The Dolcera Blog

Google Inc., the Internet giant, has signed a $12.5 billion agreement to acquire Motorola Mobility, the legendary mobile phone and set-top box manufacturer. As per the agreement, Google will pay $40 per share in cash, which was a 63% premium to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on August 12, 2011.

But what is impressive about the deal is the purpose behind it. After all, Google generates its revenue from searches i.e. it auctions off search words to clients that want to advertise alongside the responses. On the other hand, Motorola Mobility manufactures handsets and set-top boxes that carry TV channels to homes. Interestingly, Motorola Mobility is the No.2 provider of set-top boxes after Cisco.

So why an Internet mogul be interested in acquiring a hardware company?

The key to the story is Android, Google’s OS for mobile devices. At present, Android has surpassed Apple and Nokia smart phones and already has signed deals with 39 handset manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics, Sony Ericsson, etc. As we can see from this, Google is not just an Internet-based company but is part of the mobile business in full swing. Although Google offers the Android OS for free to handset manufacturers, it is a cynosure when it comes to patent infringement lawsuits. Companies from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and Apple have filed multiple lawsuits against Android.

As a result, in a bid to strengthen its patent portfolio, Google has acquired Motorola’s 17,000 patents (Click here for information on Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio). The acquisition not only eliminates Motorola from being a potential threat in terms of filing a lawsuit but also arms Google so that it can defend itself in lawsuits as well as launch suits of its own.

In a latest turn of events, just last week HTC, the Chinese handset manufacturer, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. As per the appeal, HTC stated that Apple was infringing nine US patents related to wireless communications and mobile phone displays. The interesting bit is that Google had assigned those patents to HTC and some of those patents it had acquired from Motorola Mobility.

The ownership pathway for the nine patents is shown below.

The first five patents were used to strengthen HTC’s Delaware suit against Apply while the other four have been used for a new lawsuit against apple.

Clearly, Google is out to avenge the lawsuits against its adopted child Android and defend itself in any way.

In addition, the other side of the story is the set-top box business, the acquisition of which will facilitate Google becoming a significant supplier of Internet-borne TV content on Android-equipped mobile devices and also generate revenues from TV advertising, which is worth $70 billion.

In all, Google’s deal with Motorola Mobility is not just a defensive action against infringement lawsuits but also a smart move in terms of boosting its ad revenues from Internet-borne TV content.

Author: Charanjeet Singh

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Microsoft was sued in 2007 by i4i, a company from Canada, or infringing on its patent for an editing tool it co-opted for MS Word. The technology gave Word 2003 and Word 2007 users an improved way to edit XML. In the initial hearings the lower courts ruled Microsoft willfully infringed on the Canadian company i4i’s patent.

Microsoft was ordered to pay i4i damages of $290 million. Also through an injunction it was prevented selling versions of Word containing i4i’s technology.

The case in point is the standard of proof that must be met by the company that challenges the validity of a patent in court. According to the law, the patents which are issued by the Patent Office solely on the basis of supporting information submitted by the patent applicant should be presumed valid. Since the 1980s, however, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees patent appeals, has required a challenge to a patent’s validity be proved by a heightened standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” which was an argument used by i4i and as opposed to the lower “preponderance of evidence” standard routinely applied in civil lawsuits which was used by Microsoft. The issue is far more than a technicality, as it can have far-ranging effects on innovation and technology businesses.

In the court, Microsoft argued that the patent held by i4i is invalid because the invention covered by the patent was already on sale by i4i more than a year before the patent application was even filed. Under the current patent law, a patent cannot be issued in such a situation.

However, in the case of i4i, the USPTO never considered the evidence of this sale in the first place. In this case, i4i itself discarded the evidence and hence itwasn’t available. The lawyers of i4i argued to the jury that since such evidence wasn’t available, Microsoft could not prove its invalidity case under the heightened “clear and convincing” standard. The jury agreed to this argument and an appeal was affirmed by the Federal Circuit.

Microsoft which was backed in this case by many giants like Apple, Facebook, Cisco etc. argues that creativity and innovation should be promoted and that simply patent laws should not govern such cases. They also argued for a change in the law which is being followed by the congress.

Smaller tech companies and venture capital firms, meantime, were rooting for i41. Lawyers for i4i and the Obama administration argued, however, that there’s little point in granting patents to inventors if corporations can simply infringe upon them with impunity.

