In a unanimous decision earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in order for an infringement suit defending a method patent to succeed, every step in the method must be infringed by the same party or parties under its direct control. The case, Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., involved a situation […]
The prospects for patent law reform being passed by the current Congress disappeared last week when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) pulled his bill after several contentious months of no consensus. The Senate’s Judiciary Committee Chairman had been fighting to get the Senate to adopt patent reform in the wake of the House of Representatives’ overwhelming […]
In an appeal from a bankruptcy ruling (Taylor v. Taylor Made Plastics Inc., 2014-1212, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Washington), the appellate court ruled that the omission of an ex-wife who had a 60% interest in the patent in question voided the attempt by the original patent owner to sue for infringement. […]
If someone in possession of another’s trade secrets files a patent application including those secrets, the application may be considered a sufficient notice of possible breach for the purpose of statutes of limitations. That appears to be the result of a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California in […]
Rumors of the death of innovation have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), recently reported that their annual international patent applications surpassed the 200,000 mark for the first time ever. Of the 205,300 applications, 56% were from the United States, while 29% were from China, which saw a significant jump in […]