Chicken!

Chicken chicken chicken.  That is all.

2011 Ig Nobel Prize Winners!

The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize Winners have been announced!  (I would have posted this last night, but I was too busy reading the winner of the "literature" prize.)

"Things Apple is Worth More Than"

Here's another blog to follow, if you like large amounts of money.

Don't Ever Get Into an Argument With a Higgs Boson

Or else THIS might happen.

President Obama Signs the ‘‘Leahy-Smith America Invents Act’’

Today President Obama signed the ‘‘Leahy-Smith America Invents Act,’’ also known as the patent reform act.  The final bill is here in PDF form and here in text form (with handy hyperlinks to its various sections).  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's web page on the bill is here, and additional government press releases are here, here and here.

While the bill unquestionably contains the most significant changes to the patent laws since the current version of the Patent Act was passed in 1952, the bill does not "reform" the patent laws as much as many people had hoped.  Patent reform bills have been before Congress for most of the last decade, and competing interest groups have blocked various reforms in earlier proposals.  For example, the electronics, computer and other tech industries would have liked to have seen reform of how patent damages are awarded, but pharmaceutical companies and non-practicing entities opposed such changes.  Today's bill is a compromise containing a number of unrelated changes, many of which are highly technical in nature and matter only to patent lawyers.

Since the Senate passed the House version of the bill, H.R. 1249, on September 8, there have been tons of articles written about the bill's scope and effect.  Rather than write my own analysis, I'll just link to a bunch of them.  (This post will therefore get updated regularly as I receive additional articles of interest.)

• The Patently-O Blog has posted several articles:  Discussions of changes to Prior Art (35 U.S.C. §102 is significantly changed); the immediate elimination of the best mode defense and vastly improved joinder rules (the latter is an especially welcome reform); international patent harmonization; a collection of remarks by several patent law professors; patenting human organisms; a quick increase in PTO fees; the dis-joinder rules; provisional patent applications; implementation of the act; preclusive inventor disclosure; the new 35 U.S.C. §102.
• Mark Lemley is working on a particularly interesting post, "Things You Should Care About in the New Patent Statute."  As of Sept.16, it was only available on Facebook, but Mark has now published it on SSRN.
• Harold C. Wegner has a 139-page analysis of the bill.  And an updated 176-page book.
• The Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox firm has devoted an entire section of its web page to the bill, with a number of helpful articles.  These include "Ten Things to Know About the America Invents Act of 2011"; "Immediate Changes for Patent Practice Under the America Invents Act"; "Patent Litigation at the USPTO Under the America Invents Act" (which has a nice table comparing post grant review with inter parties review); a timeline of changes under the act; and two articles about ways to challenge patents under the new bill, which adds some new ways to challenge patents and changes existing procedures (this article in particular has a useful table comparing all the ways to challenge patents at the PTO).
• The Banner & Witcoff firm has an interesting article, "The America Invents Act and What it Means for the Future of Patent Acquisition and Enforcement."
• Here is a Techdirt article about the bill.  And another article about the many lawsuits that were filed in the days before the bill was signed, to avoid the anti-joinder provision of the bill, new 35 U.S.C. §299 (scroll down just a bit to get to §299).
• The IEEE has an engineering perspective on the bill, including a table discussing how the court system has provided some patent reform over the last several years.
• The bill has many different effective dates for different provisions.  The Finnegan Henderson firm has assembled a table showing these dates.
• The Foley & Lardner firm also has a resource page on the act.  Some of its articles so far include: An overview of the bill; How the act will impact litigation; and a list of the different effective dates.
• Oblon Spivak has yet another presentation of the bill's different effective dates.  And another one.  Morrison & Foerster has a "cheat sheet" on the effective dates.
• Here are client alerts by Morrison & Foerster; Ropes & Gray; Morgan Lewis; Fenwick & West; a somewhat longer alert by Baker Botts; McDermott Will & Emery; Dorsey & Whitney; Alson + Bird; Squire Sanders & Dempsey; Quarles & Brady; Proskauer Rose; Orrick; Mayer Brown; Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Smith, Gambrell & Russell.
• Fish & Richardson has an article about the prioritized examination process, which will let patent applicants obtain patents more quickly -- for a price.
• IP Watchdog has a post about the new provision limiting joinder of multiple defendants in a lawsuit.
• Broken Symmetry has this numbered list of highlights.
• Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has a "top ten list"of highlights and an article about potential effects on patent litigation.
• Haynes and Boone has an article, "Practice Tips Under the Patent Reform Rules."
• Foley Hoag talks about the new "micro-entity" status.
• Oblon Spivak points out that the PTO has changed the standards for granting an inter partes review under the old Patent Act.  "The new standard for any such request filed on or after September 16, 2011 is a reasonable likelihood that the requester would prevail with respect to at least 1 of the claims challenged in the request.  This new standard will apply to all inter partes patent reexamination filings going forward."  Oblon also points out that the PTO now has a web page with implementation information about the new bill, which includes documents on issues such as inter partes examinations, tax strategies, best mode, and human organisms.
• While the bill has been touted as creating a "first to file" system, in fact it might more accurately be called a "first to disclose" system.  Here's an article (by a Foley & Lardner attorney) explaining why.  (Patently-O noticed this potential problem in a 2010 article.)
• King & Spalding has a 20-page newsletter with articles about new §102, derivation proceedings, post-grant review, the prior use defense, and others.
• Davis Wright Tremaine has this 12-page paper about the act.  This discusses the "first to disclose" issue, among others.
  
