Over the past month, I’ve shown just how successful the inter partes review (IPR) program has been in its first five years. IPR has saved billions of dollars and helped everyone from city governments to realtors to the targets of patent trolls funded by foreign countries. Those stories are listed below: IPR Successes: Trolls and…
Tag Archive for inter partes review
IPR Successes: A Bridge To Sovereign Patent Funds
by Josh Landau • • 2 Comments
Patent trolls are a familiar concept at this point, but a “sovereign patent fund” (SPF) might not be. This isn’t the kind of sovereign I wrote about recently in regard to sovereign immunity. In essence, an SPF is simply a patent assertion entity (PAE) with backing from a national government. While government-funded companies that…
IPR Successes: Scan-To-Email Defeated By Scanner Makers
by Josh Landau • • 3 Comments
In the pantheon of infamous patent trolls, MPHJ is near the top. MPHJ drew attention for their habit of mailing demand letters to anyone they thought might possibly have infringed their scan-to-email patent. This drew so much attention that, ultimately, they were sued by Vermont’s State Attorney General. MPHJ’s tactics were also one of the…
Guest Post: A Balanced Patent System to Protect Innovation
by Dan Lang • • 3 Comments
Today I’m pleased to present a guest post from Dan Lang, VP Intellectual Property at Cisco. Now more than ever we need a strong patent system which strikes the right balance so that intellectual property rights encourage innovation rather than financial gamesmanship. The need to prevent a copyist competitor from reaping all the rewards of…
IPR Successes: Realtors Association Defends Its Members Using IPR
by Josh Landau • • 2 Comments
When you buy a house, it’s nice to know where the local schools are, where the closest park is, where a nearby grocery is. So realtors commonly embed tools on their websites to show you a map of these “points of interest” in the area around a house for sale. Unsurprisingly, using technology leads to…
IPR Successes: Cleaning Up Messes
by Josh Landau • • 2 Comments
APTWater makes water treatment systems that clean up polluted groundwater and wastewater. You’ve probably never heard of APTWater. I hadn’t, nor had a friend who lives near their headquarters and works on water issues. Of course, that didn’t stop a patent troll from suing APTWater over their wastewater treatment technology. APTWater wasn’t the only one…
IPR Successes: Trolls and Tolls
by Josh Landau • • 3 Comments
September marks the five-year anniversary of inter partes review (IPR), and Patent Progress is highlighting how successful the system has been at achieving its stated goals of increasing patent quality by providing a second look at invalid patents and decreasing costs by providing an efficient alternative to litigation. Last week, I showed that, in those 5…
Inter Partes Review: Five Years, Over $2 Billion Saved
by Josh Landau • • 5 Comments
This Saturday, September 15, 2017, marks the five-year anniversary of the first filing of an inter partes review. We’ve seen nearly 7,000 post-grant reviews filed since then, a Supreme Court case dealing with IPRs, and there are a pair of IPR Supreme Court cases up this term. [Oil States] [SAS] Over the next few weeks,…
Why Pay For Delay When You Can Pay For Immunity
by Josh Landau • • 5 Comments
What do Seymour Cray’s high-performance computing research company SRC Labs and drug manufacturer Allergan have in common? Both SRC Labs and Allergan sold patents to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, then licensed them back from the tribe, in order to use tribal sovereign immunity to prevent challenges to their patents as invalid.
Now The ITC Is Banning Products Over Invalid Patents
by Josh Landau • • 5 Comments
Update: Dan Lang, who commented on this post below, has provided an expansion of the thoughts in his comment. His detailed comments can be found here. The International Trade Commission (ITC) is supposed to protect U.S. industries from unfair foreign competition. They’re supposed to consider the interests of the U.S. public. But recently, it seems…