Gobble Gobble

The author and PlanetIP wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Don’t mess with the girls!

We would like to congratulate Kelly Lamberti and Cary Grove High School to win the school’s first state title after defeating Lyons Township High School during the IHSA Class 4A championship game at Redbird Arena in Normal on November 14, 2009.

The sport of Volleyball has come a very long way.  It marks 114 years old this year.  Today there are more than 46 million Americans who play volleyball and there are 800 million players worldwide who play volleyball at least once a week.

In 1895, William G. Morgan, an instructor at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented the game of volleyball, originally called “mintonette,” after the invention of basketball by James Naismith.

Morgan took some of the characteristics from tennis and handball along with basketball to create a game, which would be less intense and less violent.  The purpose of the game is to volley the ball back and forth over a net without the racket.  Mintonette was then renamed to volleyball.

A year later, the first official game of volleyball was played at Springfield College.

Volleyball became so popular that in the year 1990, a special ball was designed for the sport.

In 1928 and 1949, the United States Volleyball Association (USVBA), now known as USA Volleyball (USAV) for men and Women’s USVBA division were formed, respectively.

In 1952, women played in Federation Internationale De Volley-Ball (FIVB) tournaments, founded in Paris, France for the first time in volleyball history.

In 1957, the international Olympic Committee (IOC) designated volleyball as an Olympic team sport.

In 1975, the US National Women’s team began a year-round training regime in Pasadena, Texas.

In 1977, the US National Men’s team began a year-round training regime in Dayton, Ohio.

In 1983, the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) was formed.

In 1986, the Women’s Professional Volleyball Association (WPVA) was formed to administer, govern, and protect the integrity of Women’s Professional Beach Volleyball.

The following are some interesting patents relating to volleyball and apparel.

U.S. Patent: No. D248,986; No. D445,155; No. D451,186; No. D566,386; No. 4,462,115; No.4,587,673; No. 4,796,303; No. 5,327,662; and No. 6,146,239.

 

Ultimate Fighting Championship- LIVE on Pay-per-View!

On November 5, 2009, Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) sue Knowles Electronics LLC (Knowles) for allegedly infringing on its four patents.  The patents-in-suit covers U.S. Patent No. 6,147,528 that is directed to integrated circuit for microelectromechanical System (MEMS) microphones and MEMS products and No. 6,674,140; No. 7,220,614; and No. 7,364,942 that are directed to anti-stiction wafer for MEMS microphones and/or products and they share the same specification.

Last month, Knowles filed a patent infringement lawsuit against ADI for ADI’s infringement of Knowles U.S. patents: No. 6,781,231 and No. 7,242,089 relating to MEMS microphone packages.

In ADI’s complaint, ADI claimed that they are being, and will continue to be, seriously damaged and irreparably harmed.  ADI seeks to enjoin Knowles from further infringement, among other things.

And in Knowles’ complaint, Knowles claimed that ADI’s part or lot numbers 403 IP625 infringes its patents-in suit.  Knowles also seeks to enjoin ADI from further infringement, among other things.

Maybe both parties could settle out of court and work out a cross-license agreement between them.

As I recall, Knowles was sued by Sonion MEMS A/S for allegedly infringed on Sonion’s U.S. patent No. 6,859,542 relating to similar anti-stiction layer for MEMS microphone packages four years ago.  The case was eventually settled out of court with favorable settlement and business arrangement to both parties.

 

Pay, you’re on St. Clair camera!

Once upon a time there is a company.  They purchase patents cheaply from entities not actively seeking to enforce them and then enforce patents against purported infringers to obtain bucks.  We called the company, a patent troll.

Generally, patent trolls do not seek out new applications for the technology nor commercialize products related to patents they owned.  Their focus is buying patents to monetize them.  Here is a classic example of a well-known patent troll, St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants (“St. Clair“) in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

Between 1995-2001, St. Clair purchased U.S. patents: No. 5,138,459; No. 6,094,219; No. 6,233,010; and No. 6,323,899 (collectively, “patents-in-suit”) relating to electronic still video camera from a group of inventors (Marc K. Roberts, Matthew A. Chikosky, and Jerry A. Speasl) for $65,000.00.  And then they sued major electronics and smart-phones corporations (Sony, Canon, Casio, Seiko, Epson, Fuji Photo, Fuji Film, Kyocera, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Nokia, Eastman Kodak, Siemens, BenQ, Audiovox, UTStarcom, Sprint Nextel, Cingular, Verizon, Vodofone, Cellco, LG, Motorola, Palm, Sanyo, Concord, Vivitar, Petters, Polariod, Aiptek, HTC, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, Research in Motion (RIM), and General Imaging), alleging infringement of its patents.

