Patent Registration

Time Runs Out for Owner of Altimeter Patent

April 22, 2013, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte recently ruled that Avocet Sports Technology Inc. waited an unreasonable amount of time, 6 years, to initiate a patent infringement case against Polar Electro, Inc.  Thus, she dismissed the case due to the doctrine of laches.

Avocet Sports Technology Inc., a Palo Alto, California company, tried to convince the Judge that the 6-year delay was due to a lack of funds needed to pursue litigation, but the Judge dismissed the excuse as having “no authority” to uphold it.  She further stated that Avocet’s claim of lack of knowledge was unjustified because Avocet Sports should have taken action sooner if it knew of possible infringing activity by Polar Electro.

Avocet Sports filed the complaint a year ago against Polar Electro in a California federal courtroom alleging that Polar infringed on one of its patents.  The patent at issue, U.S. Patent Number 5,058,427, issued in 1991 for “Methods for selectively accumulating altitude changes”.  The patent involves a strap-on device which Avocet Sports developed as a GPS-type of monitor which tracks a hiker, cyclist, or runner’s variations in altitude while on a trek.

Avocet Sports has been an innovator of outdoor sports products including compact cycling computers, altimeters, heart rate monitors and other related equipment since 1977.  Avocet Sport’s complaint against Polar Electro claimed the two companies had discussed the possibility of a partnership or license to the technology, but that Polar Electro had branched out on its own, copied the design, and then sold its own similar device.

Polar Electro, which focuses on sports, physiology and electronics has been developing heart rate monitors since 1977.  It now sells its products in over 80 different countries, employing 1200 people.  Polar Electro has been aggressively marketing and selling the elevation-tracking device since 2004, spending significant sums of money, unaware they may have been infringing on Avocet Sport’s patent.  Because of this, the Judge felt Polar Electro would be unduly prejudiced by Avocet’s long delay in filing an action against it.

Now that the case has been dismissed, it may never be determined if Polar Electro had in fact infringed the patent.

Tagged as: Avocet Sports Technology, Polar Electro

Nokia, LG Accused of Infringing Integrated Circuit Patents

February 13, 2013, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – Tela Innovations Inc. filed a lawsuit against Nokia Corp, LG Electronics Inc., and several other companies with both the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Delaware federal court accusing the companies of infringing seven patents owned by Tela that cover technology related to integrated circuit manufacturing processes.

In addition to Nokia and LG, Tela filed separate lawsuits against Motorola Mobility LLC, HTC Corp., and Pantech Co. Ltd. in Delaware federal court and a joint complaint against all five companies with the ITC accusing the companies of copying Tela’s technology for optimizing the layout of integrated circuits in its smartphones without a license from Tela.

“Tela has, and continues to, create technology to address critical technical and economic challenges facing the semiconductor industry.  Our products enable designers to achieve the best performance, area and power characteristics possible as semiconductor processes continue to scale,” Scott Becker, CEO of the California-based Tela, said in a statement.  “Given the significance of our company’s investment in this technology and associated products, it was necessary to take legal action at this time.”

Tela, which is headquartered in Santa Clara County, said its patents protect improvement for the manufacture of integrated circuit chips, which are utilized in nearly all electronic devices including smartphones, tablets and laptops.  The manufacturing techniques allow manufacturers to perfect printing of a circuit layout on tiny chips.

In the complaints, Tela claims that each of the five companies have imported and sold smartphones or tablets that contain integrated circuits that infringe some combination of seven patents held by the company.

“Tela has been irreparably harmed by the defendants’ infringement of its valuable patent rights,” the complaint said. “Moreover, defendants’ unauthorized and infringing uses of Tela’s patented technology have threatened the value of this intellectual property.”

In the lawsuits filed in federal court, Tela is seeking damages and an injunction to prevent the companies from importing goods in the future that infringe its patents.  The ITC complaint is seeking a declaratory judgment that the companies have imported infringing goods and therefore have breached Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930.  If the ITC rules in favor of Tela, it could result in an exclusion order banning the companies from importing their devices into the United States.

