trained in the non-thinking modes of academia-infected “soft” areas of the more “touchy-feely” Liberal Arts undergrad degrees coupled with a lack of real world experience.
I also get the distinct impression that some of those that do have technical undergrads, but who may have gone immediately into the law school path simply did not achieve a foundational view of what innovation means in the real world. In fact, these people may be even worse when it comes to advocating for strong innovation protection policies, as they may have some cred on the technical side, without that technical side mored to actual innovation practice.
I think you are right that the ones that may have some science or technical training as undergraduates never did actually learn their profession. They worked for maybe a year or two and then went to law school.
Lemley, SV money, and Obama have destroyed patent law.
The big thing I notice among the science/patent illiterate on the CAFC is that they have no appreciation for hindsight reasoning.
Probably their obtuseness is intentional as most of the current judges were selected by SV for their poor ethical characters and dislike of patents.
There was a time that “hindsight is 20/20” percent as not only readily recognized, but actively guarded against.
That being said, I do not subscribe to the level of angst that you have regarding “the selection” of the judges of the CAFC.
This is NOT to say that the Silicon Valley Efficient Infringer crowd was absent from (and in contrast WERE to an egregious extent) far too in bed (with scores of undocumented behind closed doors meetings with the Executive branch during Obama’s reign) they were. This is to say that I place more blame on the Supreme Court for fire-hose training of the lower appellate court in the use of Ends Justify the Means broken score board decisions, and now the CAFC is infected with a “We want this Ends” mindset, which leads into your viewpoint, as such an unchecked mechanism is an open invitation to such political manipulation.
This is also why any truly long-term removal of Supreme Court muckery (for example, Congress employing their Constitutional power of jurisdiction stripping of the non-original jurisdiction of patent appeals from the Supreme Court), would need be accompanied by a resetting of the CAFC.
…odd autocorrect with the insertion of “percent” — I trust that the meaning is understood
Get over yourself. Jeez.
Lol – what’s your point AAA JJ?
Try to not be like Random with a meaningless response.
Wanted to add this tidbit, as AAA JJ seems to (somehow) want to take issue with my observations…
link to patentlyo.com
Did you guys read the article in Law 360 (no link sorry if you don’t have it) about some absolute ridiculousness where some states might be allowing illegal immigrants to join the bar? lolwut? How would a literal illegal alien get to have a position of authority in the gubmit over legal residents (being an officer of a court somewhere)? How can this clownery be taking place?
F–ck off and die, you white suprem@cist piece of f—cking sh-t.
“Hi, I’m an illegal, and my victimhood entitles me to be allowed to be a member of the bar because white supremacy n neo nazis and stuff hur dur”.
“Hi, I’m a leftist and I think we should totally have illegal immigrants having power over legal citizens because that really helps to “fight white supremacylol” (lol I meant fight the ebil white mane)”
Next thing you know we’ll have literal illegal immigrants as the congress/presidency. I’m not even shi tting you guys. Because “fight the white mane!”
These jokers are “worried” that the supremes will put an end to their clownery. LULZLZLZLZLZZLZUZLZUZLZUZUUZLULZ.
Its in the “Access to Justice” section.
Notably, one of the ‘drivers’ is because “Law is the hard,” and rather than drop bar requirements to “let more in,” the idea is that illegals may be “smart enough” to pass the bar at their current levels.
I did not read the item all that deeply though, so I don’t recall if the article touched upon a different requirement for being admitted: passing the ethics screen.
I would have to imagine that THAT might be naturally difficult if you know yourself to be in the status of being an illegal alien.
I did see the article. Cannot say that I am much troubled by the idea. YMMV, evidently.
“I did see the article. Cannot say that I am much troubled by the idea. ”
You’re probably not “troubled bylol” the idea of having literal illegal foreigners literally up in your congress ruling you either. Are ya?
What we really need in the country is more literally and unironically illegal lawlyers! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA OMG.
