Post #6: U.S. Patent Suit King

The article, Texas' Eastern District was U.S. patent suit king in 2012, illustrated that Texas’ Eastern District dealt with the most patent suits last year. Second place was the District of Delaware. However, the number of defendants dropped by around 16.5%. The main reason was that the plaintiffs can join in one suit, resulting in more separate law suits filed per plaintiff, which leads to more cases. This leaves out a lot of marginal law suits against the defendants. I suppose you can argue this turnout could be good or bad. The good side is that public resources can be saved for more severe cases. The bad side is that smaller cases, where patent infringement is genuinely occurring, are less likely to rule in favor of the plaintiff. I am actually surprised that the Northern District of California has the least patent suits. I thought there would be more suits here because of Silicon Valley’s many startups.

For more information on the article, please visit: http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2013/02/eastern-district-was-us-patent-suit.html 

Post #5: Wi-Fi Patent Troll vs. the Wi-Fi Manufacturers & End-Users

Innovatio was created by Noel Whitley, who was the former IP lawyer of Broadcom. In the article, Wi-Fi patent troll hit with racketeering suit emerges unscathed, Innovatio started suing hotels and coffee shops for Wi-Fi patent infringement. Their strategy is to sue the end-users instead of the manufacturers of Wi-Fi routers, hubs, adapters, etc. On the other hand, the manufacturers, Cisco, Motorola, and Netgear teamed up to file a RICO claim against Innovatio. However, Judge James Holderman threw out the RICO claims, because Innovatio was not engaged in “sham litigation”, and the company is protected by the First Amendment. In addition, RICO claims are generally against crime families. Fortunately, Holderman will allow the manufacturers to file contract claims against innovation. However, the hotels that were sued by Innovatio will still have to pay up if the hearing next week does not go towards their favor.

Personally, I wish the court will not let Innovatio “troll” these small businesses. Otherwise, Innovatio’s next step could be target private home users, and that means we would be the next target for the patent troll.

                                                       

For more information on the article, please visit: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/wi-fi-patent-troll-hit-with-novel-anti-racketeering-charges-emerges-unscathed/

Post #4: Intellectual Property War

Due to the rapid change in the wireless mobile devices, and the fast growth of technology, companies are constantly caught themselves in the intellectual property war. I am surprised that the companies are still capable of producing new products to the public even though they are constantly fending off litigation. It must be difficult to encourage innovation in the company while dealing with the possibility of “stealing” others’ ideas at the same time. This makes me wonder what will happen when two parties copyrighted the same idea at the same time, or filed patents that generate the same feature for the mobile devices, but written in different computer languages.

Post #3: Marble Security Patent

The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Marble Security patent No. 8,356,105 entitled “Enterprise Device Policy Management”. The patent ensures a secure pathway that only allows the enterprise’s administrators to unlock the mobile devices that were storing data through a third party cloud service, even if the service was jeopardized. The patent was filed in 2009, and it was issued on January 13, 2013. I wonder if during these five years period, other companies have come up with the same method of this security system. Will those companies be sued for infringement?  

For more information on the article, please visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2013-02-06/aEq4kEU9ptOo.html