A few points to help put this in context: 1. Technically, the USPTO hasn't yet "invalidated" the patent; it issued a first "Office action" in which it stated that all of the patents claims were unpatentable in view of varying combinations of prior-art references. 2. Institutionally the USPTO is very much aware of the significance of reexamination for a patent in litigation. 3. The Office action was signed by a "prima…
All office actions are signed by a primary examiner or supervisory primary examiner. Junior examiners cannot sign their own office actions.
I've been thinking lately that with the number of patents in existence, the likelihood that a newly submit patent application is truly novel without any invalidating prior art is probably very low. The USPTO should start each review under the premis that the application will probably be denied unless the application includes sufficient justification for it being truly novel. If the USPTO started denying the majority…
Former examiner here. That's basically how it works. As an examiner you do your best to reject every application. There's no other way to go about it.
> This is not something that a patent examiner has the tools, training, and, most importantly, time to do on initial application. ... which then begs the question: If the USPTO cannot do adequate research for granting a valid patent, then why are they granting patents?
They have a mandate to grant patents. They have a certain budget to fulfill that mandate. I imagine (although I don't know) that they do the best they can to grant valid patents within those constraints.
I don't think the patent office is under any obligation to grant any particular patent. If they are unable to properly process a patent application, the consequence should be a decade long backlog that forces lawmakers to make a more sensible law, not a mountain of bogus patents that are worse than useless.
"Last I ran the numbers, Foxconn employees had the suicide rate of a Carribean island.". Sorry, you're making a common comparison fallacy that I used to make as well. The Foxconn employee suicide rate is for employees committing suicide specifically at the factory itself. To make an equivalent comparison, you can't compare against a whole Caribbean island, you'd have to compare with a specific sugar plantation. The f…
I'm certainly open to the idea that the rate is being systematically underreported, but the article I read suggested that most of these employees lived in dormitory-style housing on the factory premises. For example: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-apple-foxconn-i... NEW DORMS ... Foxconn committed to building new housing to alleviate situations where multiple workers were squeezed into dorm rooms that s…
Correct, so using your statement that "most of these employees lived on factory premises", the equivalent comparisons could be how many college students commit suicide in their dorm rooms, or how many google employees commit suicide on campus. Those would be valid comparisons whereas comparing with a country, a region would be a misleading comparison.
I don't even like pinch to zoom. It is hard/impossible to do when using the phone one handed. It is also annoying in apps like google's new maps for iOS because it is hard to not also rotate the map, which is hardly ever the desired outcome.
When I saw pinch to zoom, my first thought was, Minority Report . Can a 2002 movie be prior art for a user interface? Because in this case it really deserved to be.
I think so. There is a myth about a Donald Duck comic being used as prior art when denying a patent application. It could be true since the patent was indeed denied, but sadly the records of why has been lost.
It's curious that Samsung's lawyers didn't manage to bring about the invalidation during trial, if its lack of validity was evident enough that the patent office is now retracting it. I'm curious if a) Samsung did present the evidence that the patent office relied on to invalidate but it was rejected by the jury or b) Samsung wasn't allowed to present it for some reason or c) Samsung didn't try to present it Option a…
Samsung is from Korea, Apple, the judges and the USPTO are from the US.
They have a mandate to grant patents. They have a certain budget to fulfill that mandate. I imagine (although I don't know) that they do the best they can to grant valid patents within those constraints.
I don't think the patent office is under any obligation to grant any particular patent. If they are unable to properly process a patent application, the consequence should be a decade long backlog that forces lawmakers to make a more sensible law, not a mountain of bogus patents that are worse than useless.
It's curious that Samsung's lawyers didn't manage to bring about the invalidation during trial, if its lack of validity was evident enough that the patent office is now retracting it. I'm curious if a) Samsung did present the evidence that the patent office relied on to invalidate but it was rejected by the jury or b) Samsung wasn't allowed to present it for some reason or c) Samsung didn't try to present it Option a…
Are you sure that pinch to zoom was one of the issues for the Samsung suit? All I recall is the "rebound effect" when you reach the end of a page, and the physical design of the galaxy tab
Yes it was. According to Groklaw, Samsung has already pointed the re-examination results out to the court, as this patent made up a solid chunk of the infringement the jury found, and hence the damages number presumably needs to at the very least be adjusted. However, the jury didn't indicate how they apportioned the number, so this might be another way for Samsung to get a new jury trial on at least parts of the issues.
Companies should be securing clawbacks in patent settlements upon invalidation.
Does it work like that? If you were bootlegging during prohibition, and convicted, would your conviction be repealed afterwards? It was technically illegal at the time. Maybe someone with more knowledge of law on here knows if this is the case with patent law or not.
In your analogy, the activity was illegal until the law was changed. If a patent is declared invalid, then it shouldn't have been valid when it was used in prosecution, so it's logical for the defendant to ask for some kind of redress. Whether the law actually works like that, I don't know.