Er, no. The Congress and the legal profession are not especially similar or analogous. I would be against the idea of letting non-citizens serve in Congress (if you want a hand in drafting our polity’s laws, join our community of citizens). I am, however, no more troubled about the idea of aliens drafting our wills or filing our slip-&-trips than I am of the idea of them picking our fruit or watching our children.
“the idea of aliens drafting our wills”
No, thanks. Ever seen a Klingon will? It will make you s. your pants.
“I am, however, no more troubled about the idea of aliens drafting our wills or filing our slip-&-trips than I am of the idea of them picking our fruit or watching our children.”
Yeah I’m not particularly troubled by that either. One part however that does concern me is that having them involved in the whole “illegal immigration industrial complex” as the “pro bono” etc. “legal services” (and don’t forget “advocacy”/”activismlol”) for illegals to get them to not be deported will only exacerbate that “industry”. But even setting that aside, I don’t need illegals in charge of my criminal case (any aspect thereof) or the criminal cases of others. Or for that matter, even civil matters. “Herp I’m choosing to be a lawlbreaker right now at this very moment and what I really think you should do is obey the law/go to jail”. Yeah, no thanks. The hit to the legitimacy (underline that) of the “ebil patriarchy”/”patriarchial gubmit” established by the ebil constitution, which gubmit is the only reason we have laws, and are a nation of laws, is large enough without such clownshows occurring up in courtrooms. With such clownery the ebil white cis hetero christian capitalist democractic patriarchial gubmit that we have in place may as well not even exist as it would have legitimacy set permanently to = 0. There are of course those who are ta rded, like MM, who think that this is what he wants, to really “help” his muh victims by fighting “the ebil” by tearing down the gubmit in whatever way he can. But in fact billions of his muh victims depend daily on that particular ebil gubmit still being around tomorrow, and the next day. Lowering its legitimacy to = 0 is not conducive to that.
6,
Did you not catch the use of a false equivalence by Greg with his comment of “…than I am of the idea of them picking our fruit or watching our children.”…?
He switched from illegal alien to merely alien in talking about a more “typical” set of jobs that immigrants often fulfill.
As if for those jobs, the status of illegal really does not matter.
Obviously, he has forgotten Nannygate.
Obviously, he has forgotten that one of the woes for migrant food workers IS related to a condition of illegality making them suffer in silence.
He basically says “meh” to underlying problems of illegality for “less glamorous” jobs as some type of vouching for illegality to NOT be an issue for most any job. The problem of course is that illegality IS a problem for any job.
Welcome to PatentlyO, where white supremacists and glibertarian @ h0les swap spit and reminisce about “Nannygate”. They’re very serious people, after all. The very best.
Wow, could you be more obtuse — and more incorrect — in your hurry to employ your “one bucket” mantra?
You really are the Trump of these boards, given your obvious lack of control over your emotions.
Could you be more of a white supremacist c0 ck s ck er?
Nope. You must love the taste, Bildo. Otherwise why bother?
You could not be more wrong, nor more Trump like, Malcolm.
“by Greg”
I didn’t know that was greg.
“He basically says “meh” to underlying problems of illegality”
It’s probably just because he’s a rac ist, though more secretly than MM.
It’s probably just because he’s a rac ist, though more secretly than MM.
Good f—–ing gob how does a human brain get this warped.
That you see no warping in turning a plain illegality into the politically correct phrasing of “undocumented” — and then are incensed at anyone that remarks on that ploy, is what is staggering about how the Rule of Law gets warped in a very typical Leftist Ends Justify the Means scenario.
There is a warp alright, but not the warp that drives your own feelings here, Malcolm.
“That you see no warping in turning a plain illegality into the politically correct phrasing of “undocumented” — and then are incensed at anyone that remarks on that ploy, is what is staggering about how the Rule of Law gets warped in a very typical Leftist Ends Justify the Means scenario.”
Anon has literally caught onto the game.
