freePat: Canadian patent attorney Peter Eliopoulos has written a bit of desktop software that allows you to download PDF patent documents. The software is free and each download is free — no money changes hand.
Catch: The only problem is that the software is only in Version 0.6. I.e., beta. Peter has written a great tool — someone should take Peter’s code and build a nice GUI around it.
USPTO Director Jon Dudas recently gave a stirring speech at the AIPLA annual meeting in Washington DC. Here is the money quote:
[M]y charge is very clear, the charge of the USPTO is very clear. We are resolved to protect your intellectual property rights. Internationally, we are resolved to protect your rights in the treaties we debate, the enforcement measures that we promote, and the Free Trade Agreements that we negotiate. Domestically, we are resolved to protect your intellectual property rights through administration policy and, perhaps most importantly, by ensuring that you have the highest-quality patents and trademarks in the shortest time possible, in short, to give you the certainty and the quality that you need and deserve.
Link: Yesterday, we reported on how Patent Law is likely to shape the debate on drug importation from Canada and other countries. Now, the AP is reporting that a coalition of Canadian groups is beginning to pressure the government there to ban prescription drug exports. The coalition argues that the rise in exports is likely to lead to shortages and price hikes in Canada.
Here in Illinois, Governor Rod Blagojevich has been a strong advocate of legalizing imported drugs. (Link).
Canada may also be able to share its surplus flu vaccine with the U.S. (Link).
Link: America was founded as a dissenting opinion in the 18th Century colonial world. Not wishing to be unpatriotic, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has been on a rampage — issuing dissents with abandon. According to Professor Polk Wagner’s research, the percentage of dissenting or concurring opinions in CAFC cases has risen from under 5% in the late 1990’s to over 25% today. (chart from www.fedcir.org).
Comments: The amount of dissent on the court clearly indicates that the composition of the panel for your case will have a major impact on your outcome. As Stephen Nipper and Hal Wegner have noted, if the composition of the panel was known well in advance of appeal, the resulting certainty would lead to more settlements. Despite any internal conflict within the Federal Circuit, it would be laughable to argue that the law is less settled or less certain than it was prior to the formation of the court.
Professor Polk Wagner has a background in empirical research. Lately, he has been using his statistical tools to help provide a better picture of how the Federal Circuit operates. You can see his work at the “Claim Construction Project.” His site and papers are loaded with information. Perhaps the most fun is the Predictor Tool. By selecting the panel of appellate judges, the tool will predict the panel’s decision methodology.
Two prominent law professors have called for major reforms in the practice of filing continuation patent applications. In a recent paper, Professors Mark Lemley and Kimberly Moore outlined their view that continuation applications “have led to abuse of the patent prosecution process.” According to Lemley and Moore, “they serve very little useful purpose, and what benefits they confer may be outweighed by their potential for mischief. The world would probably be a better place if continuation applications were abolished.”
Specifically, the professors propose to limit each application to only one continuation application. “Allowing even one continuation application will give the applicant five or six bites at the apple. Surely that is enough.” In addition, the professors would create “intervening rights” for competitors who begin making a patented invention prior to a broadening continuation.
Article: Ending Abuse of Patent Continuations, 84 B. U. L. Rev. 63 (2004).
IP-Updates provides more details.
Comment: Lemley and Moore are formally correct that an applicant always has an opportunity to keep an application alive by filing a continuation. However, as each day passes, the eventual resulting patent becomes less and less valuable because the patent term will be calculated from the filing date of the original parent application. At the limit, a continuation that issues 20 or more years after the original parent was filed is completely unenforceable. Thus, there is a practical 20-year limit on the filing of continuations.
Link: The European Patent Office (EPO) has released Version 3 of their patent searching website, esp@cenet. The new version is more user-friendly and had improved field-searching.
Version 3 is the culmination of a long process aimed at developing a new improved user interface for the esp@cenet service. During this time, we have consulted extensively with both current and potential users of esp@cenet, as well as specialists in the area of human computer interaction, in order to improve the usability of the service, with particular attention being paid to the needs of the non-specialist user.
