The page can be found on the right side-bar.

IHA

The Pope doesn’t believe in the vigorous protection of intellectual property rights:

Obviously he is unaware of how bad it would be for the world (rich and poor alike), if companies kept their inventions secret rather than publishing them in patents.  Yet another example of the Pope living in a vacuum.

Jack Welch…not a nice guy when he worked for GE, not a nice guy now…as reported by the ABA.

There are other words I would use to describe him, but this is a family blog. This attitude is also one of the reasons I don’t work at GE anymore.

IHA

CAFC oral arguments for selected cases:

http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/searchscript.asp .

IP ThinkTank has podcasts of international IP issues:

 http://duncanbucknell.com/

IHA

According to the Washington Post, Activision and Linden Labs the makers of virtual worlds World of Warcraft and Second Life are being sued by Worlds.com for alleged infringement of a patent related large scale multiuser technology.  Read the full story here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031103650.html

IHA

One issue with this case is that Histogen is not marketing a product.  However, a patent gives the holder the right to prevent others from making, using or selling the patented invention.  Here, SkinMedica can argue that Histogen is making or using, so it looks like the suit is proper.  But the wierd part is that there will be virtually no damages.  SkinMedica has not lost any sales.  They are going to spend a lot of money and then get an injunction against a company that is no longer in business.  That’s a wise use of shareholder capital (hint: sarcasm).

IHA

Robert Bosche & Healthways announce a joint licensing program for remote health monitoring (CNN Money.com)

Pfizer receives favorable rulin from USPTO in reissue patent.  Patent to expire in 2011 with term extension intact (Associated Press)

Not exactly the most thrilling of topics to discuss.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow will have something juicy

Also, the link to IP Colloquium in Monday’s post has now been fixed.

IHA

I haven’t listened to it yet, but this month’s episode is an interview with Judge Mitchel Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (The appeals court for patent matters).

Did I mention this is free????

IHA

The big news in the blogosphere is that Apple has filed a patent application (US 20090000010) for gloves that can be used with the iPhone, or as Ars Technica called it the “iGlove”.  The USPTO has not yet initiated a substantive examination of the application.

On problem with touch screen devices is that you, well, need to touch the screen with a finger.  Usually, touch screens operate based on a change in resistance, or other electrical change son the surface of the screen.  This is caused by the conductivity of the users skin.  Unfortunately, the phone will not measure contact from a glove.

The iGlove has a specially designed fingertip that allows for electrical contact through the fabric.  I may not like Steve Jobs, but at least he keeps his company innovative and focused on problems that solve customers needs.

IHA

ps. For those that are curious, the first patent application to be published in 2009 is entitled “Welding Helmet with Protection Cover for Cartridge“

In the mean time, Japan Today reported a new analysis tool for researching large volumes of patent data.  The tool, called XLUS (pronounced “Kai-lus”), is produced by a company called So-Ti, Inc and is based in Japan.

XLUS is similar to another product I’ve used called Themescape Maps (now owned by Thomson Reuters).  XLUS does a linguistic analysis of large groups of documents and provides a graphical representation similar to this:

While this looks like a mess, what happens is that like patents are grouped together radially, and those closer to the center are more closely related to your search terms.  This tool could be used many ways, one technique that I’ve used on similar tools is to identify a patent closely related to my topic.  Then run a broad search to encompass as many related documents as possible.  Then, using a tool like XLUS, you can see where your previously identified patent lies.  At least in theory, the patents that lie around it on the map should also be similar.

The major difference between XLUS and Themescape is that Themescape creates a topographical map representation while XLUS is a 2-D radar plot.  The topo-map looks cool for clients, but it is also computationally intensive and sometimes the number crunching can take a long time (caveat, I haven’t used Themescape on a production basis in many years and they may have improved on this).  In any case, competition is good, and XLUS looks to be a good addition to the marketplace.

IHA