In truth tho anon, in MM’s defense, he’s probably still naive enough to believe that leftists really do care about their victims and totally aren’t using ploys. And to be fair yet again, they’re not wrong that many leftists actually do care for the victims, at least a little bit. And further they think this is also the case for their masters because they themselves do care, at least a little bit. and they project that onto their masters. But they do have a very hard time understanding that their mind masters at the top of their alternate heirarchy really do use such ploys to yank them around (similar to how MM yanks you around on occasion actually, tho on grander scale, and not exactly the same). I can’t really blame them too much, I was in the same pickle myself not long ago, not understanding how the powerful/top tier pull the strings of the masses. I guess MM and friends think that their leftist mind masters are just too good of people to stoop to such a thing. And/or just dislike the opposing position on other grounds, and are content to just let the ploy do the work so long as their masters will support doing so as the proper course of action.
And regarding the ultimate warping whew, what a sht show that eventually becomes. I just don’t even want to think about that.
That’s a long and tor tured way of saying that I am correct, 6 – and full of both unnecessary and incorrect postulating about me and Malcolm’s “yanking around.”
I have been “on to the game” long before you started catching on.
How many patent examiners are illegal aliens?
Of course, I would rather have an undocumented worker who understands written English than many of the examiners I have had (who don’t).
This made me chuckle… Because it’s so true.
What exactly is your concern?
“What exactly is your concern?”
“a literal illegal alien get(ting) to have a position of authority in the gubmit over legal residents (being an officer of a court somewhere)”
There are about a thousand sub-concerns thereunder. It’s been a bad idea throughout history, and it isn’t going to magically become a good idea after having been a bad idea for literally 4 thousand yearsish of it being a bad idea. And it also isn’t going to magically become a good idea by it being/becoming a means to “fyt whitey” as MM and his leftist pals imagines it will be. That they even imagine it to be a means of fyting the people in the country should be enough for you to know it isn’t a good idea.
6,
You are aware that AAA JJ is a “Leftie,” eh? He even elevated Greg to be “the best poster on Patently-O” (even as he took extreme exception to Greg’s playing patty cake with Random Examiner).
… a bad idea for literally 4 thousand yearsish of it being a bad idea.
No doubt I am going to regret asking this, but how can anything to do with “illegal aliens” be a bad idea for “literally 4 thousand years,” when there have only be citizenship and alien exclusion laws for ~150 years?
What would it even have meant to talk of “illegal aliens” 3000 years ago? There were not even national borders back then, so it would have been incoherent to speak of a person being on the wrong side of a national border.
No doubt.
Walls of Jericho, walls of Troy, Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, U.S.-Mexico Border wall. Been going on awhile.
Walls of Jericho, walls of Troy, Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, U.S.-Mexico Border wall
One of these things is not the like other …
Walls of Jericho, walls of Troy, Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, U.S.-Mexico Border wall. Been going on awhile.
Sure, but walls are not national borders, or at least not necessarily. Of those five examples you give, only one (the one that does not yet exist) is actually intended to demarcate the bounds of sovereign territory. The territory of Troy extended way beyond the walls of Troy. The walls were just a stronghold into which the citizens could retreat during times of invasion. The government of Troy’s writ ran for leagues beyond those walls. I expect that the same was true of Jericho, although we know rather less about Jericho than Troy.
Hadrian’s wall was strictly a military tool, not an assertion of sovereign boundaries. If two Roman citizens got into a dust-up on the far side of Hadrian’s wall, Roman courts would still adjudicate it. No one said “beyond the wall is outside our jurisdiction.” Similarly, if a Pict from beyond the wall wanted to come to the Britannia side of the wall and live in peace with his Romano-Celtic neighbors, there was no sort of naturalization process required. Roman citizenship conferred certain administrative benefits on the citizen vis-a-vis non-citizens, but it had nothing whatever to do with a “right” to be on a particular patch of ground. The only folks under Roman law whose “right” to be present on a particular patch of ground was ever in dispute were those who had been formally banished, and that punishment could apply to Roman citizens as easily as to non-citizens.
