Patent Troll Targets eBay — But Might Tar Whitman As Well | BNET Technology Blog | BNET
Yesterday, a company called XPRT Ventures filed a patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation suit against eBay EBAY for $3.8 billion. The company claims that eBay “unfairly stole the idea and method of payment used in eBay’s PayPal and similar electronic payment systems” from two inventors who were granted six patents in the area.
via Patent Troll Targets eBay — But Might Tar Whitman As Well | BNET Technology Blog | BNET.
Federal Circuit Ruling May Rein In Patent Re-Examinations | Law.com
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A federal appeals court ruling may curb the growing trend of using re-examinations to challenge other parties’ patents.
In In Re Suitco Surface Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejection of some claims in a patent re-examination. The PTO’s interpretation of Suitco’s patent claim for “material for finishing the top surface of the floor” was “unreasonably broad,” wrote Circuit Judge Randall Rader.
Rader noted that case law requiring the PTO to give claims “their broadest reasonable construction” does not give the PTO “an unfettered license to interpret claims to embrace anything remotely related to the claimed invention,” Rader wrote. “Rather, claims should always be read in light of the specification and teachings in the underlying patent.”
Suitco will be a frequently cited case for patent lawyers helping clients fight re-examinations, said Steven Moore, an intellectual property litigation partner in the Stamford, Conn., office of New York’s Kelley Drye & Warren, who was not involved in the case.
“It’s a fight that we all have with the patent office,” Moore said. “If it’s in your specification and you’ve used it in a particular manner, that’s what should rule, not this broadest-interpretation concept.”
Seeking a re-examination of the patent is “almost a knee jerk reaction” for defendants in patent infringement cases, he added.
“With the number of re-exams being allowed by the patent office, if you’re in litigation you almost always have a re-exam,” Moore said.
via Law.com – Federal Circuit Ruling May Rein In Patent Re-Examinations.
Court Tells Microsoft to Edit Word | BusinessWeek
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world's biggest software maker, must alter its popular Word software or stop selling the product after it lost its appeal of a $200 million patent-infringement verdict won by a Canadian company.
The company, based in Redmond, Washington, was given until Jan. 11 — five months from the original order issued in August — to make the change by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. Word is part of Microsoft’s Office software, used by more than 500 million people.
The court today upheld a verdict which has since grown to $290 million won by closely held I4i LP of Toronto. The dispute is over a patented invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft has called it an “obscure functionality.”
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