Stephen Nipper has a nice post discussing harmonization issues between the USPTO, JPO, and EPO. (PDF)

A new book by Harry Arzouman is coming out called Patent Piracy. The book is not yet released, but apparently it is the author’s own story about how his ideas were stolen and then regained. Published by Sterling House.

The USPTO lists 16 patents for Mr. Arzouman that primarily focus on hydraulic jacks.

Jennifer Miller has published an iBrief in the Duke Law & Technology Review discussing whether litigants have a right to a jury trial in patent infringement cases. (Article)(PDF) Ms. Miller presents an argument that the seventh amendment does not guarantee a jury trial in complex cases. In addition, she notes that the fifth amendment right to due process may bar a jury “trial where a jury would be unable to perform its job because of a failure to grasp the legal issues or the underlying facts of a case.”

IP Worldwide recently ran an article questioning whether independent IP firms are viable in today’s marketplace. (Discussing the fall of Lyon & Lyon). The APLF has offered a response to the article.

The fact remains that very few large general practice firms can offer the depth and breath of expertise, in litigation, prosecution or counseling service, that are the standard offerings of independent IP firms. If the large general firms have an advantage, it is their willingness and ability to devote large budgets to advertise and promote their services. Few independent IP firms have (or desire to spend) the resources that many large general firm devoted to advertising and promoting their IP departments. Of course, those large advertising budgets also give rise to higher billing rates, a separate phenomenon which clients are also coming to recognize.

As I mentioned in a previous posting, anecdotally, the Orphan Drug Act has been quite successful in providing incentives to pursue drug research in areas that may have otherwise been overlooked. Here are several links that provide further information and analysis:

The Orphan Drug Act
Drug trial cost estimates
A criticism of the Orphan Drug Act
Background on the law

The Federal Circuit Bar Association has announced its sixth annual “bench & bar” conference beginning June 26 in beautiful Colorado Springs. Program (pdf).

The Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago (IPLAC) is hosting a federal judicial panel on April 29 (pdf). Judges Cudahy, Duff, Holderman, Moran, Ashman and Brown are all scheduled to attend.

The AIPLA has issued a response (pdf) to the FTC’s October 2003 patent law report (pdf). Here are some highlights of the report:

The AIPLA
1) Agrees that a post-grant review process may help enhance patent quality;
2) Opposes reducing the presumption of validity associated with an issued patent;
3) Sees no need for any legislative change regarding the suggestion for combining prior art references;
4) Supports additional USPTO funding;
5) Strongly opposes increased use of PTO Rule 105 information requests;
6) Skip for now;
7) Agrees with an 18-month publication rule for all pending patent applications;
8) Supports prior user rights in use before the effective filing date.
9) Strongly supports requiring written notice of infringement or deliberate copying of the patentee’s invention, knowing it to be patented, as a predicate for liability for willful infringement; and
10) Questions whether economic analysis should be applied in patent law decisionmaking.

(Thanks for Dennis Gregory for the update.)

Berkeley’s IPblog has been covering patent reform issues. The NRC is also urging patent reform.

From Leland Meitzler at the Genealogy Blog:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has begun shredding about 35 million patent documents — some dating back to the agency’s creation on July 30, 1790 — as it moves toward full electronic processing.
…
But Brigid Quinn, spokeswoman for USPTO, countered: “Nothing valuable is being disposed of. There is nothing original. These are paper copies of copies of copies. Nothing is historical or archaeological, and we’ve been doing this for years.”
…
As for what happens to historical patents, Ms. Quinn said, “The original patent goes to the patent holder, and original copies are kept in our warehouse for 10 years. Then they go to the Federal Records Center, where they are kept for 40 years. They are then examined by the National Archives,” which decides if they should be preserved or destroyed.

