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Patent Ban Down Under?

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New Zealand’s Commerce Minister has released a supplemental order paper clarifying the government’s position that software patenting shouldn’t be allowed within the country. The paper – which affects the Patent Bill pending before parliament – proposes language that a computer program is “not an invention and not a manner of manufacture for purposes of this Act.” That...

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How Low Can You Go?

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There are no shortage of lawyer jokes, and those of us with “esquire” attached to our name should probably hesitate before adding fuel to the fire. But two recent news stories relating to attorney conduct caught our eye. The first, courtesy of Patently-O, relates to a rather breathtaking letter by an obviously frustrated patent attorney who...

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And The Survey Says…

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We’re avid followers of the work of Assistant Professor Colleen Chien (Santa Clara University Law School) when it comes to patent trolls / “patent assertion entities” (PAE). And so, we were particularly interested to read recent reports of a SCU report on “Best Practices in Patent Litigation Survey” in theChicago Tribune.Surveying in-house counsel (primarily at large technology companies), Professor...

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The Next Front

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As our trusty readers are aware, there’s nothing we in Blogville get more excited about than patent–reform legislation (unless it is patent–related court decisions, patent–related press, or really just about anything patent–related). At any rate, today Senator Schumer of New York—no friend of patent trolls—announced he’ll be introducing a second bill in Congress, to act as a...

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Sticks and Stones

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Just a hat tip to our friends at Docket Navigator, for providing a copy of an order denying a motion to strike the term “patent troll” from a declaratory judgment action filed in the Southern District of New York. Finding that, while the term “describes entities that engage in negative, even aggressive, behavior,” it was...

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The Geography of the World Wide Web, Patagonia–Style

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As we’ve mentioned before, it is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that determines which top–level domain names exist (.com, .org, .edu, etc.), and who manages them. Asreported on the website of The Atlantic magazine, ICANN now faces a thorny challenge in assigning the management of the top–level domain name “.patagonia.” The two potential claimants are...

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The ABCs of the ITC

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The International Trade Commission (“ITC“) has become an increasing arena of interest lately in intellectual property disputes, as filing trends are on the rise. While still fairly few and far between, what ITC cases lack in numbers they make up for in speed (and, some would say, an associated burden on the parties). Certain critics...

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The Troll Sleeps Tonight

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In the matter of Masimo Corporation v. Philips Electronics (pending in the District of Delaware), the Magistrate Judge Thynge recently issued a 200–page report and recommendation on 15 separate motions. We can’t claim to have read the entire report, or even much of it. We did, however, note that one of the (denied) motions included in the...

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Internet Retailers Among Many Submitting Comments on Patent Troll Problem to FTC/DOJ

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Following their joint public workshop in December, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have solicited comments from interested parties on the patent troll problem. The comment period closed on April 5, and the FTC is posting comments as they come in here. The agencies have received comments from individual businesses, law professors, local chambers of...

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The GeoTag Show

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Your bloggers are at the 28th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference in Arlington, Virginia, and so have not been as garrulous as usual. However, we wanted to take a brief moment to recognize an unusual order in an unusual case. If you’re a retailer, or perhaps if you’ve just ever used a map, you’ve probably...

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