“Deep in the Heart of Texas” was a hit song in 1942. Half a century later, in 1992, patent litigants penetrated deep into the heart of Texas—all the way to Marshall. It took another quarter-century for the U.S. Supreme Court to plunge a knife into the swelling heart, the pulsating East Texas patent docket, in […]
If you’re an inventor, engineer, or programmer—if you’re an entrepreneur, owner, or prime mover in a business—if you use technology to make better products for your customers— Here’s a toast to you! More than a toast, my gift to you today is
There is an international crisis in software patents. The critical, unanswered question is this: When are software inventions eligible for patent? Billions in corporate assets are
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (EDTX) is often painted in a bad light. Among other malignments, the Court has been described as having “earned a reputation as the intellectual property equivalent of
Nine billion dollars. That’s what Oracle wanted from Google for the unauthorized use of 37 Java APIs in Android, which runs most of the world’s smartphones. Zero. That’s what Oracle has been awarded by a California jury, which decided on May 26, 2016, that Google’s use of the APIs is “fair use” and thus permitted […]
House counsel for a large software company has written an open letter to me titled Pursuit of Extremely Short Patent Claims. He has thrown down the gauntlet in a public forum. Here’s what he said to me, followed by my response.
In the last inning of the Apple-Samsung game of smartphone hardball, Samsung slid into home. Apple failed to make the tag. “Samsung is safe!” cried the umpires. The inning was umpired by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which held Apple’s slide-to-unlock U.S. Patent 8,046,721 invalid. See Apple v. Samsung (Fed. Cir. Feb. 26, 2016).
The Supreme Court has granted Samsung’s appeal of a $500 million dollar judgment rendered on the latter’s infringement of Apple’s smartphone (iPhone) design patent. If your company owns patents, you may wonder: What effect will Apple-Samsung have on your patent program? More practically, how can you and your company make money on your patents starting now, in the “incubation period” of […]
Amidst the raging debate over succession for Justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016), I ask for one minute of silence. Not from the press, the Executive Office, or the campaign trail, but from the Bench. One minute of silence from the Bench. For each side in
The Washington Redskins are on the verge of winning big! Their trademark rights are about to be vindicated. That’s one good reason, I say, for them to throw in the towel.