Tagged as: LG Electronics, Nokia, Tela Innovations

IBM Tops the Patent Charts, Again

January 12, 2013, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – For the 20th year in a row, International Business Machines Corp has been named the number one assignee of patents in the United States, according to IFI CLAIMS Patent Services’ list of the 2012 Top 50 US Patent assignees.

IBM leads the chart with 6,478 patents granted in 2012, which is more than 20% more than its next closest competitor.  IBM brings in an estimated $1 billion a year from licensing its patent portfolio.  In addition to the income, IBM uses its portfolio of patents to protect itself from litigation brought on by competitors and patent-holding firms.

Not surprisingly, Samsung Electronics Co made the number two spot with 5,081 patents granted last year.  The top ten is rounded out with other technology giants, such as Sony, Panasonic, Microsoft, Toshiba and other popular electronics brands.

However, there are a few names that surprisingly did not come close to the top ten.  Apple Inc came in at number 22, with only 1136 patents granted in 2012.  Google, Apple’s patent war rival, came in just ahead in the number 21 spot with 1151 patents granted.   Though the technology giants are lower on the list, the two companies made the biggest climb from their rankings last year.  Apple jumped from the 39th to 22nd spot and Google made an astounding jump from the 65th to 21st spot.

Google’s numbers were likely boosted by its purchase of Motorola Mobility in May of last year.  However, it is clear that Google and Apple both see their patent portfolios as a major business tool, as seen by their jump in the rankings and their ongoing patent wars around the globe.

However seriously these companies may take their patent portfolios, they could still learn a thing or two from IBM.  Dr. Michael Karasick, a vice president and computer scientist at IBM, says he credits the company’s impressive portfolio to its diverse range departments, each of which is filled with employees with varying skill sets.

Dr. Karasick also credited IBM’s success to its ability to invent and patent technology that can be used in different disciplines.  One example is the patent it was granted last year which covered the technology used in the IBM Watson computer, which beat the human “Jeopardy!” champions in 2011.  The same technology is currently being tested as an automated assistant for physicians to aid in diagnosing diseases.

With strategies like that, it is no wonder IBM has been able to hold the number one spot for the 20th year in a row.

Tagged as: IBM, Samsung

Patent Chief Defends System Against Google and Other Critics

November 26, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – US Patent and Trademark Director Dave Kappos defended the patent system against critics, such as Google, who have been claiming the system is broken.

Google and other technology giants have long criticized the patent system, particularly when it comes to the handling of software patents.  Many issues in the debate were summed up in an opinion piece written by Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel for Google, which was posted yesterday on Wired.

Walker claimed that patent trolls are taking advantage of holes in the patent system, costing technology giants billions of dollars each year.  He called the government to action, claiming they need to get rid of bad software patents that have been issued, prevent bad software patents from being issued in the future, and provide “clearer rules for damages and awarding costs.”  Walker claimed that bad software patents include overly broad patents and business method patents.

The patent trolls are not only bad for businesses, Walker claims they are bad for consumers as well.  He claimed that fighting abusive litigation takes time and resources away from research and development in large companies and completely devastates small companies and start-ups, resulting in quashed competition and suppressed creativity.

These views are shared among many critics of the software patent system, but Kappos claimed in a speech this morning at the Center for American Progress that the software patent system is functioning the way it should be.

The patent office conducted a study of many different software patent lawsuits and found that the courts had found 80 percent of the patents in question valid, according to Kappos, thus getting rid of bad software patents would make little difference in the amount of software patent litigation.  He stated that the software patent wars are not a sign that the patent system is broken, but rather a sign that the patent system is working.

Kappos also claimed that the America Invents Act will take care of many of the issues critics are complaining about, but they have not yet given the AIA time to take effect. Among other things, Kappos said the AIA will help weed out business method patents and bad software patents.

