29 January

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SMCA Set To Export U.S. Copyright Law to North American Neighbors

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The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was passed by the U.S. Senate on January 16, 2020 and will be signed by President Trump today. The treaty, which renegotiates and cancels the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is expected to dramatically affect many areas of law of its three member states. With respect to copyright law, the USMCA largely exports copyright standards from the United States. Once it is implemented, content creators and owners, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and copyright professionals can expect the laws of Mexico and Canada to more closely resemble those of the United States with respect to...

28 January

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PTAB Holds Packet Filtering Claims Unpatentable in Cisco/Centripetal Networks IPR

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“[A] person of ordinary skill would have understood that in both the ‘713 patent and Sourcefire, the relevant data is located in the first packet of the message . . . [and] would have been sufficiently motivated by Sourcefire to design intrusion rules with the ssl_version keyword.” On January 23, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in IPR2018-01437 holding all claims (1-20) of U.S. Patent No. 9,160,713 B2 (the ‘713 patent) unpatentable. The ‘713 patent, owned by Centripetal Networks, Inc. (CN), was challenged in an inter partes review (IPR) by Cisco System, Inc. (Cisco). Packet Filtering Rules The ‘713 patent relates to filtering network data transfers....

28 January

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EPO Provides Reasoning for Rejecting Patent Applications Citing AI as Inventor | COFFYLAW, LLC

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Earlier this month, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) each rejected two patent applications that designated an artificial intelligence named DABUS as the inventor. While the UKIPO published a decision setting out its reasoning, the EPO simply stated at the time that the applications did “not meet the requirement of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that an inventor designated in the application has to be a human being, not a machine.” Now, the EPO has released more detail about the grounds for its decision. The applications at issue are for a “food container” (number EP3564144/ EP 18 275 163 )...

21 January

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Episode 15: Kevin Jakel of Unified Patents (Part 2)

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This episode is the second and final part of our interview with Kevin Jakel, the founder and CEO of Unified Patents. On this episode, we continue the conversation with Kevin about how Unified Patents operates, discuss Unified Patents’ new program for targeting Standard Essential Patents (SEPs), debate whether the patent troll narrative has been overblown, talk about the patent quality problem, and delve into some other patent policy issues related to IPRs and the PTAB. We also find out what Kevin has in common with George Costanza! ...

21 January

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Trade Secrets Review: Key 2019 Decisions and Trends (Part I)

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“The Court in CMI Roadbuilding, Inc. explained: “At the point [plaintiff] was on notice there was a possible problem, it had a duty to investigate, regardless of its exact knowledge.” In other words, the statute of limitation begins to run under the Defend Trade Secrets Act as soon as a party is on notice that its trade secrets are being misused.” In general, a trade secret is any information used in business if the owner has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret, and the information derives independent economic value, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through...

20 January

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This Week in Washington IP: Selecting the Next Register of Copyrights, 5G Workforce Concerns and Smart City Models for U.S. Communities

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This week in Washington, D.C., Congress is relatively quiet while the House of Representatives enters a district work period. In the Senate, the Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to explore ways to improve the workforce for the 5G industry to promote the build-out of necessary networking infrastructure in this country. The Library of Congress will host a pair of listening sessions to discuss the selection process for the next Register of Copyrights with members of the public. Elsewhere, the Center for Strategic and International Studies will host a series of events on technology issues later in the week, including...

20 January

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Responding to Criticism of ‘State Pharmaceutical Importation Programs Threaten Patients and Innovation

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A recent article by Dr. Kristina M. L. Acri née Lybecker highlighted her research about the fiscal workability of state pharmaceutical importation programs from two aspects: Cost of counterfeit testing of products that have been handled by unregulated entities Because these medicines will be handled by unregulated entities, they need to be subjected to finished product testing using statistical sampling to ensure they’re genuine. The counterfeit pharmaceutical business is well established and has even involved licensed Canadian pharmacies and wholesalers, so no entity in Canada can be trusted, especially since we’ve previously had difficulties extraditing them for trial. Cost of adverse medical events due to...

20 January

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Reflections on Denial of Cert in Athena Diagnostics

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“If the Supreme Court does not function as intended in the Constitution, and has in fact transformed the structure of our government from three co-equal branches of government to two co-equal branches governed by the Supreme Court, what do we do?” I was at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference when I learned a week ago that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) had denied Athena Diagnostic’s Petition for Certiorari. I was shocked. We feel the same when as a child we discover there is no Santa Claus—a trusted institution is not as represented. SCOTUS ignored a recommendation from the U.S....

19 January

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Google v. Oracle: An Expansive Fair Use Defense Deters Investment In Original Content

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Google v. Oracle America, a case pending before the United States Supreme Court, is a seemingly never-ending battle, since 2010, between two Silicon Valley behemoths. But now that battle may finally be nearing its conclusion. On January 7, the first of the amicus briefs were filed, signaling that both sides are marshaling their arguments for one final push toward the finish line. The dispute centers on Oracle’s allegation and multibillion-dollar damage claim that Google’s unauthorized use of Oracle’s Java API (“Application Programming Interface”) package in its Android operating system infringed Oracle’s copyrights under the statute – 17 U.S.C. 107(1). As a result, Oracle has sued Google...

18 January

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How to Help Data Scientists Overcome Their Patent Doubts

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When discussing patentable inventions with data scientists, I often hear them dismiss their inventions under arguments such as these: “We’re using the same tools as everyone else,” “Augmenting data for the training set is well known,” “A similar thing has been done for car-bumper design” (said by the designer of a churro-making machine), “Configuring the neural-network hyperparameters is trivial,” and worst of all, “It’s obvious.” Data scientists often believe that their accomplishments are not patentable, but in-depth exploration of their work often uncovers patentable ideas. I am referring to data scientists that use machine-learning (ML) tools to uncover intrinsic relationships within...