Loudon Owen, i4i’s chairman said, “The bottom line is whether there’s a robust patent system, and whether or not if you get a patent, it means something. If the law goes the way Microsoft wants it to, it will mean it will be very easy to invalidate patents, which will make it hard to justify why one seeks a patent in the first place.”

In this tussle between a small firm and a giant of the IT industry, the ruling has been in the favor of i4i. Read the supreme court ruling here. This will not only impact Microsoft, but also smart-phone manufacturers and technology developers. With very few patent cases coming through to the supreme court, this ruling would also act as a reference for such legal cases. The decision of the jury increases the confidence of small firms in defining their progressions based on innovation and intellectual property assets.

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Oracle sued Google on its famous operating system ‘Android’. Oracle says Google infringed patents on its Java software platform while developing Android and also violated the copyrights owned for Java platform (including without limitation code, specifications, documentation and other materials) by Oracle.

The following is a brief background on this news and a summary along with patent numbers to digest.

Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems on January 27, 2010. Sun is now Oracle America, a subsidiary of Oracle. Oracle acquired the Java technology from Sun. Android competes with Java as “an operating system software platform for cellular telephones and other mobile devices” and that the Android stack employs Java apps running on a Java-based object oriented application framework and core libraries running on a “Dalvik” virtual machine that features just in time (JIT) compilation.
Android (including without limitation of the Dalvik virtual machine and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of the following US patents.
US6125447A-Protection domains to provide security in a computer system
US6192476B1-Controlling access to a resource
US6192476B1-Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files
US7426720B1-System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master run-time system process
USRE38104E1-Method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code
US6910205B2-Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions
US6061520A-Method and system for performing static initialization

Source: Oracle Google Complaint

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Shall we say the era of complete information disclosure has just begun? and hence the importance of full text patent searching. This blog post is subsequent to our recent post where we cited a classic patent suit where the ‘test of enablement’ was exercised.
Under section US112, the test of enablement requires the claims to be backed by full disclosure of the preferred embodiment in the specification. This tactic has been used by lawyers extensively to invalidate patents in the courts of law.
Hence, as a commercial information service provider the provision of the full text data becomes extremely important to search and analyze since the import of the inventive step may not be fully available from the claims.
In other words, there is potent challenge to perform a thorough patent search given the commercial patent database providers providing just the thumb nail view of the first page. My random informal meetings with Dolcera’s analysts go on to concur on one simple fact that in order to understand the utility of an invention, it is highly advised that a patent search is done on the full specifications of the patent.  They believe that the title, abstract and claims typically make one to understand the novelty and non obviousness while most patents have their utility residing in the full specification.
Further, it is only prudent to have a thorough patent search involving full specifications of the patents where the purpose of patent search is for litigations involving invalidation / infringement and also while searching the prior art. Time and again, it has become a thumb rule for a patent searcher to understand that the patents are often written with a purpose to obscure the patented invention.  We believe that the above reiterates the need to search on the full text and hence the key for future patent searches.
Alternately, the patent dashboard’s new version allows searching the full text of the patent even with simple boolean operators. The search snippets provided beside the pdf documents of patents is where the searched keyword is highlighted on the full text.

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Test of enablement - “Any analysis of whether a particular claim is supported by the disclosure in an application requires a determination of whether that disclosure, when filed, contained sufficient information regarding the subject matter of the claims as to enable one skilled in the pertinent art to make and use the claimed invention.”  Source
I have always considered the CAFC judgments as one of the best repository to learn intellectual property. I happened to come across a very interesting case.
Janssen Enablement Alzheimers (pdf) - This case (relating to US Patent No. 4,663,318) goes to prove the necessity of writing very detailed specifications backed with strong experimental data for claims to be upheld in the court of law. In this case, Janssen claimed use of a certain drug ‘galanthamine’ for treating Alzheimers. At the time of submitting the patent for review, the inventor who later on licensed the granted patent to Jansen, did not have sufficient experimental data proving direct probable linkage to use of galanthamine for Alzheimers treatment. USPTO examiner also cited this point, yet issued the patent (this part is weird). Eventually, the claims of this patent were held invalid due to an ‘enablement’ clause - in simple terms, enablement here means the specification did not directly support the claims of the inventor.
The discussions were also adverting to the utility requirement which prevents mere ideas from being patented. As noted in Genentech, Inc. v. Novo Nordisk A/S, 108 F.3d 1361, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 1997), “[p]atent protection is granted in return for an enabling disclosure of an invention, not for vague intimations of general ideas that may or may not be workable.
Being an inventor myself, this case intrigues me that if we find a novel use for a patented compound, we can get a patent for it. From a business perspective, I feel that it would be prudent that pharmaceutical firms keep track of formulation patents/method of use patents filed by competitors over its own molecule portfolio. This is on the assumption that the competitors are trying to find novel uses of a compound patented by the inventing pharmaceutical firm. If successful, the competition would need to pay royalties to the patent holder of the novel compound (assuming the patent holder is willing to license it on fair terms).
For the patent searching fraternity, the hypothesis of determining patent quality based on disclosed experimental data is quite sound. However, it becomes difficult to retrieve if the experimental data paragraphs are added during the later stages of patent prosecution. The US PAIR information workaround to access the office actions will be of little help especially if the number of patents to be examined is large.

