The Dolcera Blog

Intellectual Ventures sued Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) for patent infringement on Thursday (10/06/2011) with case title “Intellectual Ventures LLC v. Motorola Mobility Inc., 1:11-cv-00908-UNA, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington)”.

Intellectual Ventures was founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who has focused on creative ideas, rather than products based on those ideas. The firm has raised over $5 billion and holds a portfolio of more than 35,000 patents. The company has filed over 30 lawsuits against various companies in the last couple of years, earning it the reputation of a ‘patent troll,’ or a predatory patent-holding company.

Intellectual Ventures claims that Motorola Mobility has infringed on six patents related to transferring files among computers and technology used in an “entertainment device,” and claims at least 18 Motorola Mobility products infringe the patents in the complaint.

Intellectual Ventures claims that Motorola Mobility has directly infringed one or more claims of US7810144B2, US6557054B2, US6658464B2, US7409450B2, US7120462B2 and US6412953B1 by making, offering or selling in US and associated hardware and software devices and components included but not limited to, the Electrify, Photon 4G, XPRT, Titanium, Atrix 4G, Triumph, Rambler, Bali, i576, Quantico, Brutei680, Brutei686, Clutch i475, i412, i886, Milestone X, Theory and Lapdock for the Atrix without authority.

Intellectual Ventures says it has earned more than $2 billion in licensing fees, but its recent wave of litigation suggests investors are pressing for more.

Intellectual Ventures has successfully signed licensing agreements with many of the top handset manufacturers in the world, and has been in discussions with Motorola Mobility for some time.

Intellectual Ventures noted in its complaint that it first approached Motorola Mobility about licensing its inventions in January, roughly eight months before Google announced plans to buy the device maker.

All the six patents acquired by Intellectual Ventures are most recent (last two months).

Impact on Google

This lawsuit against Motorola will certainly affect its acquisition by Google for $12.5 billion. A big rationale for Google purchasing Motorola was its vast portfolio of nearly 17,000 patents to boost the Android platform and protect Google from future litigation. Although this doesn’t affect Google directly as Motorola’s acquisition is still under review, it could prolong the time it takes for the deal to be completed.

Four of the six patent violations are software patents that Intellectual Ventures alleges relate to the Android platform, which is deployed in Motorola smartphones like Atrix, Photon 4G, and Milestone. Google could face a bigger headache if this legal battle isn’t sorted out before Motorola’s acquisition.

The Tech world is buzzing in 2011. Apple, Android, and Patents seems to the most recurring themes conversations converge too. Apple is a great success story, and literally becoming the apple of everyone’s eye by becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world, consistently innovating and generating higher and higher revenues. They recently posted one of their best quarters ever.

Many see Apple’s rise as a challenger to the Open Innovation theories, and positing that in technology a closed system offers you much more strength and sustainable innovation coming up with products which have completely re-shaped markets.

Of course Apple had a visionary in the form of Steve Jobs, but technologies don’t just develop “magically” and systems don’t just fall into “amazing” perfect tandem on their own. So, we at Dolcera decided to look into what exactly are the sources of Apple’s innovation.

Apple being a very secretive company, it was hard to find a lot of inside information. But one of the best sources of “innovation” data is the legal document which one gets for innovating - a patents. We decided to look at the patents of Apple and get an idea of the true sources of Apple’s innovation.

In our opinion, the key sources of Apple’s innovation are :
1. Expenditure on research,
2. Acquisitions, and
3. Patent Deals
Apple definitely has a strong in-house research. But every time Steve Jobs wished to make one of his “visions” a reality, it often required Apple to go out and spot “sources” which can be acquired, or taken the technology from. Some prime examples are acquisition of Fingerworks which developed the Multi-Touch for iPhone, and technology licensing from LiquidMetal which gave Apple products their great aesthetics among many others.

We have tried to provide a basic story flow in the visual below.

We are also conducting web seminars to detail on the findings of our research, and how you too can do the same. For details contact us at - info@dolcera.com

 Author: Pramath Malik

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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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Broadcom plans to acquire chipmaker Netlogic Microsystem, a maker of networking equipment. At USD 50 per share, Broadcom has agreed to invest 3.7 Bn USD in the deal. This is the biggest acquisition by Broadcom hence has many scratching their heads to understand the motivations of Broadcom, and their future plans as Broadcom has agreed to pay a 57% premium over the closing price on September 9th, 69% premium over average trading price for last 20 days.

Strategically, CEO Scott McGregor stated that the deal will double Broadcom’s market in networking equipment, which takes a substantial 23% share of their sales.

