Related Updates
How the STRONGER Patents Act Would Send Innovation Overseas
Senator Chris Coons introduced a bill this week called the STRONGER Patents Act [ PDF ]. The bill contains many terrible ideas. It would gut inter partes review (a valuable tool for challenging bad patents). It would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v....
Small Business Fights for its Life, Wins with Alice
Michael Skelps was celebrating on New Year’s Eve with family and friends when he got a strange email from a lawyer. It said that Michael’s company, Capstone Photography, had just been sued for patent infringement. Michael went from celebrating to worrying about whether his small company would survive. Capstone is...
The Patent Troll and the Scavenger Hunt
Ken Cooper runs a small business out of his home. Unfortunately Ken’s business was not so small that it avoided the notice of a patent troll. Ken has been writing code since 1973. His life in programming has ranged from small personal projects to founding a software company that was...
A Startup Runs Into A Patent on Picture Menus
If you’ve ever seen a picture menu, you’ve seen the supposed ‘invention’ claimed by U.S. Patent 6,585,516 . Although it had a complex-sounding title (“Method and system for computerized visual behavior analysis, training, and planning”), the patent simply claimed using picture menus on a computer. Patent troll DietGoal Innovations,...
Saved by Alice: How a Key Supreme Court Decision Protects Businesses from Bad Patents
In 2014’s Alice v. CLS Bank , the Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer. Since then, Alice has provided a lifeline for real businesses threatened or sued with bogus patents. This...
Copyright Law Shouldn’t Pick Winners
Mandatory Filtering Proposals Curb Competition When looking at a proposed policy regulating Internet businesses, here’s a good question to ask yourself: would this bar new companies from competing with the current big players? Google will probably be fine, but what about the next Google? In the past few years,...
Federal Circuit Hits Stupid Patent Owner With Fee Award
Patent litigation abuse thrives when patent trolls can force defendants into making a hard choice: pay the troll (even though the claim is absurd) or pay even more to your lawyers. This week, the Federal Circuit issued an encouraging ruling that will make it harder to use this...
Stupid Patent of the Month: Ford Patents a Windshield
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Impression Products v. Lexmark International was a big win for individuals’ right to repair and modify the products they own. While we’re delighted by this decision, we expect manufacturers to attempt other methods of controlling the market for resale and repair. That’s...
Supreme Court Victory for the Right to Tinker in Printer Cartridge Case
The Supreme Court struck a blow today [ PDF ] for your right to own the things you buy, reversing a lower court decision that had given patent owners the power to sue customers who paid in full for a patented item but then used it in a way...
No Evidence that "Stronger" Patents Will Mean More Innovation
Push to once again allow abstract patents is misguided Right now, the patent lobby—in the form of the Intellectual Property Owners Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association —is demanding “stronger” patent laws. They want to undo Alice v. CLS Bank and...
