Future Inventors of America

Kids invention competition in San Diego:

I like this one:

Flip-flops were augmented with a cardboard shield in the front to keep out dirt and sand.

But here's the full scoop:

"Inventions go as simple as a button on your clothes to more complicated than an atomic submarine," said Martin Teachworth, a physics teacher at La Jolla High School. He organized students to staff the two-day display of projects, held Wednesday and yesterday in the Scottish Rite Center in Mission Valley. About 10 percent of all entries come from La Jolla High. This was the 19th year of the event. It began after Jo Anne Schaper, then a science teacher in the San Diego Unified School District, heard a presentation by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lamenting that fewer Americans were getting patents compared with foreigners and urging efforts to stir students' interest. Schaper persuaded the district to let her start the competition.

The 104 Year Old Patent Attorney

Article here:

This weekend, The Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., will award C. Yardley Chittick, the nation's oldest patent attorney, with an honorary degree.

Apologies

Things have been a little hectic and busy in my IP litigation world lately -- I'll hopefully get back to posting more regularly sometime soon, so keep checking back!

No Crustless PB&J For You!

The Federal Circuit came through. Smuckers' method for crustless PB&J is not patentable. Article here, and in part:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday rejected an effort by J.M. Smucker Co. to patent its process for making pocket-size peanut butter and jelly pastries called "Uncrustables."

The Patent Review Process

Is it flawed?

The USPTO says no.

Who Invented Baseball?

This article from The Saratogian ponders the issue. In part:

In 1907, a special baseball commission recognized Doubleday as baseball's founder based on the testimony of a boyhood friend named Abner Graves. 'It's all part of American mythology and folklore, like Paul Bunyan and John Henry,' said Jim Gates, library director at the National Baseball of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown. 'But folklore is an important part of the American story.'

PB&J Crustless Sandwiches

The argument happened yesterday in front of the Federal Circuit. Is this patentable? Should the patent really be extended? We shall see. The USPTO said no way.

Google Google Google

Google's latest patent, a "Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data" is analyzed here at the SEO Blog. In part:

Google is in the midst of sweeping changes to the way it operates as a search engine. As a matter of fact, it isn't really a search engine in the fine sense of the word anymore. It isn't really a portal either. It is more of an institution, the ultimate private-public partnership. Calling itself a media-company, Google is now a multi-faceted information and multi-media delivery system that is accessed primarily through its well-known interface found at www.google.com .

Tivo's Patent Portfolio

I want Tivo. Desperately. But I haven't gotten it yet. I guess the main reason is that I'm afraid if I get it I will never leave my house again...

But Tivo's patent portfolio is ridiculous. See this article. In part:

The DVR pioneer has been amassing a patent portfolio to boost its licensing business and fend off new entrants to the DVR market. However, TiVo hasn't yet been able to turn its intellectual property into significant financial success.

Early last month, TiVo was granted five patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company has 76 patents, with 106 still pending.

Jurassic Park

This article states:

The US Patent Office issued Patent # 6,872,552, "A Method of Reconstituting nucleic Acid Molecules" today to Burt D. Ensley, Ph.D, Chairman of MatrixDesign, and CEO of DermaPlus, Inc. The patent covers methods for recovering and reconstituting genes from "degraded" DNA samples, and could allow scientists to reassemble everything from prehistoric, extinct animals to unsolved crime scenes.

****

By reconstituting nucleic acid molecules that have been degraded but still contain useful information scientists at MatrixDesign are able to create a template from which to multiply the genetic material. That process is repeated until the genetic material is substantially representative -- at microscopic levels -- of the species from which the degraded sample was obtained.

Is eBay Safe?

Hmm...this article indicates that things might not be going well for MercExchange in re-exam. But again, who knows what the real story is until all is said and done.