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Case background    Avandia is the popular drug name marketed by GSK had strong sales of 2.3 billion USD in 2007 till reports of its cardiovascular risks came out in the market place (forcing lots of physicians to change prescriptions to their patients, though the data was proclaimed as inconclusive by FDA).
    Avandia finds strong applications for glycemic control or in others words for diabetes type II treatment. Its active ingredient is a compound called Rosiglitazone, and a variant of this chemical compound was patented by GSK with expiry in 2005  (US5741803).

GSK Indian strategy

—————————–

Per change in the Indian patent act in 2005, GSK filed a patent for the same active ingredient as disclosed in US 5002953 as an Indian patent 00295/DELNP/2003 trying to claim the ethanesulfonate salt of the active ingredient. This patent was subsequently rejected by the India Patent office citing no evidence of the complex showing substantially different clinical efficacy than the available pharmaceutical version of Rosiglitazone.

However, it is interesting to note that GSK has not given up. It has at least three more pending application before the IPO for the same compound Rosiglitazone and we will have to see how the IPO deals with that. These applications are:- 
    a) IN3546/DELNP/2004 in which GSK has tried to patent a cyclodextrin complex of rosiglitazone and

    b) IN4030/DELNP/2005 in which GSK has tried to patent the process for manufacture of a rosiglitazone polymorph (the maleic ester form as patented in US7358366)
    c) IN6569/DELNP/2007 in which GSK has tried to patent a novel method of delivering rosiglitazone (enmeshed in nanofibres)

To counter this threat, Cadila and Dr. Reddys have also filed process patents for manufacture of amorphous Rosiglitazone maleate.

Only time will tell, who will win the Rosiglitazone turf war in India.

Source:

FDA Orange book - http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/docs/patexclnew.cfm?Appl_No=021071&Product_No=002&table1=OB_Rx

Indian Patent office

US Patent Office

Economic times

—

Lakshmikant Goenka

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Claims 1,4,15 & 18-21 of US Patent Application No. 10/346,493(”Appln. 493″) filed by “Gleave”(Martin Gleave and Maxim Signaevsky)  were rejected by the examiner as anticipated or obvious under 35 U.S.C 102/103. Gleave appealed against the decision but the Federal circit affirmed the rejection.

Appln. 493(titled “Bispecific Antisense Oligonucleotides that inhibit  IGFBP-2 and IGFBP-5 and Methods of Using the same”) claims antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, pharmaceutical compositions containing them and method of treating cancer by using them.

The claims rejected by the examiner included Composition claims consisting of these antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, which were claimed to be complementary to a portion of a gene encoding human IGFBP-2/ IGFBP-5, “wherein the oligodeoxynucleotide is of sufficient length to act as an antisense inhibitor of human IGFBP-2 and human IGFBP-5″.

The examiner rejected the present claims over anticipation by prior art PCT Publication of Wraight et al. (WO 00/78341).This publication disclosed every fifteen-base long sense oligodeoxynucleotide in the IGFBP-2 gene and further also disclosed that these oligodeoxynucleotides may be bispecific(capable of acting as a inhibitor of IGFBP such as IGFBP-2 and/or IGFBP-3).

For a reference/document to be anticipatory, the following requirements should be satisfied:

1.     The reference should disclose each and every element of the claimed invention, explicitly or inherently. Those elements must be combined or arranged in the same way as in the claim.

2.     The reference must enable “one of ordinary skill in the art to make the invention without undue experimentation”.

Gleave claims that Wraight does not describe any particular individual antisense species, there are no particular selections and no understanding of what targets would be useful. Thus Gleave primarily argues that although a large and exhaustive list was disclosed to the public, no basis was provided for selecting some individual members over the others. In effect, he argues that what is actually disclosed is not more than a generic concept underlying the list.

