From the category archives:

Patents

What? Marshall, Texas?

March 5, 2009

It would be nice if lawyers didn’t have to call their clients and tell them that their company had been sued for patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas (EdTX). “Where? Where’s that?” “What, you’ve never heard of Marshall, Texas?” you reply. “Never been to Tyler, Beaumont or Lufkin? Kind of quiet evenings after

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Worthless Patents

February 25, 2009

Once you get a patent, it costs a lot to maintain it. For most categories of patentees, the maintenance fees after issuance are $980, $2,480 and $4,110 at 3.5 years, 7.5 and 11.5 years, respectively. If the fee is not paid, the patent is forfeited. Top patent blogger Dennis Crouch has an interesting set of

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Will Massachusetts Lose Judge Saris to the CAFC?

January 17, 2009

According to the front page of the January 12, 2009, National Law Journal (above the fold), Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris is on the “short list” to be appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit – the so-called “science court” that sits in Washington D.C. and hears patent appeals

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How to Attract Patent Litigation

November 27, 2008

If you’re a federal district court, that is. The answer? You need something not every federal district has. The Eastern and Southern Districts of Texas have them. The Northern District of California has them. The Districts of Pennsylvania (Western), Georgia (Northern) and Illinois (Northern) have them. In fact, so many U.S. District Courts have them

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In re Bilski – The Pendulum Swings

November 2, 2008

Those who take an interest in patents — inventors, litigants, lawyers, judges, pundits, trolls, and on and on — have been waiting with bated breath for the CAFC’s decision in In re Bilski. Is it a game changer for much-maligned “business method” patents? How far does it go in narrowing the patentability of business method

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EdTX Judge Says: Litigate Future Royalties as Part of Trial

September 4, 2008

We’ve been following the lower courts’ interpretation and application of eBay v. MercExchange since the case was decided by the Supreme Court in May 2006. In eBay the Court held that post-judgment injunctions were not “automatic” for successful patent plaintiffs, but rather that the trial court had to apply the traditional equitable test to determine

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Quick Hits – Antitrust

July 14, 2008

The Federal Trade Commission has asked for en banc review of the D. C. Circuit’s decision in the FTC’s Rambus proceeding. I expect this case to be appealed to the Supreme Court, and given the Court’s propensity to accept antitrust cases over the last several years and the importance of this case, the case stands

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Quant Computer v. LG Electronics – the Supreme Court Rules on "Patent Exhaustion"

June 10, 2008

Yesterday’s decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. is linked below (via scribd.com, which I am becoming quite enamored of as a place in the “cloud” to hold and link to documents or embed them in a web site or blog). This is a very technical case, and probably is of little interest

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Rambus Court: "Price Raising Deception" Not Competitive Harm

May 22, 2008

The “Rambus litigation” in all its many permutations — Justice Department investigation, FTC proceedings and multiple civil cases — has been documented and commented upon widely. For a recap see Andy Updegrove’s article here. At the heart of the legal controversy is the allegation that during the 1990s Rambus, the owner of key DRAM patents

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