March Madness! Patenting Sports Moves

Can you patent a sports move? What about Michael Jordan's slam dunk, Pete Sampras's serve, or Tiger Woods' swing? After all, wouldn't this be a great advantage for certain athletes? If Sampras had patented his serve, where would Andy Roddick be right now? And for every little Mary or John out there who tries to duplicate what their favorite sports celebrity does, a patent infringement complaint could land on their doorstep. Or a touchdown or slam dunk in the big game could be forfeited due to patent infringement.

The quick answer is sure, why not patent a sports move? If a sports move meets the patentability requirements of utility, novelty, and nonobviousness, then why shouldn't it get patent protection?

The longer answer is maybe and is it really necessary? There is a surprising amount of debate on the issue. After all, a sports move would be a process, procedure, or method correct? If it is useful, novel, and nonobvious, then it should qualify for patent protection, correct? Then why aren't they? Or, why hasn't this caught on? It is not unknown for a sports move to gain patent protection. Dick Fosbury, the first person to go over a high jump bar backwards revolutionized the sport of high jumping, although he was laughed at at the time. Now all high jumpers use his method. It wasn't patented, but in retrospect is was a big deal at the time. Imagine if it had been patented. Where would the high jump be today? Imagine if Michael Jordan had patented his slam dunk. Conversely, Nolan Ryan did receive a patent on his pitch, describing his pitch in excrutiating detail in his patent application.

The biggest place where sports moves see problems is the nonobvious requirement. Many people have slam dunked a basketball, so why is Michael Jordan's method so special? Many people have swung a golf club and won the Masters, so why is Tiger Woods' swing so special? And again, many people have served a 120+ mile per hour serve in tennis, so why is Pete Sampras' serve so special? Each of these examples show methods that have been improved upon in some way, to make them better than what existed before. Obvious? Maybe.

The other big problem is the time related statutory bar requirements for patentability. Public use is a big one. You can't practice your "move" in front of your teammates or that's public use. That might create some problems. Athletes would have to make sure and file that patent application pretty quickly so they don't lose their chance at patentability. Is patentability really the first thing on their minds? Doubtful.

Then, of course, there are the policy reasons behind not patenting sports moves. Is athletics really advanced by receiving patent protection for specific sports moves? For example, how do you enforce a sports moves patent? How do you get lost profits or reasonable royalties from the use of a sports move? How do you prove that "but for" the use of your move, the other player would not have achieved their financial success? How can you prove with any certainty the value of the loss of a game? How do you prove irreparable harm? And who would own the patent? The athlete (an employee of the team?) or the team? And is this really the focus of sports teams?

And what about the public? The public thrives on competition in their sports teams, New York Yankees aside. If one team has a patent on a great slam dunk or passing play, then what of competition? Part of the excitement of sports is seeing teams come up with new plays and new ways of playing the game, and seeing other teams catch on to it and improve the process. Wouldn't patenting sports moves hinder that and ruin it for the public?

At any rate, I don't know the answer. I'm against patenting sports moves, but it is an interesting question to ponder.

And a series of law review articles on this topic:

Kukkonen, C A Be a Good Sport and Refrain from using my Patented Putt: Intellectual Property Protection for Sports related Movements (1998)80 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc'y 808.

Smith, J A It’s Your Move- No its Not!: The Application of Application of Patent Law to Sports Moves (2000) U. Colo. L. Rev. 1051.

Weber, L J Something in the Way She Moves: The Case foe Applying Copyright Protection to Sports Moves (2000) 23 Colum.-VLA J.L. & Arts 315.

Patent Chronicles

Patent Chronicles is a great blog focusing on software and business method patents and authored by a prior art searcher. Check it out!

Edited: Authored by a current prior art searcher! My bad.

Top Universities Receiving Patents

The USPTO released a list of the top universities receiving patents:

The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced the top 10 U.S. universities receiving the most patents during calendar year 2004. Listed below are the 10 universities receiving the most patents for inventions in 2004, along with their 2003 ranking. The University of California tops the list for the 11th consecutive year.

Full press release here.

Patent Trolls?

