You hear a lot about patent litigation in district courts. And, over the past several years, the new inter partes review procedure has seen a lot of attention (including last week’s renewed effort to try to kill off the single most effective tool we have for invalidating bad patents.) You don’t hear that much about…
Tag Archive for Patent Assertion Entity (PAE)
Should Abstract Ideas Be Unpatentable? The Answer Is A Snap
by Josh Landau • • 2 Comments
Tuesday, Kaldren LLC sued Snap. (According to RPX, Kaldren is affiliated with IP Edge, a notorious patent troll.) Kaldren sued over a set of expired patents on such wonderful ideas as: Printing out a machine readable symbol; Reading a machine readable symbol; Using an address in a machine readable symbol to retrieve information from that…
ContentGuard: Arguendo
by Josh Landau • • 1 Comment
Today, we watched as a man stood in front of a panel and explained how the other side had behaved improperly and how the decisions they made were incorrect and contrary to applicable legal standards. I’m speaking, of course, of the ContentGuard oral arguments. What did you think I was talking about? Oral Argument at the…
ContentGuard: Validity and Privilege
by Josh Landau • • 0 Comments
Monday I summarized the history of the ContentGuard cases, and yesterday I described the process of claim interpretation. Today, we’ll turn to an issue that we’ve focused on recently, patent validity. ContentGuard convinced the jury that the ContentGuard patents were valid—can they convince the Federal Circuit? Abstract Ideas We’ve written a lot about patents on…
ContentGuard: Defining A Patent Case
by Josh Landau • • 1 Comment
Yesterday, I went through the history of the ContentGuard v. Apple and ContentGuard v. Google cases. I talked briefly about the Markman process; today, I’d like to go into more detail on what Markman is, how it works, how Markman affected the ContentGuard cases, and why it’s such an important issue in patent litigation in…
Previewing ContentGuard v. Apple and Google at the Federal Circuit
by Josh Landau • • 2 Comments
This Thursday, June 8, the Federal Circuit will hold oral argument in ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. v. Apple, Inc. and in ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. v Google, Inc. (The Google case also includes a number of major Android phone manufacturers, such as Samsung, HTC, and Motorola.) Both cases have roughly similar histories, and both appeals deal with…
Uniloc-ing Defendants Into The Eastern District of Texas
by Josh Landau • • 1 Comment
Yesterday, Uniloc sued Google in the Eastern District of Texas. Uniloc is a Luxembourg based company, not a Texas company.1 Google? Also not a Texas company. So, if neither of the companies involved are Texan, why are we still in the Eastern District of Texas? History Uniloc filed a set of lawsuits against Google based…
Blackbird Gets Wings Clipped In Lighting Litigation
by Josh Landau • • 0 Comments
Last week I wrote about Blackbird Technologies, a relatively new patent troll with some ethical and practical issues. As I found out via Patently-O, it turns out that I’m not the only one who was wondering how they were going to keep confidential information away from their lawyers. In Blackbird Tech. v. Service Lighting et…
The Patent Troll’s New Clothes
by Josh Landau • • 3 Comments
You might have been reading a bit about Blackbird Technologies lately. Not the Blackbird Raytheon bought in 2014 (cybersecurity) or the Blackbird Etsy bought in 2016 (AI algorithms). (It’s a popular name, apparently.) This one’s a troll. Tailoring a Patent Troll Blackbird was formed in 2014 by attorneys who worked for two major law firms.…
Myths and the STRONG Act
by Matt Levy • • 7 Comments
We’re hearing a lot of claims about the STRONG Act as an “alternative” to patent litigation reform. The campaign supporting the bill has been misleading at best. There are two pervasive myths that the STRONG Act’s supporters keep repeating that I want to address in this post. Myth 1: Inter partes reviews are unfair to patent…