Our modern ideas of citizenship and immigration status are very much inventions of the modern era. They might or might not be good ideas, but they are certainly not something that can be said to have “stood the test of time.”
I really know very little about the Great Wall of China, so I decided to do some elementary (i.e., Google Books) research on the subject. I gather that this wall was no more intended as a “boundary” than were the walls of Troy, or Hadrian’s wall. Rather, just like Hadrian’s wall it was a piece of military hardware, not an actual border marker. The emperors who built the great wall intended to (and actually did) conquer territories beyond the wall, such that the wall did not serve as a delineator of sovereign power (this side is ours, that side is yours). It was just a holdfast from which imperial soldiers launch attacks and behind which they could retreat as necessary.
All the walls served, at least in part, to keep out foreigners. Don’t make me cut and paste from Wikipedia! And though there are no written records, anthropologists conclude that Homo Saps were reluctant to welcome Neanderthals into their campsites (except for the obvious spear-to-the-head welcome).
Apparently, the filter here does not permit the species name for modern human beings. I’ll try again.
All the walls served, at least in part, to keep out foreigners. Don’t make me cut and paste from Wikipedia! And though there are no written records, anthropologists conclude that [censored] were reluctant to welcome Neanderthals into their campsites (except for the obvious spear-to-the-head welcome).
Greg is trying too hard for an explicit point that a wall may not mark the precise boundary of a Sovereign’s domain, but will — on many occasions — merely mark a more convenient military spot.
His musings, while perhaps interesting (and even correct), nonetheless have nothing to do with the point at hand.
That train is never late…
6, one reason you may not get why some attorneys is fine with this is that the overriding concern of the bar may be the state Constitution and the federal Constitution. It is questionable whether it is OK to have people that permanently reside in the USA and yet are not considered citizens or do not have the same rights as citizens.
So many attorneys feel the current situation is unconstitutional. And many attorneys feel strongly that illegal alien or not they are still entitled to the basic rights of human beings, which our Constitution is based on.
Please do not conflate Constitutional Rights with basic human rights.
While certainly overlap exists, the Rule of Law (versus the Rule of Man) clearly distinguish the two.
You only invite mischief in such conflation with regard to a Constitutional system designed to have limited Power — and that “limited” applies across all three branches.
link to documentcloud.org
^ Supreme court of California regarding undocumented aliens being admitted to the bar.
So he was admitted five years ago, and yet the republic hasn’t collapsed. Who woulda thunk?
That case is NOT the matter that I saw in LAW 360.
The link to the Law360 article is here, if anyone wants it. As mentioned in the linked article, currently Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming allow people to be admitted to the bar without regard to immigration status. I cannot say that I see notably more obvious problems with the legal system in those states than in the other 40, but YMMV.
Evidently Utah and New Mexico are also considering rule changes to disregard legal immigration status. Meanwhile, if one gets admitted in one of those ten jurisdictions that do not consider immigration status, then one can even practice law in the other 40 jurisdictions, so long as one confines oneself to one of those strictly federal law practices (such as immigration law, federal tax law, or patent law) that are beyond the control of the state bar authorities.
Thanks Greg — while that too was not the particular Law 360 article that I had seen, the link is a nicely detailed story that does fold in the story that Ben alluded to above.
That being said, it should be pointed out that there is a rather serious “Slippery Slope” being played upon here — with individual States reaching for their desired Ends by way of Means that place a particular illegality as being NOT an ethical roadblock to (as 6 put it) being officers of the court.
And to deflate the reductio ad absurdum that AAA JJ offers, no one claimed that the republic was going to fall with this particular Ends justify the Means mechanism. There are certainly different levels or categories of illegality that bear on the ethical requirements of the various State bars (for example, parking tickets don’t “count”). But “fall of the republic” certainly is NOT the measure of ANY state ethics level.