According to David Orange at the University of Washington, the site provides “a title-abstract keyword search, along with various number options, [such as] applicant, inventor etc. You can retrieve PDFs of US patents (and published applications), [and patent documents from] WIPO, Japan, EPO, Great Britain, France and Germany.”
Finally, an on-line forum is provided for discussing search techniques.
Eugene Quinn, the “IPWatchdog,” made an interesting comment recently in his newsgroup. Quinn sees a “double standard” in the Patent Office’s examination procedure.
[T]he Patent Office just doesn’t apply the law any more. There seems to be a double standard in the office. Things that are silly/stupid get patented without much time or consideration, perhaps because the Patent Office doesn’t believe anyone will ever use the patent. Things that are what we would consider “science related” actually get stricter scrutiny. This may make some sense, but the patent laws do not make such a distinction. I also think that the craziness that the Patent Office is allowing significantly contributes to the existence of scam invention submission companies. These scam companies can say with a straight face that any invention can and will receive a patent. Therefore, I think the Patent Office is to blame for many of the scams. Perhaps if Congress would let the Patent Office keep its own revenue better examinations could be had. That looked like it would be the casee earlier in the year, but last week the Senate seems to have stripped that measure in the appropriations bill.
-Gene
Douglas Bourgeois, the Patent Office’s former Chief Information Officer (CIO) recently left to become a director at the Interior Department. The PTO has announced a job search to replace Bourgeois. (Peter Zura posted the announcement as did the PTO.) With the PTO’s move to a paperless office and electronic filing, it is critical that the Office finds a highly qualified canditate for the position.
For a short time, websites offering free online downloading went out of vogue. Recently, however, Pat2PDF.org was started by a generous patent attorney as “a free search tool.” Pat2PDF allows you to download U.S. patents in PDF format.
Now, a Canadian attorney, Peter Eliopoulos, has taken the code from Pat2PDF given us an installation guide so that the script that can run locally on our WindowsXP systems. There is one problem with Peter’s installation guide. The Guide is only slightly longer than an AA 12-step program. Installation appears to take about an hour, and the result will be easy downloading of patents from your PC.
Update: Peter asked me to also give credit to the script’s authors Oren Tirosh and Thomas Boege. According to Peter he “only wrote the installation instructions for those of us still using Windows.”
Suggestion: At some point, the PTO should make PDF versions of the patents freely available from their website.
Lin k: Italian cable manufacturer Pirelli has requested an ex parte reexamination of Stanford University’s patent number 4,859,016. The patent, entitled “Fiber Optic Amplifier,” survived a first reexamination four years ago.
The patent reexamination system is intended to provide a less-costly alternative to litigation — and can be especially useful when the validity of an issued patent is questioned. Reexamination allows the patent office to consider newly discovered prior art and printed publications. However, the evidence available to the patent office during a reexamination is limited. In addition an ex parte reexamination does not allow an open forum for a potential defendant to argue its case.
After a reexamination is requested, the PTO has three months to determine whether a substantial new question of patentability exists. Once a reexamination is ordered, the patent holder can respond to the questions of patentability and may propose amendments to the patent claims. The reexamination requester may then file a counter-statement. After filing the counter-statement, the claims are examined without any further input from the requester.
Following a reexamination, the PTO issues a reexamination certificate showing changes made to the patent.
A reader asked about how I find news to post. Here are some tips and rules that I follow:
1. The primary sources for the Patently-O Blog are judicial opinions released by the Federal Circuit and various district courts. In addition, I pay attention to rule changes at the Patent Office and legislative changes in Congress. My policy is to post a review of every appellate opinion directly related to patent law, most rule/legislative changes, and some district court opinions.
2. Secondarily, the world of blogs (or blawgs) provides lots of interesting points of interest. For example, I read about the recent patent lawsuit against the RIAA on Stephen Nipper’s blog. I use the online news reader “Bloglines” check for new items from blogs around the world. I have about 35 blogs in my list. There are millions of blogs, so 35 is quite culled.
