In the not too distant past, a person or company unhappy about a patent had two choices: (a) wait to be sued for patent infringement by the patent owner in Federal court and then challenge the validity of the patent, or (b) preemptively sue the patent owner in Federal Court and ask the court to […]
Many in the U.S. take advantage of low prices offered by Canadian ‘pharmacies’ by purchasing doctor-prescribed patented pharmaceuticals. The Canadian pharmacies are not pharmacies in the traditional sense. That is, they do not maintain stocks of drugs nor fill prescriptions from their own inventories. Instead, the Canadian pharmacies are “ordering services” that ship pharmaceuticals to U.S. […]
The Navy just received a patent on flying saucer technology. No, I don’t mean a circular wing that flies like every other aircraft. I mean a craft that relies on laws of physics that neither Newton nor Einstein would recognize. The patent, by Navy inventor Dr. Salvatore Pais, describes what is literally anti-gravity technology, referred […]
In last May’s newsletter we told you about proposed changes to the patent statute to, hopefully, correct some of the damage that the Supreme Court has done to the U.S. patent system over the last decade. Among other things, the Supreme Court has expanded the judge-made categories of inventions that cannot be patented to include […]
There are some great inventions that cannot be protected by patent. Laws of nature, such as electromagnetism , cannot be patented. Abstract ideas, such as mathematical formulae , cannot be patented. Natural phenomena, such as a naturally occurring bacteria, cannot be patented. These judge-made exceptions to ‘patentable subject matter’ do not appear in the statute.* In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued decisions that […]
Consider this situation: you get to work one morning and attempt to open your computer. A pop-up message tells you that your hard drive is encrypted and demands that you make a payment, in Bitcoin, to get access to your files. Your coworkers have the same experience. Your company’s servers are frozen. You and your […]
A patent is property and the claims of a patent determine the value of that property. The words are important, folks. Consider the following (fictitious) claim: A love detector, the love detector comprising: a computer configured to determine whether a user is in love That’s called a “functional” claim – the claim addresses what the […]
In a word, yes. Consider this situation: An entrepreneur comes up with a new invention, let’s say, a self-inflating tire. A big tire company, which has unsuccessfully tried to develop self-inflating tires for years, signs a non-disclosure agreement and comes to inspect the tire. The non-disclosure agreement is a contract by which the big tire […]
You can create a great software or Internet invention that is completely novel, unobvious and has utility, but you still may not qualify for a patent. Why not? Congress enacted 35 USC §101 to identify which inventions are the proper subject for patents. That section states: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, […]
Stryker Corporation sued Zimmer, Inc. for patent infringement. There was no question whether Zimmer infringed Stryker’s patent – it did. Zimmer believed Stryker’s patent was invalid and believed that it would prevail in the infringement lawsuit. Zimmer had good reason to believe that the Stryker patent was invalid. As a result, Zimmer continued to infringe […]