St. Clair also sued Eastmen Kodak and requested that U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) institute an investigation into violation of Section 337 arising from the unlawful and unauthorized importation into the United States, the sales for importation, and/or the sale with the United States after importation, of certain digital cameras that directly contributory, or by inducement, infringe one or more claims of its patents.

In the Section 337 complaint, St. Clair indicated that certain asserted claims of the patents cover (1) technology that relates to formatting of captured images in a digital camera in a choice of file formats such as JPEG, MPEG, or TIFF, to make it easy to use the captured images in popular software programs on personal computers and (2) technology that relates to a digital camera’s formatting of storage media such as a memory card from an Apple-compatible memory format to an IBM-compatible memory format.

St. Clair seek an exclusion order and a cease-and desist order to prevent Eastmen Kodak from continuing to import products that infringe its patents into the United States and sell those products once imported.

During the course of the complaint initiated by St. Clair, Sony filed multiple reexamination requests 90/006,435; 90/006,436; 90/006,437; and 90/006,438 and for all four patents in litigation.  The United States of Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued ex parte reexamination certificates confirming the patentability of all claims in all four patents in litigation.

So far St. Clair has collected in excess of $60 millions from Sony ($25 millions), Canon ($35 millions), and (Fuji Photo and Fuji Film ($3 millions), alleging infringement of its patents.

Sony, Canon, Casio, Koycera, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Seiko Epson, Eastmen Kodak, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sanyo, General Imaging, Pentax have since entered into an agreement with St. Clair to license the patents-in-suit.

On October 26, 2009, St. Clair filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. in Federal District Court in Delaware, alleging that Apple has, by its advertising, product instruction, import and/or sale of electronic still video cameras in the United States infringes on the patents-in-suit.

In the complaint, St. Clair claims that the infringement by Apple of the patents-in-suit has injured St. Clair and will cause St. Clair added irreparable injury and damage in the future unless Apple is enjoined from infringing the patents-in-suit.  However, the complaint does not specify which hardware is believed to be in violation of the patents-in suit.

Tune in for further updates…

 

Dude, what is wrong with you?

A patent practitioner represents an inventor Atsushi Ishihara filed the patent application on a display control apparatus for image forming apparatus.  On July 21, 2003 the patent application was published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.  Everything seems fine, right?  Not exactly.

Apparently, there was a bogus claim (claim 9) included in the patent application.  Claim 9 recited:

The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus which is really a bogus claim included amongst real claims, and which should be removed before filing; wherein the claim is included to determine if the inventor actually read the claims and the inventor should instruct the attorneys to remove the claim.

On November 7, 2006, the law firm filed a preliminary amendment, canceled claim 9, and explained in the preliminary amendment why claim 9 was canceled:

“Before the application was filed and before the inventor signed the declaration, the undersigned (“SoCal IP Law Group”) was instructed to delete claim 9.  Through an oversight, claim 9 remained when the application was filed. Shortly thereafter, the undersigned was reminded to cancel claim 9.  A preliminary amendment was prepared one week after the application was filed, but filing of the preliminary amendment was deferred until the application number was known.  This preliminary amendment belatedly addresses the oversight.”

USPTO received the amendment, reviewed the claims, and accepted the amendment.  After few rounds of communications between the practitioner and the USPTO, the patent is issued.

What have you learned so far?

LESSON 1: Next time when you look for a patent practitioner to assist you with the patent application, hire a patent practitioner who is awake and sober.  Certainly you do not want to hire a patent practitioner as failure to make a reasonable inquiry prior to submitting any papers to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).  “Practitioners submitting papers must read each paper submitted to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) before it is submitted.  Each submitted paper must be read in its entirety… regardless of the source of the paper.”  The duty of inquiry is codified in the Federal Regulations as 37 C.F.R. §11.18(b).

LESSON 2: Do not execute the declaration until the final changes to the patent application have been made and you have read the final draft of the patent application.

 

Need a BOOK?

Smartphone maker HTC has applied a patent on a book-like user interface (UI) of an electronic device.

The company’s patent application, published on October 29, 2009 as US Patent no. 2009/0271783, defines the basic of the book-like UI by explaining:

“The book-like UI proposed by the present invention unifies applications, widgets, and web pages into book pages, enabling the user to browser, use, and manage the functions and services in an intuitive and convenient way like browsing a conventional printed book.”