  
  
  

First Circuit Decision in Sony v. Tenenbaum

Today the First Circuit Court of Appeals released its decision in Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum.  The PDF of the opinion is here and a text version is here.

As explained by EFF's post, the Court overturned a trial judge's decision to lower a damage award against a college student found liable for file sharing songs.  The trial judge had found the $675,000 damage award for 30 songs to be unconstitutional.  The appeals court held that the trial court should not have considered the constitutionality of the award before first reducing the award using a procedural device called a "remittur."  The case will go back to the trial judge for that purpose.

Next Time, Play "Love Minus Zero, No Limit."

This guy should probably NOT have played "Just Like a Woman."

Best Taxidermy Commercial Ever?

If there is such a thing as the best Taxidermy commercial ever, THIS would be it.

The Defendant Will Love THIS Juror.

"A man facing a murder trial in Schenectady County court got an unexpected note in the mail -- a jury duty summons for his own trial."

Duck of the Day

This blog would be remiss if we did not mention this duck.

Patent of the Day

With the passage of the Patent Reform Act, there will be lots of talk about creating jobs and so forth.  Doubtless a new patent this week, "Apparatus for facilitating the construction of a snow man/woman," U.S. Patent No. 8,011,991, will create many of those new jobs.  Update:  Techdirt likes this patent almost as much as I do.

Patent Reform Act Passes the Senate

Patently-O reports that the Senate has passed the House version of the Patent Reform Act, also known as the "Leahy-Smith America Invents Act."  President Obama is expected to sign the bill promptly.

 

A related article by that blog discusses three key aspects of the new act.

 

Darn, now I am going to have to read the thing.  At least I can keep in mind the very first comment on the Patently-O blog:
 

Dear Congress,
Thank you very much.
Yours truly,
China

Kindergarten Party!!

Here's one judge who really knows how to show attorneys a good time.  In Texas, of course.

"25 Words You Might Not Know Are Trademarked"

Most people don't know that words such as aspirin, zipper and escalator once used to be trademarks, but aren't any more.  They have now become generic words for the thing that used to be subject to trademark protection. 

Here is a list of 25 similar words that may or may not still have trademark protection.

Wire Cutter Security Fail

How NOT to secure your wire cutters.

Copyright Term Extension Explained

This video explains copyright term extension, and why it's a bad idea.

MP3Tunes: Another District Court Gets the DMCA (Mostly) Right

Yesterday the Southern District of New York issued an opinion in Capitol Records v. MP3Tunes.  Since both EFF and Techdirt have published extensive posts about the case, I won't repeat what they have to say.  In summary, the court adopted most of the reasoning supporting broad DMCA protection expressed by previous district court opinions, such as UMG v. Veoh and Viacom v. YouTube.  The pending appeals in those two cases will affect the MP3Tunes case, of course (particularly the Second Circuit appeal in Viacom).

UPDATE: Here is Eric Goldman's post about the case.

Brad Templeton to Don Henley: Take It Easy

Musician Don Henley (of The Eagles) doesn't like the Internet very much.  He personally signed onto an amicus brief in the Viacom v. YouTube case supporting Viacom's attempt to shut down YouTube and similar user-generated content services.

Henley has now published an op-ed piece in USA Today setting forth his views, including his support for a very flawed piece of legislation.  While he is entitled to his opinion, some of his rhetoric goes a little overboard.  For example, Henley says that "Critics of this pending legislation need to be honest about the company they keep and why they essentially aid and abet these criminal endeavors."  He includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Google in that group.

Brad Templeton, one of EFF's directors, published a response to Henley's diatribe.  Here's the best part:

Take it Easy, Don. There’s a New Kid in Town, and it’s called the Internet. Get Over It.  I Can’t Tell you Why, but in The Long Run, there isn’t going to be a Heartache Tonight. One of these Nights I hope you’ll you understand that for search engines to Take it To the Limit, they can’t be forced to police every search result.

Internet companies only grow when living Life in the Fast Lane, able to operate, innovate and design products without needing to check for permission from the music industry. If every time you wrote a song you had to worry about what every user who plays it and every store that sells it might do with it, you would lose your Peaceful, Easy Feeling quickly. Big companies might run filters, but if the small ones had needed to they would be Already Gone.

The Best of My Love,

Brad Templeton, EFF

Heh.  (Click here if you don't follow some of the italicized references.)  If USA Today publishes EFF's expected formal response to Henley's op-ed, I'll update this post to link to it.  Here's Techdirt's discussion of Henley's article.

Best. Prior Art. Ever.

"Samsung cites science fiction as prior art in US iPad patent case."  Unless, of course, you count Arthur C. Clarke's "invention" of the geosynchronous satellite in one of his other stories.

Do You Like Math?

If not, don't worry.  You're not alone.