May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent
via May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent | This Day In Tech | Wired.com.
Link: U.S. Patent No. 4,270,182.
Richard Feynman was one of the great physicists of the 20th century, and an incredible teacher. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics.
I learned about Feynman in the 1980s when I was studying physics, and spent many a night watching films of his famous lectures at Caltech. To this day, he has inspired me to persevere in my love for science and math, while appreciating that science and math do not derogate the arts and humanities. To the contrary, math and science only add to the beauty, mystery, and appreciation of the world - art and science are complementary.
This short video says it all: YouTube - Richard Feynman - Ode on a Flower.
TOP 10 Litigation Wins of 2008
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday in a split decision that the Patent and Trademark Office did not overstep its authority in adopting a set of new rules that some intellectual property lawyers say fundamentally alter patent practice and threaten innovation.
via Law.com - Federal Circuit Sides With PTO in Dispute Over Rules.
EPC Rule 36:
(1) The applicant may file a divisional application relating to any pending earlier European patent application.
(2) A divisional application shall be in the language of the proceedings for the earlier application and shall be filed with the European Patent Office in Munich, The Hague or Berlin.
Method claim 1 does not recite any machine or apparatus or call for transforming an article into a different state or thing. A domain name is simply a series of characters representing the address of a resource, such as a server, on the World Wide Web.
Links: Ex parte Atkin.
Source: USPTO 2007-2012 Strategic Plan
The United States Patent and Trademark Office predicts that patent application filings will continue to increase to over 600,000 a year in 2012. Furthermore, according to their own estimates, there may be a backlog of around 1.4 million patents:
It is an unchallenged reality that the rate at which patent applications are being filed has increased beyond the rate at which the USPTO is presently able to examine them, resulting in an increasing backlog (cases that have not been examined). It is possible that this backlog could approach about 1.4 million by 2012—unless something is done.
A utility application can claim the benefit of a design application, and a design application can claim the benefit of a utility application:
Where the conditions of 35 U.S.C. 120 are met, a design application may be considered a continuing application of an earlier utility application. Conversely, this also applies to a utility application relying on the benefit of the filing date of an earlier filed design application. See In re Chu, 66 F.3d 292, 36 USPQ2d 1089 (Fed. Cir. 1995); In re Salmon, 705 F.2d 1579, 217 USPQ 981 (Fed. Cir. 1983). In addition, a design application may claim benefit from an earlier filed PCT application under 35 U.S.C. 120 if the U.S. was designated in the PCT application.
Q: We filed a patent application (provisional or non-provisional) and have “patent pending” status. Can we show our product to others without having them sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement)?
A: Yes… more or less. If the most important thing to you is building your company, and you have a well written patent application and thorough IP strategy, go show your product and get the word out, but keep the following in mind:
An NDA helps fulfill the immediate need or desire to stop others from copying your invention. However, it is a bit impractical and reduces your ability to sell your product if you have to ask everyone to sign an NDA. So, while an NDA would provide some level of “protection” not yet afforded to you by the patent application, you can proceed without one. Keep in mind, that without a granted patent or NDA, someone can still copy what you have disclosed to them and you would have few if any legal arguments to stop them.
The legal point to consider from this case is that the PTO will apply its “broadest reasonable” claim interpretation during its §101 analysis. Here, the BPAI panel found that the broadest reasonable interpretation of IBM’s claim does not necessarily “require computer or machine implementation” and thus that the claim fails the “tied to a particular machine” prong of Bilski machine-transformation test.
PatentlyO:
Fish and Richardson:
Groklaw:
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
For substitute drawings and other corrections see PCT Rule 26.4:
A correction of the request offered to the receiving Office may be stated in a letter addressed to that Office if the correction is of such a nature that it can be transferred from the letter to the request without adversely affecting the clarity and the direct reproducibility of the sheet on to which the correction is to be transferred; otherwise, and in the case of a correction of any element of the international application other than the request, the applicant shall be required to submit a replacement sheet embodying the correction and the letter accompanying the replacement sheet shall draw attention to the differences between the replaced sheet and the replacement sheet.
Abbot Laboratories fought for 14 years (receiving 12 rejections) to get a patent allowed, only to have the patent found unenforceable because Abbot’s patent attorney withheld key information in connection with the patent filing. Lesson: disclose information which may be material to the patentability of any of your claims, as required under 37 CFR 1.56.
Links: Law.com article.
Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital has a good post on the value of patents after fighting for 8.5 years to get one of his granted. His Half.com (Ebay.com) patent received six rejections, half of them final, before it was allowed. I explain this to clients, particularly software startups, on a daily basis - good patents are often very hard to get, you will receive many rejections, and it will be very expensive to respond to those rejections with no guarantee that you will ever be granted a patent. Fire your patent attorney if he fails to explain that to you.
This patent application from Apple seems to show a four layer arrangement comprising protective glass, an LCD display, a solar panel, and a circuit board. The solar panel receives light passing through the (semi-transparent) LCD display.
Links: MacRumors.com, Patent Application Solar cells on portable devices
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Postulated in 1971, a fourth passive circuit element called a memristor has been invented by a team from HP Labs. Circuit theory books, which will have to be rewritten, teach the existence and use of three passive circuit elements: the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. The memristor, short for memory resistor, changes its resistance based on the history of the flow of charge through the device. It essentially behaves like a non-linear resistor with memory. The device improves in performance the smaller it is made. The memristor can be used as both a digital and an analog device, depending on how current is passed through it. The applications are astounding, including computers that do not need to boot up, the elimination of disk drives, more energy efficient devices, and analog computers that can remember and associate patterns in the same way as the human brain.
Links: HP Press Release, HP Labs, Nature, EE Times, 1971 Paper in IEEE Transactions on Circuits Theory theorizing the existence of a memristor.
My client, On Deck Capital, officially launched today. Their patent pending financial products and technology improves upon standard credit models to offer performance-based loans to businesses that may not have access to traditional bank financing. On Deck Capital offers business loans up to $100,000 based on the performance of the business, rather than the personal credit history of the business owner.
Links: On Deck Capital, USA Today article.
I recently won U.S. patent no. 7,344,086 for the inventors of an innovative lottery ticket having features that prevent theft. The patent also claims methods for preventing lottery ticket theft. Major lottery ticket suppliers are considering licensing the patent.
The former anonymous blogger of Patent Troll Tracker has been outed as a patent lawyer at Cisco Systems. He was unmasked after a $15,000 bounty was offered by a senior partner at a law firm criticized on the blog after he filed suit for a client against Google. The blog has been taken down.
Links: Patent Troll Tracker, law.com article.