Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Updates

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TACTICS PARTNERS WITH PATENTS ONLINE TO HIGHLIGHT UNIVERSITY IP

143 Universities in the USA Listed with One-Click Access to the Current Patent Portfolio of Each School

BALTIMORE, MD and NAPLES, FL (April 15, 2009) – Technology Transfer Tactics and Patents Online, LLC today announced a strategic alliance, whereby the two firms are collaborating to offer a unique database of all patents held by major universities in the United States.

Visitors to the www.technologytransfertactics.com/university-patents can view the current patent portfolio of each of 143 prominent U.S. universities, and with one mouse-click can see the entire patent portfolio of each institution.

Also, from this web page, users can initiate a patent search at www.freepatentsonline.com, the most visited site in the world for patent information.

 

The Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter provides in-depth guidance designed to streamline the commercialization process, as well as maximize the financial benefits of that process for universities and other research organizations.

 

“Technology Transfer Tactics is the pre-eminent periodical on amplifying and expediting the commercialization process for university IP,” said Erik Reeves, CEO of Patents Online, the company behind FreePatentsOnline. “We are very excited to be working with them to better expose the patent portfolios of all the key schools of higher learning across America. This will bring these universities more opportunities to increase licensing revenues."

“Historically, the patent portfolios of companies and institutions have been only dimly visible,” said David Schwartz, CEO and Executive Editor of Technology Transfer Tactics.  “Not only has FreePatentsOnline aggregated the largest audience in the world for patents and created unrivaled search capability, but they’re applying new ways of sorting and visualizing patent information to help accelerate the commercialization process.”

Patents Online also offers www.sumobrain.com, a free alternative to the pay services in the patent search domain. SumoBrain features full-text cross-collection searching of US & EP patents and applications, PCT documents and Japanese abstracts, and brings higher account limits and bulk PDF capabilities.

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About Technology Transfer Tactics

Technology Transfer Tactics is a subscription-based newsletter published monthly by BizWorld, Inc., a global publisher which also produces the free weekly e-zine, Tech Transfer e-News, which is distributed to a worldwide audience of 160,000. The company is the world's largest provider of continuing professional development for tech transfer professionals. Other products and services include the Tech Transfer Library, Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor, IP Marketing e-News, numerous audio-conferences for tech transfer professionals, a Distance Learning Subscription Program, and Hot IP, a new marketing service for select university inventions. For more information, go to www.technologytransfertactics.com.

About FreePatentsOnline.com

FreePatentsOnline (FPO), founded in 2004, is the top worldwide web property in terms of audience for patent search (www.freepatentsonline.com). The company’s most recent free service, www.sumobrain.com, is designed for users who require more advanced features in seeking, storing and sharing data from the world’s largest database of human achievement. SumoBrain allows an individual user to maintain up to 20,000 documents of patent storage, among other capabilities.

Technology Transfer Tactics is a trademark of BizWorld Inc. SumoBrain and FreePatentsOnline are trademarks of Patents Online, LLC. All other product and company names are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

How Crowdsourcing Could Revolutionize Patent-Busting

Simon Owens alerted me to a piece he wrote for PBS on Article One Partners on March 17, 2009.  The following is an excerpt:

Ricky James Robertson knew very little about touch-screen personal navigation devices when he first began reviewing patents on them back in November of last year. He was surfing Slashdot when he came across a launch announcement for a company called Article One Partners; the group offered awards for as much as $50,000 to individuals who could invalidate specific patents that were currently under litigation. The 53-year-old Robertson is a 30-year veteran of the aerospace industry with a master's degree in aerospace engineering from MIT; he currently works for a small Huntsville, Ala., engineering consulting firm, but he soon found himself poring over navigation device patents.

...invalidating a patent is something like searching for a needle in a haystack -- it often requires someone who has a very specific field knowledge and is willing to search through hundreds of documents to find an invalidating piece of evidence.  Rather than relying on its own staff to find the needle, Article One Partners opens up the process to the wisdom of the crowd by offering large monetary awards to those that can discover prior art -- that is, public information relevant to a patent's claims of originality.

In February, the company announced that Robertson was one of two who had found relevant prior art for this particular patent. Because he had been first to submit, he received $35,000 while the other person received $15,000.