One may earnestly suggest that being in this country illegally is not a type of breaking of the law that should count as to those ethics concerns. And certainly there may well be cases that draw close to a line of making exceptions. But the overall (and generally Leftist) zeitgeist is that there be NOT ONLY NO possible view that such illegality be considered an ethical concern whatsoever, but that the mere mention of such being a possible concern automatically brings out the “You are Ra c1st” card.
I have absolutely zero tolerance for that “game.” That is the game not of developing critical thinking, but the game of pure manipulation so that critical thinking is NOT employed against a particular ideological viewpoint.
Interesting decision today in MTD Prods. v. Iancu. Two quick thoughts:
1) I agree broadly with the idea the “mechanical control assembly” is a §112(f) limitation. “Assembly configured to [X]” is (99 times out of a 100) just an attempt to disguise that the patentee does not really have any particular structure in mind, but does not want to come out and admit as much by using “means for” language.
2) That said, I am not sure that it is really fair for the patentee to invoke §112(f) as a way of evading a novelty/obviousness attack when the same patentee explicitly argued during prosecution that the “mechanical control assembly” language is structural. To my mind, there should be some sort of estoppel provision that prohibits a patentee from later relying on §112(f) after disavowing §112(f) during prosecution. At that point, the infringement defendant should still be free to make a §112(f) argument to avoid the infringement charge, but the patentee should be cut off from the §112(f) argument.
goose and gander — IF you are going to accept (and cut off) the §112(f), then it MUST be bilateral.
What I found interesting about MTD Prods. v. Iancu [holding that “mechanical control assembly” must be treated as a §112(f) limitation] was how many of the subject claims ran into that same problem of “no means in the bun.” That is, a presumably broad claim element like that which is bundled in a large number of purely functional limitations, but no structural limitation, does not avoid the claim limiting of §112(f) to the spec embodiment or ITS equivalents.
…purely… functional….?
Interesting article addressing limits on copyrighting music:
link to m.dailykos.com
That was a very interesting article — indicating a depth of thought that at no time do I associate with your own postings.
But I appreciate you sharing the link.
(2) Cancer Doctors are Calling for a Permanent Fix to Drug Shortages. It is hard to know how this story found its way onto an IP-focused website. There was nothing in this story about IP, except for the last line, where the author observed that “[t]he three drugs are no longer patented and there’s little incentive for manufacturers to keep up inventories… .” It seems like the author may be trying to imply a connection between those two points (off patent, little incentive), but that really seems a stretch. Aspirin is long since off patent, and the shelves of your pharmacy are chock-a-block full of aspirin. I really have no idea why there are shortages of these drugs. I doubt very much, however, that IP comes into the story one way or the other.
…except perhaps has a emotive tie (to the more general “patents are bad” feelings)
Thoughts on the two links I clicked from the above:
(1) How Patents Really Work. The author remarks that “for most Canadian companies, a Canadian patent is really of secondary value—many of our companies don’t even bother to seek patents in Canada, and they focus their patent protection in the United States, Europe and China.”
In other words, Canadian patents do not incentivize Canadian innovators. The principle incentives to Canadian innovators comes from the US, EP, and CN patent systems. I wish that this point would sink in, although I know from past experience it will not.
The interest of CA inventors in the US, EP, and CN patent systems is not a unique quirk of CA innovators. This is true everywhere. CN innovators are incentivized just as much by the US and EP systems as by the CN system. US innovators are incentivized just as much by the EP and CN systems as by the US system. Brazilian innovators are incentivized mostly by the US, EP, and CN systems, just like CA innovators. We live in a global economy. Decisions taken by national systems have international implications.
Naturally, we should still run our own patent system for our own national benefit. We should be clear eyed, however, about how little we can do with our patent system to give ourselves any sort of “leg up” on international competition. Changes to the EP or CN patent systems can wipe out any advantage that we might try to give ourselves by fiddling with our own patent system. Innovation—and incentives to innovation—happen on a global scale.