This article, discussing the recent conference titled "Patent Trolls and Patent Property Rights" begins:

Intel Corp's David Simon, chief patent counsel for the world's biggest computer chipmaker, recalls when he used to get only about five letters a year from people accusing Intel of patent infringement and demanding cash.

That was back in 1997. Now the Santa Clara, California-based company gets that many letters in a week, Simon said in an interview.

He even received one from the owner of a patent for a drill used to make a hacksaw blade.

The Impossibility of Patents

This article from InformationWeek begins:

Either patents are the first line of defense for the garage-based inventor, or they're tools of the ruling class intended to block innovation and maintain lucrative monopolies. Either the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is spinning wildly out of control, or it's stretching to meet the demands of a changing business landscape. Both sides of the argument have their adherents, and both are simplistic and flawed. Patents are a fact of business life, one that many companies have to come to terms with, whether it's through litigation, settlement, or something as drastic as what eBay may be facing--a change in business model. True to form, Microsoft wants to be both patent powerhouse and arbiter of change.

Among other things, the recent eBay lawsuit is discussed.

Top Patent Prosecution Firms

Article and rankings here:

PatentRatings, LLC, a leading patent research and rating service, today released its annual list of the top U.S. patent law firms for 2004. The rankings are based on PatentRatings' proprietary IPQ(TM) patent quality scoring system, which has been proven in blind studies to have statistically significant correlation to patent quality and potential value.

The Helicopter

The inventor of the helicopter's son gave a speech at Utah Valley State College on Wednesday, where he discussed the invention of the helicopter. An article about the speech is located here, and in part, the article states:

Throughout it all, he explained the role his father played.

"There's a secret to this that the birds have been trying to teach us for a million years," he quoted his father concerning the invention of helicopters. "It is far more intelligent to stop and then land than it is to land and then try to stop."

Sikorsky's father was a Russian-born scientist who started the idea of the helicopter as a student in Paris. After building his first two models in 1909, and failing to get either one off the ground, Igor Sikorsky turned his attention to fixed-wing aircraft.

*****

It wasn't until 1939, 30 years after his first attempt, Igor Sikorsky made the worlds' first successful helicopter.

"Anything, anything that one man can imagine, other men will later make true," Sikorsky said, quoting his father.

African American Inventors

I found a fairly recent book (released last April) discussing the role of black inventors, called The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity, by Patricia Carter Sluby, an ex patent examiner.

Here is an article about the book. In part, the article states:

Ms. Sluby's book grew out of her job as an examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After being asked by an administrator there to put together a list of African American inventors, she began searching back through history for names. She was surprised by what she found.

"The African American inventor has invented in every subject any other person has invented in," Ms. Sluby says. "From agriculture to games to computers, they have turned around industries, bringing us a better level of living."

Design Patents

Although the requirements for design patents differ from that for utility patents, and aren't as common in litigation, no patentability blog would be complete without at least a mention of these types of patents. I've found some articles that discuss the basics:

The USPTO FAQ About Design Patents:

In general terms, a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171). Both design and utility patents may be obtained on an article if invention resides both in its utility and ornamental appearance. While utility and design patents afford legally separate protection, the utility and ornamentality of an article are not easily separable. Articles of manufacture may possess both functional and ornamental characteristics.

Design Patents, from BitLaw:

An application for a design patent is much simpler than that for a utility patent. The specification is short and follows a predefined form. Only one claim is permitted, and it also must follow a specific form. The drawings in a design patent are similar to those in a utility patent, except that design patent drawings are created to show the ornamental features of the invention rather than its utilitarian aspects.

What Are Design Patents and When Are they Useful, from the Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society -- (note that this is a 1993 article, but it still provides some good information on design patents):

A design patent may be issued for ornamental configuration, surface decoration, or both. It must be issued for an article, however. It is also important that the design be repeatable. For example, in a case where a company had a unique method for applying a decorative coating to wallpaper to create a cloudy appearance, a design patent was refused. The basis for the refusal was that the design was not repeatable. Protecting all designs created by the process would have essentially protected the decorating method itself. Methods cannot be protected by design patents.