Though Article One Partners can make educated guesses as to whether a patent is invalid based on prior art, the company can't legally invalidate a patent on its own. This means that it will constantly be handing out large monetary awards with the possibility of the validity of these patents being held up in court. But Milone emphasized to me that the company isn't just about patent-busting, but also improving the efficiency of the patent system as a whole -- many consider the industry in dire need of reform.

Read the full article here and my prior posts on Article One Partners here, here, here and here.

PatentBuddy Upgrades Inventor Edition with 3.5 Million Records

On February 13, 2009, PatentBuddy made a major upgrade to the Inventor Edition with 3.5 million records.

PatentBuddy for Inventors allows you to:

• Create your own capabilities profile.
• Search for inventors in your same area of expertise.
• Search directory of all inventors' names on U.S. Patents.
• Profile other inventors.
• Find upcoming events.
• Build a support network.

Find it free here.

And Now for Something Completely Different - Detecting Software Copyright Infringement

I was contacted recently by Bob Zeidman, President of SAFE Corporation. They offer a product called CodeSuite®, which detects software copyright infringement.  While this might seem a little off topic for a patent infringement blog, please hear me out.

According to Mr. Zeidman, "SAFE Corporation is a pioneer in providing software and services for discovering intellectual property theft, measuring software IP, and comparing software source code and object code. CodeSuite® has been used by law firms for IP litigation cases around the world. CodeSuite has also been used by tax attorneys to track changes through generations of programs for accurate IP valuations."

I have worked on a few patent infringement cases that involved software (as a Consulting Expert and as an Investigator).  In those that reached the discovery phase and its related access to source code, we needed to identify technical experts with experience with the specific programming languages involved.  They then needed to perform very detailed and time consuming analysis of the code and how it compared to the claims of the patents.  I have not worked with CodeSuite before, but perhaps it is worth a look on the next software case I am involved with.

"You can use CodeSuite for free on any code where the total of all files being examined is less than 1 megabyte. For larger jobs S.A.F.E. can run CodeSuite on your code at our secure facility. We can also run your jobs on our CodeGrid distributed computing platform. We will provide you with the detailed, raw CodeSuite output, and an in-depth expert report."

If you have used CodeSuite before, share your comments here with other readers.  Learn more about the product here.

FreePatentsOnline.com Logs its One Millionth Registered User

The following is excerpted from a February 10, 2009 press release from FreePatentsOnline.com:

Patents Online, LLC, the company behind www.freepatentsonline.com, announced today its one millionth registered user.

FreePatentsOnline (FPO) has patent data from the USA, Europe, WIPO and Japan, and is the #1 destination in terms of worldwide audience in the patent space.  The site is totally free for users.

The one millionth FPO registrant was K.C. Benson of Rockford, Tennessee.  “I’m an exercise fanatic, training for triathlons. I’m always interested in how certain exercise equipment operates the science behind it, and the technical drawings. I registered for FPO so I can save exercise equipment-related patents in three folders, one each for running, swimming and cycling.”

Registering at FreePatentsOnline takes less than a minute, and gives the following additional features at absolutely no cost:

1. Ability to save frequently-used searches

2. Ability  to store documents in portfolios
3. Ability to annotate both documents and portfolios
4. Ability to set up alerts to be notified of new documents of interest
5. Ability to batch export data to excel
6. Ability to share your portfolios with other users

Learn more here.

Prior Art Found Relevant to a Patent Litigation Against Garmin

The following is excerpted from a February 9, 2009 Article One Partners' press release at PR Newswire:

Article One Partners, LLC, a global community working to legitimize the validity of patents, today announced seven new patent studies, as well as two winners who will share the $50,000 prize for discovering prior art in Article One's Garmin/SP Technologies Patent Study. The Study relates to a graphical interface providing a touch screen keyboard display that may not be minimized, maximized, closed or deleted. In a 2008 complaint filed in federal court in Chicago, SP Technologies, LLC (SPT) accused Garmin Limited and Garmin International, Inc. of infringing SPT's patent. Garmin is a market leader in the portable navigation devices market.

