On September 16, 2011, President Obama signed the America Invents Act (AIA) in to law. The major thrust behind the Act was to harmonize U.S. patent law with that of other countries, such as Japan and those in the European Union. Prior to the AIA, the last major overall to the patent system occurred in [...]
Decided: January 31, 2011 The CAFC upheld the district court’s determination on summary judgment that three of Tokai’s patents were invalid as obvious. The patents-in-suit relate to safety and triggering mechanisms in utility lighters. The panel majority found that various combinations of cigarette lighter prior art rendered the asserted claims obvious. In particular, one of [...]
Decided: 1/20/2011 Summary: CAFC vacated and remanded prior courts ruling of non-infringement concerning the “spring metal adaptor’ claimed under Patent No. 5,266,050, held by Arlington. The court held that the prior court misconstrued the “spring metal adaptor” and “spring steel adapter” terms by importing a “split” limitation from the specifications into the claims. Full Opinion
The Social Network: an IP Litigator’s Review of the Movie about Facebook By David M. Lilenfeld of Lilenfeld PC “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.” So says Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in defending himself against claims that he stole the concept for Facebook from Harvard classmates.
*Originally Published in Spring/Summer 2010 IP Section Newsletter by Chad Graves “Cloud computing” is a buzz phrase that increasingly dominates the conversation in IT strategic planning. Technology evolves at a lightening pace and many business decision-makers (who may not have fully acclimated to other recent trends) are justifiably dubious about the potential benefits and pitfalls of yet another tech paradigm shift. There may be [...]
The Federal Circuit rejection of StateStreet’s 10-year old test for evaluating subject matter eligibility in Bilski effectively voided the USPTO’s established procedures for evaluating subject matter eligibility and placed the validity of claims directed to business methods, biotechnology, and software in question.