Financially it seems to make sense, as Netlogic has higher gross margin (55%) than Broadcom (52%), and the deal is expected to increase EPS (earning per share) by 10 cents as claimed by Broadcom.

Netlogic is known for it’s processors which help transfer multimedia (video), and other data over the internet efficiently. With a surge in consumption of data due to smartphones, and requirements of these has been on a rise.

This in effect is thus one of the three biggest deals caused by “smartphone phenomenon” with the other two being
1. Nortel patent portfolio sale for 4.5 Bn USD
2. Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility for 12.5 Bn USD

The exorbitant price tags associated with all of these deals have shocked many. So while Nortel, and MMI had patents being the primary asset, we decided to dig into Netlogic’s patent portfolio.

Netlogic though not a giant portfolio like Nortel, has been slowly chugging about and innovating in the areas of :
1. Accessing, addressing or allocating withing memory systems or architectures
2. Associative or content-addressed stores
3. Transmission of digital information
4. Methods for processing data
5. Digital computing or data processing equipment for specific functions

These are closely related to the knowledge-based processors, multi-core embedded processors, and digital front-end processors which Netlogic will bring to Broadcom.

Some of the key patents of Netlogic too are in these areas. The 5 most cited documents of Netlogic are as following :
1. US6154384 - Ternary content addressable memory cell -  119 patent citations
2. US6237061 - Method for longest prefix matching in a content addressable memory - 117 patent citations
3. US6137707 - Method and apparatus for simultaneously performing a plurality of compare operations in content addressable memory device - 105 patent citations
4. US6317350 - Hierarchical depth cascading of content addressable memory devices - 64 patent citations
5. US6240485 - Method and apparatus for implementing a learn instruction in a depth cascaded content addressable memory system - 52 patent citations

Broadcom has 214 patent families in IPC classes G06F 12, and G11C 15. And it gains 106 patent families from Netlogic. These two are the key technology areas in which the patents of NetLogic fall.

But besides the intellectual assets, Broadcom is also gaining the employee, among whom will be prolific inventors :

Given the trend of increasing data consumption, the move makes perfect sense from Broadcom’s perspective. Wether 3.7 Bn USD is a fair price, only time will tell

Author: Pramath Malik

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“Patent Cliff” is a term used when a number of lucrative pharmaceutical patents are all on the verge of expiry at the same time. What it results in is a huge drop in revenue, due to both, decrease in sales volumes as well as a price erosion of up to 70% within months resulting from the generic intrusion. The patent cliff is going to brunt major Pharma companies big-time in the near future. IMS Health Midas estimates revenues of about $89.5 billion USD from drugs whose patents are about to expire over the period of 2010-15, the majority of them being small molecules. While, according to a report by Datamonitor, the impending patent cliff will mean that global branded pharmaceutical companies are estimated to lose $82bn in sales by the end of 2014.

The year 2011 alone will see $30 billion in sales face generic competition for the first time in the major developed markets. The world’s biggest selling drug, Lipitor by Pfizer, will go off protection in 2011. Other major drugs that would be experiencing Patent Expiry in 2011 are Plavix, used to inhibit blood clots; Leavquin, used to treat a variety of different infections; and Zyprexa, used to treat bipolar disorder. These four major drugs contributed $17 billion in the US alone. Revenues lost by patent cliffs can only be partially compensated by newly launched products, e.g. in indications such as osteoporosis, respiratory illnesses, thrombosis, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

Although, the patent cliff is a challenge that the Global Pharmaceutical Industry can’t do without facing in the coming, there are other drivers also that one has to see to see the complete picture. The much-talked about concern eases in two years. The cliff is steepest in early years, with an estimated $58.6 billion in expirations through 2010-12. The year 2012 alone is estimated to cause the industry a loss of $28.7 billion due to impending patent expiry. The cliff moderates over the following years and it estimated to reach as low as $1.3 billion in the year 2017.

While so much of furor has been created of the imminent “Patent Cliff” and about $81 billion loss that the industry is going to face due to Patent Expiry during 2011-2015, in actuality the Pharmaceutical Industry is not facing an unprecedented patent expiration, but rather a continuation of a trend that has been in place for a decade. In the five-year period from 2005-2009, this value was $90.5 billion US for sales exposed to generic competition according to the same data source. There has been no mention of the patent cliff of 2005-2010, whereas the Patent Cliff of the near future has been widely publicized, in spite of it being about 11% less than the previous period in terms of value.

The problem might be big, but the solution is simple for the major Pharmaceutical companies - fully exploit their intellectual properties and kick-start their drug pipelines with innovative new drug candidates.