The determination of winners was based on Article One's analysis, including review and analysis of outside counsel, leading Article One to reach the opinion that the prior art is invalidating because it teaches what is claimed in the subject patent U.S. Patent No. 6,784,873 B1. Article One believes that the claimed inventions would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the relevant art at the time of the inventions. The Study was won by Article One community members, called Advisors, from the United States. Two Advisors submitted publicly available evidence, known as prior art, that predates the subject patent. The first prior art reference is a 1991 international (WIPO) publication of a pending patent application assigned to MicroSlate Inc.; and the second is an excerpt from an out-of-print 1998 textbook on a Microsoft Windows Operating system, Windows CE.

Importantly, only a U.S. federal court or the U.S. Patent Office can invalidate a U.S. patent. Article One is announcing only its own opinion based on its analysis of the prior art for purposes of determining winners to its Patent Studies. A court or the Patent Office may disagree with Article One's opinion. The prior art is listed in the announcement of the winning Patent Study and may be viewed on Article One's website.

Read the full press release here.

Peer-to-Patent and Article One Drag the Reclusive Patent Onto the Thoroughfare

Mike Shultz of Message Infusion and PR point person for Article One Partners alerted me to a January 30, 2009 post by Andy Oram of O'Reilly Media.  An interesting post, with lots of links, comparing and contrasting Peer-to-Patent and Article One Partners.  The following is an excerpt:

Many patent review efforts exist--PatentFizz, EFF's Patent Busting Project, CAMBIA's Patent Lens, and more--but their effectiveness has been constrained by the oddities of the patent system, the difficulties of reading patent language, and the sheer size of the undertaking in an age where some 150,000 patents are granted each year worldwide.

Peer-to-Patent, an academic research project affiliated with several patent offices, and Article One Partners, a commercial venture, are two promising entrants into the space. This article will described [sic] and compare these organizations, highlight a new "post-issue" site erected last week by Peer-to-Patent to seek prior art on patents that have already been issued, and try to tease out the social and economic trend represented by the organizations.

Most prior art is intimately known to somebody: the person who invented it, a student who wrote or read a paper about it, a user of the product, etc. If one of these people fortuitously happens upon a patent, he can provide a clincher instance of prior art in a few minutes.

Peer-to-Patent may be most useful for such people, who "graze" by returning often and quickly perusing the summaries of patents. In any case, the success of Peer-to-Patent rests on its positioning in the wide-open public thoroughfare, attracting a wide diversity of visitors from around the world, the polar opposite of a patent applicant working in secrecy.

Article One plans on three sources of income:

• Sales of promising instances of prior art to patent holders and those at risk of being targeted for infringement. Patent holders can use the prior art to reissue a patent with narrower and stronger claims; those targeted for infringement can try to overturn the patent.
• Investments in companies based on results of searches, which can indicate whether they are likely to profit from patents.
• Sponsored studies (the Bounty Quest model) which generate fees for the initial posting and contingency fees upon a successful conclusion.

...and a comment I found particularly intriguing:

Perhaps industries could agree on mandatory prior art studies, just as some industries now have mandatory arbitration. The prior art study would not preclude a lawsuit, but it could be an initial stage that could persuade one of the litigants to settle.

See the full post hereand thanks to Mike Shultz.

Evaluating the Risk of Patent Infringement by Means of Semantic Patent Analysis: The Case of DNA Chips

The above titled article by Isumo Bergmann, Daniel Butzke, Lothar Walter, Jens P. Fuerste, Martin G. Moehrle, and Volker Erdmann appeared in the November 2008 issue of R&D Management (Vol. 38, Issue 5, pp. 550-562).  The abstract reads:

In this paper, we are going to present a method for detecting the risks of patent infringement by evaluating similarities between patent documents on the basis of semantic patent analysis. This approach enables the user to visualize similarities in the contents on a semantic patent map by means of multi-dimensional scaling. The effectiveness of the semantic patent map has already been demonstrated by Dressler (2006) with regard to patents of seal technology, in which documents are commonly kept short and the extracted contents are concise. This paper will open out to the field of biotechnology, where patents can easily comprise several hundreds of pages. The method presented here conveys an interdisciplinary approach and combines computer-aided natural language processing with domain-specific expertise of biochemical processes. This is illustrated by an authentic case of infringement involving two manufacturers of DNA chips. Our experiment will show how the infringement case is visualized on a patent map based on semantic patent analysis. This experiment can be compared with the search for a needle in a haystack, the two competitive patents representing significantly conflicting needles. From an approximate number of 4,000 patents in the current US Class 435/6, a set of patents was selected that included the needles mentioned. This paper will point out how such mutual interference can be detected by way of semantic patent analysis, and what advice may be given to R&D managers who are faced with the risk of patent infringement.