There are definitely other blogs that should be on my list, but I just don’t have time to process that much information. Here are four patent related blogs that I often use as sources. (in no particular order).
b. PHOSITA
3. I look to the mainstream media to uncover some items more related to the business of patents and patent law. For example, I read about the patent suit against Major League Baseball on c-Net News. Generally, I try to add to the story in a meaningful way. For example, for the MLB case, I downloaded the patent from the USPTO and looked at the claim language and figures. Then, I contacted the plaintiff’s attorney to get his comments about the case.
Here are my three best news sources:
In his recent article “Patent and Trademark Searching Via the Web,” Robert Ambrogi provides a concise guide for using the Internet to find both U.S. and international patents and trademarks. Robert’s first stops are the USPTO and the EPO. These sites are free, easy to use, and fairly comprehensive. Several fee-based services, such as Delphion and Micropatent are good second options if a more comperhensive search is required. Finally, Robert mentions the ROSSCO website that provides a matrix of patent search options.
Mr. Ambrogi is a lawyer in Massachusetts and author of The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. In a recent article, he was kind enough to mention Patently-O, hopefully one of the best.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed a program of full public access to clinical results from agency funded research.
Establishing a comprehensive, searchable electronic resource of NIH-funded research results and providing free access to all, is perhaps the most fundamental way to collect and disseminate this information.
Although lauded by many, it is expected that publication of results would injure the market for journals and other publications.
The NIH is encouraging the public to submit comments to publicaccess@nih.gov.
Link: NIH Public Access
Chicago based Boeing recently patented a method of assembling a wing using a pair of wing spars. (U.S. Patent 6,779,272). According to patent office records, the Boeing Company holds thousands of patents on various aerospace technologies. Boeing also has several hundred more patents applications on file at the Patent Office awaiting action. In 2003, Boeing received 266 issued patents — slightly more than the country of Norway.
From Promote The Progress: As the figure shows, the use of Chapter II demands in PCT filings is in sharp decline. The driving force is that many countries no longer requre the Chapter II proceedings for the 30 month national stage filing extension. At the same time, the number of international patent applications continues to rise. (Data from WIPO).
It is Labor day in the U.S. Enjoy a day of rest.
IBM and Intel have announced a general license agreement on their patented blade server technology. This move is expected to create a level of standardization in the blade server market. (The Register).
The license (PDF) is directed at “copyright and trade secret rights in the Specification, to use the Specification for the limited purpose of designing and manufacturing Licensed Products, and to reproduce a limited number of copies of the Specification as is reasonably necessary to design and manufacture Licensed Product.”
Most notably, the license does not extend to patents, patent application, or trademarks.
Licensors grant no license … under any patents, patent applications, mask works or trademarks of the Licensors. Licenses under any patents of IBM or Intel will be addressed in separate patent license agreements.
Instructions for registering for a license are available here.
Note: This move falls in line with IBM’s open source philosophy. However, it is important to note that IBM and Intel may likely retain control over much of this technology through their vast patent portfolios.
Declan McCullagh at Cnet News is one of the best tech-law reporters on the scene. In his recent report on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) case Chamberlain v. Skylink, McCullagh begins:
A federal appeals court has reaffirmed what might seem obvious: Replacement garage door openers are legal to sell.
More particularly, a Federal Circuit Appellate Panel found that the encrypted code that allows your garage door receiver to recognize a signal from your remote control opener is not subject to copyright law — and thus not subject to the DMCA.
The so called “anticircumvention provision” of the DMCA bars attempts to circumvent technological measures that are put in place to control access to copyrighted works. In this case, the court dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal because the encrypted code garnered no underlying copyright protection.
FindLaw’s Modern Practice magazine is published monthly and is an excellent resource for those interested in technology related legal practices.
The September issue spotlights the recent Jib Jab controversy (“This land is my land”) pursues the definition of parody under copyright law. Anita Ramasastry also provides an analysis of the proposed Anti-Phishing Act of 2004.
Finally, Patently-O is honored as Modern Practice’s Weblog Chronicle of the month.