However, the court held that Gleave’s argument failed for two reasons. The list disclosed in Wraight’s  application anticipates Gleave’s claims. Secondly, Gleave’s argument that Wraight’s application is a generic concept stating that one could make antisense constructs that target IGBFP, was also nullified as court held that a person of ordinary skill in the art having the IGFBP sequence is capable of envisioning how to make antisense sequences. Thus, Gleave does not hold right to patentability over Wraight.

In conclusion, the discovery of a new property/use of known composition even when the use/property are non-obvious over prior art cannot impart patentability to claims of the known composition. If a new use is  discovered, patentability can only be claimed for that method of use.

-Priyanka Goyal

Knowledge Scientist

Source

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http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/09-1001.pdf

It is our contention that in the globalized world of manufacturing, where most of the manufacturing activity happens outside the developed world, having legally valid patents in the manufacturing hubs of China, Mexico or India can pay off handsomely. A legal right in those countries can ease gathering of evidence as can be seen in the case below where video shots of manufacturing process used in Mexico is used as admissible evidence.

This case pertains to an infringement claim won by Gemtron Corp. against Saint Gobain for refrigerator shelf manufacturing method and design.

Background:
Saint Gobain manufactures refrigerator components in Mexico and sells them in the United Sates. Gemtron Corp. has a patent for manufacture of refrigerator shelves where by a glass portion of the shelf is held to a polymeric base using ‘fingers’ and not ‘adhesive’ ( a traditional method) filed in both USA and Mexico.

Gemtron Corp. alleged that Saint Gobain was infringing on its patents since it was using a similar method for manufacturing its shelves - in which a glass portion is held to its polymeric base using ‘fingers’. Saint Gobain was countering Gemtron Corp. allegation saying that the claim 23 of the ‘673 Gemtron patent was only a ‘process’ patent and hence the end result from the process (the end design or the structural component) was not claimed. The CAFC rejected Saint Gobain’s plea on the grounds that the result of a claimed process which lead to a unique structural change were also by default patentable subject matter.

In order to refute Saint Gobain’s claims that its manufacturing process was significantly different than claimed in the patent, Gemtron Corp. showed videos of the manufacturing process used at Saint Gobain’s manufacturing site in Mexico. The video clearly proved similarity in the process used at Saint Gobain manufacturing site.

In the overall case argument, while the moot point was the ’structural component’ or the design of the shelf, it can be argued that the video showing Saint Gobain’s manufacturing process was also helpful in winning a non-technical jury’s verdict to prove wilful infringement at the district court level.

- Lakshmikant Goenka

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http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/07-1583.pdf

In this classic case of Friskit v/s Real networks, Friskit alleged Real networks media players had infringed its patents that claimed as its inventive the following (a) a media player with integrated search and playback features and (b) wher the entire control of the media player rest with the server side with no software (OS) from the client side assisting in the operation of the media player.

Real cited the following product and website evidence to counter Friskit. It cited the features available at www.iuma.com and Winamp to counter Friskit’s claims. In both cases of iuma.com and Winamp offered a media player interface with a search box. When a search was conducted, a new mini-browser window would pop up that would get populated with the search results. These search results could be dragged and dropped into the media player interface for immediate play-back with minimal intervention from the client side. Friskit’s only difference was the same interface (with no special mini-browser) window poping up providing this functionality.

The court cited KSR v/s Teleflex and found Friskit’s claims as obvious stating that as per the KSR case ‘predictable use of known elements according to their cited function’ results in obviousness.

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http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1259.pdf

In an interesting case, bankrupt GM won a patent suit for its popular OnStar navigation system.
The OnStar navigation system acts like a warning system for manouever points that are going to come up within a certain pre-specified distance from the car. The calculations regarding the relative position of the car from the manouever point is done remotely, and the only information displayed in the device in the car is the ‘distance value’ to the manouever point.

VIP had filed a patent in which the co-ordinate of the manouever point is downloaded and compared with the car co-ordinates (obtained using GPS systems) on the mobile system. They do not represent the distance between the manouever point and the car co-ordinates as scalar values, but simply represent them on a scale ‘relative to each other’.

On this semantic difference VIP lost its case against GM in both the district court and the Federal Appeals court. The CAFC and district courts did not find any reference of possibility to display scalar values on the mobile device either in the Patent specification or at anytime during the patent prosecution history.

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