You may purchase the article at Social Science Research Network.

Facebook For Patent Trolls

As a follow-up to my previous post on Article One Partners, take a look at what Asher Hawkins writes for Forbes:

For each Internet social network effort that thrives, there are dozens that fail to generate any interest from the surfing masses.

An early dud was BountyQuest.com, launched in 2000 with financial backing from Amazon's Jeff Bezos. The premise was simple: Posters to the site would highlight a patent they wanted to see blown out of the water, and visitors could receive up to $50,000 for presenting evidence that the patent wasn't, in fact, the first document to describe the invention in question. BountyQuest's problem was that too few got involved in the action. It fizzled within three years.

One former employee, Cheryl Milone, believes the company's business model deserves a second chance, given the rise in popularity of "crowdsourced" online projects like Wikipedia. In November, Milone, a Manhattan patent attorney, launched ArticleOnePartners.com to do more than just provide a means for prior-art mercenaries to peddle their wares. This time, Milone and a team of three intellectual property lawyers are the ones deciding which patents visitors should be harassing. And she's got two strategies for quickly turning a buck if a visitor does submit patent-busting information.

Say a visitor sends ArticleOne evidence (an article in an obscure academic journal, for example) that calls into question the validity of one of Pfizer's Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ) patents for cholesterol reducer Lipitor. Milone would make that information public on the site--and, at the same time, she could short the stock of Pfizer and go long on the stock of competitors eager to sell a generic version of Lipitor. In theory, she'd make a bundle once the industry finds out what she knows.

Within three days of launching, ArticleOne received more than 50 prior-art submissions, some from as far away as India and the Ukraine.

Read the full article here.

Article One Partners Launches New Global Online Community to Energize Patent Reform

The following is excerpted from a press release issued today, November 17, 2008, by Article One Partners:

Today, Article One Partners, LLC launched as a new global community to legitimize the validity of patents. Community members – who Article One calls Advisors – have an opportunity to send in previously hard to find evidence of validity for high profile patents. By tapping the unique knowledge and referral networks of our Advisors, this publicly available evidence known as prior art can be discovered. Article One analyzes the prior art to determine whether it can show patents to be legitimized or invalid. If Article One forms an opinion that patents are invalid, Advisors earn up to U.S. $50,000, with $1,000,000 total being offered for launch. Advisors who actively build the community also earn premium compensation in Article One’s Profit Sharing Plan of about five percent (5%) of the company’s net annual profit. The result is a highly-rewarded community providing a citizen’s review of U.S. patents to justify monopoly pricing for true innovation and energize U.S. patent reform.

Article One also directly supports other reform efforts, including early review of pending applications submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. Article One joins the U.S. Patent Office and Congress in endorsing the important work of peertopatent.org, which requests from the public prior art to forward to the Patent Office for consideration in granting new patents. Acknowledging this critical work, Article One encourages Advisors to participate in public-sector reform, offering Profit Sharing on articleonepartners.com when Advisors provide prior art that is accepted by peertopatent.org for submission to the Patent Office.

Earn Compensation for the Value of your Knowledge

• WHO CAN JOIN – All types of people with an interest in science or technology can participate if legally eligible. Members can join from anywhere in the world and from every type of industry and specialty: Engineers; Hobbyists; Academics; Scientists; Students; Professionals; Retirees; Experts and more.
• WHAT TO LOOK FOR – Advisors have an opportunity to review Patent Studies posted on articleonepartners.com, and to submit relevant prior art (evidence of publicly available information predating a patent’s invention, which teaches or renders obvious the patent claims).
• WHERE PRIOR ART IS FOUND – Prior art knowledge and evidence may come from published content anywhere in the world and in any language. This includes: previous patents; news or academic publications; non-digitized documents such as textbooks; or any public document provided to others, including conference or academic papers and business materials. Prior art is often found in documents tucked away in a file cabinet years ago, or in the back corner of a library.

Download the full press release [Download 11_17_08_aop_launch_final_wire.doc].