HTC are also patenting page flip animations, screen lock function (such as a zipper-like, a lock-like and/or a ribbon-like function), and the ability to download (add) or delete (remove) applications as pages.

HTC patent application was filed on April 15, 2009 and claims the priority benefit of U.S. provisional patent application 12/424,529, filed April 27, 2008.

continue reading 2009/0271783

 

TRICK or TREAT?

John J. Du Ket from Toledo, Ohio received a utility patent on August 25, 1903 issued by the U.S. Patent Office for US Patent No. 737,371, entitled “Jack-O’-Lantern Helmet.”

(Can you imagine walking around with an extinguisher and worrying the candle hide behind the helmet you are wearing might set fire?)

Continue reading Jack-O’-Lantern Helmet

 

Got Apple?

Nokia Corporation filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. on October 22, 2009 in Federal District Court in Delaware, for Apple’s infringement of Nokia’s ten patents for Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) or Third Generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (3G WCDMA), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 for wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards.

In the patent suit, Nokia claimed that they have made various offers to Apple for the fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms and conditions of a license agreement under which each of the patents-in-suit could be licensed either individually or together with other Nokia essential patents.  However, Apple has rejected Nokia’s offers for the FRAND terms and conditions both on portfolio and on a per-patent basis and thereby refused to compensate Nokia on FRAND terms for its use of Nokia’s patent technologies, including each of the patents-in-suit.

Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia vice-president for legal and intellectual property said that Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.

The patents-in-suit cover wireless data, speech coding, security, and encryption.  Please click the patents in the table below for more information.

U.S. Patents	Title of the Invention	Groups
5,802,465	Data Transmission in a Radio Telephone Network	Wireless Data patents
6,359,904	Mobile Telephone Network
6,694,135	Measurement Report Transmission in a Telecommunication System
6,775,548	Access Channel for Reduced Access Delay in a Telecommunications System
7,092,672	Reporting Cell Measurement Results in a Cellular Communication System
5,862,178	Method and Apparatus for Speech Transmission in a Mobile Communications System	Speech Coding patents
5,946,651	Speech Synthesizer Employing Post-Processing for Enhancing the Quality of the Synthesized Speech
6,882,727	Method of Ciphering Data Transmission in a Radio System	Security and Encryption patents
7,009,940	Integrity Check in a Communication System
7,403,621	System for Ensuring Encrypted Communication After Handover

 

The truth about the BILLABLE HOURS CALCULATION

Law firms do not wast any time living up to the “bill, bill, bill” system.  Partners expect you to bill the targeted billable hours (ranging between 1800 hours – 2400 hours).  Sounds innocent enough, right?  If you translate the targeted billable hours a year to billable hours a week, you would have to actually work longer to meet the billable hours.

According to the survey, it consistently shows that an associate must spend three hours in the office for every two hours of billable work.  Associates can’t simply bill time.  They strives to record, in their daily timesheet, each telephone call, mail and firm memos they have to read and respond, go to meetings, read legal publications, draft agreement, and eat lunch.  The result is relentless time-keeping from arrival to departure each day, and often at home again at night.

Being on the billing treadmill is exhausted.  In truth, most of the associates I know don’t like the billable hour.

Not necessary all your recorded billable hours consider billable.  Assume you work 2,520 hours and bill 1,800 hours.  If, for example, your  30 billable hours recorded in the timesheet are canceled by the partner for some reason, you would have to work 48 hours more ( 2,520 + 48 = 2,568 hours) and meet the targeted billable 1800 hours.

To help you understand the impact that a law firm’s billable hour expectations will have on your lifestyle, please click on the these following images.

 

NO MORE “Final Rule”

The Claims and Continuations Final Rule (“Final Rule”) has finally come to an end.

In October 8, 2009, GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”) has reached agreement with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to join the USPTO’s motion to dismiss its litigation over the Final Rule.  The USPTO is withdrawing all Final Rule regulations under dispute.  The withdrawal of the Final Regulations means that the patent system that had been in place before this litigation will remain in place.  The USPTO is revising the rules of practice in this final rule to remove the changes in the Claims and Continuations Final Rule from the Code of Federal Regulations.

[For those readers who are interested in the background of the suit and the definition of the Final Rules (obviously the rules are HISTORY), please click the following link.  Otherwise, you can skip the link and proceed to the next post.]

continue reading “Final Rule.”