Jon Dudas recently testified about IP piracy. Here is an exerpt from his prepared speech:

During a House International Relations Committee hearing in 2003, the Secretary General of Interpol identified a disturbing potential trend when he testified that IP crime “is becoming the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups.” A customs expert with the European Commission recently stated that al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are among organizations believed to be using counterfeit goods to launder money and fund their activities. Mr. James Moody, former chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Organized Crime/Drug Operations Division, has stated that counterfeiting is likely to become “the crime of the 21st Century.”

Dudas reports that the IP crime and enforcement have become a top priority at the department of commerce. The people at GNU have their own philosophy on piracy:

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them. If you don’t believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “prohibited copying” or “unauthorized copying” are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”

Many patent attorneys probably believed that, in their practice, they could avoid the moral dilemmas faced by criminal defense attorneys. As patent infringement becomes demonized as a crime, those dilemmas may become more frequent. Read the book.

MIT has released its 2004 “Technology Scorecard” (Excel) ranking U.S. patent portfolios of 150 technology companies in eight sectors. Ranks are based on the number of patents, patent citations, scientific paper citations, and technology cycle time. Pfizer and Delphi topped their respective sectors.

Adam Jaffe has done quite a bit of work in this area and has promoted the use of patent citation data as a proxy for patent quality and knowledge transfer.

eWeek’s op-ed page is calling for patent reform. Ironically, the editorial points to the settlement between Sun and Microsoft as another example of the problems of the patent system.

Like Cold War superpowers agreeing to reduce nuclear stockpiles, Sun and Microsoft have stepped back from their own form of mutual assured destruction.

Perhaps eWeek is a bit too cynical. Another point-of-view would see the settlement as an indication that patenting does not lead to a technology stalemate. Sun and Microsoft were able to work through their differences and arrive at a solution that will be beneficial for both parties. Collaboration may also be aided by potential amendments to §102(f)/103

The Orphan Drug Act provides market incentives to develop new therapeutics for diseases affecting relatively small numbers of persons. (Providing a seven year period of market exclusivity.) The act applies specifically to therapies for treating diseases or conditions which affect less than 200,000 or affects more than 200,000 persons but for which there is no reasonable expectation that the costs of developing the drug will be recovered from U.S. sales of the drug.

One problem for the FDA has been determining whether the market exclusivity should apply for new entrants who produce a slightly different drug or who treat a slightly different condition.

Robert Bohrer argues (txt)(pdf) that, in the case of monoclonal antibody drugs, the approach to orphan drug exclusivity should be for the FDA to presume antibodies to the same antigen, of the same immunoglobin class and with the same mechanism of action to be the same drug unless the second antibody is shown to be clinically superior to the first.

David Rohde agrees (pdf) that the Act has had a great impact on the development of drugs for treating rare diseases. According to David, “ten times the number of orphan products were approved in the decade following the Act than in the decade preceding Act.”

According to Susan Kuchinskas at internetnews.com, business leaders have begun meeting to solve “problems at the USPTO.” IT companies feel that patent quality has dropped as the number of applications has increased. Cisco, Intel, eBay, Symantec, Chiron, Microsoft, and Genentech said they will work with regulators and legislators on patent reform. Susan’s reports come from yesterday and today’s patent reform conference. Elizabeth Miles at Berkeley IPlog has a nice review of the conference. Elizabeth may have more on the conference tomorrow.

Update: Brian Carver presents an insightful look at day two of the conference.

Scott Wolinsky has written an enlightening (if cynical) article about the patenting process. According to Scott, successfull prosecution of a patent application requires a novel invention, adequate prosecution skills, and also a bit of luck. Primarily Wolinski finds that the luck is getting the right examiner. (Thanks to Slashdot for the link.)

Professor Lichtman (UChicago) has a nice article (pdf) about this topic and its consequences for prosecution history estoppel. If the patent prosecution process truly has such a significant luck component, then the quality of the examination might need to become an issue when determining validity during litigation. Karl Lenz and Axel Horns discuss the purpose of the patent system (focusing mainly on software patenting).