References

1.       The patent cliff is set to drive global generic uptake despite tougher market conditions - Datamonitor

2.       A View from a Cliff – Frankel Group

3.       Pharmaceuticals & Biotech Industry Global Report — 2011, IMAP

Written by:

Aditi Agarwala

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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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SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dolcera Corporation, a leading information services and technology firm that helps companies quickly and effectively navigate through their entire innovation cycle to achieve successful business outcomes, today announced its new Patent Dashboard, available for the first time as a standalone platform.

Dolcera’s flagship software as a service (SaaS) Patent Dashboard is a proprietary Web 2.0-based collaborative tool that enables companies to visualize, search, and map the relevant competitive patent landscape, determine patent value, and ultimately accelerate the time to commercialize their patents. The new Patent Dashboard v1.1 provides greater flexibility and control as well as enhanced search and reporting capabilities.

Mapping the Patent Landscape

Today, patents are under greater scrutiny, take longer to be approved, and can cost several hundred thousands of dollars from application until grant stage. At the same time, patents represent new sources of revenue through commercialization or acquisition, and are also viewed as points of differentiation and competitive advantage.

The Patent Dashboard’s ease of use and flexibility, along with its collaboration capabilities, make it easy and practical for experts and non-experts to use. It may also be used alone or with other patent tools, such as those for search, intellectual asset management, or research.

Among the new features of the Dolcera Patent Dashboard Tool v1.1 are:

• Custom Taxonomies and Patent Additions by users on the fly, based on their topics of interest;
• Editable Patent Categories that can be easily moved within the Dashboard;
• Enhanced Researching and Reporting, with patent searches (even complex Boolean ones) and information filters; and
• Enhanced Collaboration via relevance rankings, referral tagging, track changes, and data security for selective user access.

The Dolcera Patent Dashboard is sold directly; a single full and functional user license starts from $49 per user per month.

About Dolcera

Dolcera is a leading information services and technology firm that helps companies quickly and effectively navigate through their entire innovation cycle to achieve successful business outcomes. The company’s mission is to deliver high-quality Intellectual Property (IP), technology, and market research services that can be deployed easily and quickly within a company or department. Dolcera’s products and services are used by Fortune 500 and Global 1000 organizations across a wide array of industries including alternative energy, biotechnology, chemicals, oil and gas, consumer goods, food and beverages, manufacturing, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, software and telecommunications. The company is privately held and based in San Mateo, Calif. and Hyderabad, India. For a demo of the Patent Dashboard, please see: YouTube Link.

For more information, please visit: www.dolcera.com

Dolcera and Dolcera Patent Dashboard are trademarks of Dolcera Corporation. All other products and services mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

Contacts

Creekside Communications
JoAnn Johnston, 650-322-6245
joann@creekside-communications.com
or
Dolcera Corporation
Manikandan B., 650-269-7952
manikandan.b@dolcera.com

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Mr. Mekete had filed the 5602905 patent in 1995 that allowed for a user to utilize commercial online services from a CPU, that had a modem and credit card reader coupled to the CPU, and where the CPU had a software installed to fulfil this transaction.

Later in August of 1998, Mr. Mekete filed for a reissue of his ‘905 patent since he believed he had severely limited his invention by not claiming the use of ‘online services perse’ from this CPU terminal.

Mr. Mekete’s patent is interesting since this ‘905 patent has 93 citations and hence is a seminal patent in that respect.
When Mr. Mekete filed for re-issuance of his patent, the BPAI rejected his assertion on grounds of obviousness. BPAI cited combination of 3 different references as a source to reject Mr. Meketes claim. Mr. Mekete appealed the BPAI decision with the CAFC that re-affirmed the BPAI decision.

Mr. Mekete’s arguments were that his invention was a commercial success since more than 50% of the internet kiosks were using the method he wished to Claim. However, the Board and the CAFC argued that when there is no-established co-relation between commercial success and the invention (in other words, the inventors commercialization efforts are not the reason for the success of the invention per-se) then the grounds to grant a patent based on utility is ‘weak’ - and also, that makes the BPAI argument to combine elements from ‘three’ different sources to reject the patent on ‘obviousness’ grounds as ’strong’.

- Lakshmikant

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*A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened.
*Cygnus Systems sued the three companies on Wednesday saying that they infringed on its patent with products such as Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome, which allow users to view preview images of documents on the computer. Mac OS X, the iPhone and Safari also infringe, the company said in court filings. Apple uses this technology in its Finder and Cover Flow Mac OS X features, the filings state.
More details

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