His last major claim against his critics was that technology continues to develop very quickly, so he claims that critics who say development is being harmed by the litigation have no standing.

Regardless of whether the software patent system will end up being reformed or not, it appears that software patents will continue to be a hot topic.

Tagged as: AIA, Kappos

Federal Circuit Panel Wants Review Of PTO Claim Construction Weight

October 24, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – The Federal Circuit on Tuesday called for more clarity in determining the proper standards with which it should weigh claim construction decisions made in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board, with a majority panel opinion that asked for en banc review of its own decision.

The immediate case on appeal involved a bid by Flo Healthcare Solutions LLC to overturn a PTAB decision that upheld a PTO examiner’s rejection on reexamination of numerous claims of its patent for a mobile computer workstation intended for use in medical care environments. Flo originally sued Rioux Vision Inc. in Georgia federal court for infringing the patent, and Rioux initiated the reexamination proceeding that led to the current appeal.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the board’s conclusion, but got there by a different route, saying the board’s analysis was incorrect.

“Based on our review of the record, we are satisfied that the factual determinations underlying the board’s decision are supported by substantial evidence, and that the board came to the correct legal conclusions based on those facts,” the majority opinion, authored by Circuit Judge S. Jay Plager, said.

The decision, though, intentionally elided the question of the standard of review the Federal Circuit should apply to the board’s claim construction decisions, Judge Plager said.

“Whichever way this court’s review rule should be cast, and for whatever reasons, it is perhaps time that the court definitively decide en banc on an agreed review standard, one that provides clear direction to the PTO and the inventor community,” he said in additional views filed alongside the three-judge panel’s opinion.

Although the review standard may not always dictate the result, as a matter of basic law there should be one standard uniformly applied by the court to Board claim constructions, Judge Plager said.

“When, as here, there exists an unnecessary lack of clarity in our rules, I believe we have an obligation as a court to address the problem and, if possible, correct it,” Judge Plager.

One of the principal purposes behind the creation of the Federal Circuit was to provide national uniformity in patent matters, and a uniform standard for review of claim construction matters, regardless of the forum whose decision is being appealed, would be consistent with that purpose, he said.

Circuit Judge Pauline Newman agreed in her own additional views, saying that the goal of uniformity underlying the Federal Circuit’s genesis “is being undermined by a hodgepodge of procedural rulings, inferences, and presumptions that ignore the routine mechanisms of patent examination, that confound the standards of review, and that misapply the principles of administrative deference.”

“The loser is the technology community, whose incentive for innovation and commerce the patent system serves,” she said.

Nike Patents Footwear, Golf Clubs With Digital Sensors

September 11, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles — Nike Inc. was issued patents last week for golf clubs that include digital measuring equipment and shoes equipped with data transmission systems to track their use and send the information to a computer or other device.

U.S. Patent Number 8,258,941, issued Sept. 4 and titled “ Footwear products including data transmission capabilities,” covers a shoe with a transmission system that transmits data to a remote system. Such footwear systems may also include activation systems for activating the transmission or display systems.

The transmitted data may be used for various purposes, such as identifying a user of the article of footwear, activating targeted advertising or product information, or confirming the user’s presence at a specific location or at a specific time.

The data may also be used for determining start, finish or intermediate split times for a specific user, confirming athletic equipment usage, providing data for a game or reward program or registering the user for an event or competition, among other possible uses, according to the patent abstract.

U.S. Patent Number 8,257,191, titled “ Golf clubs and golf club heads having digital lie and/or other angle measuring equipment” and also issued Sept. 4, covers golf club heads with sensors configured to measure one or more swing parameters. The golf club head may include several gyroscopes and accelerometers.

In one embodiment, the club head contains three gyroscopes that measure angular rate data along different orthogonal axes. At least one gyroscope may be an analog gyroscope, while accelerometers may provide data regarding the three orthogonal axes associated with the gyroscopes.

The club head may also include software or hardware that perform computer-executed methods for determining one or more swing parameters. Club heads could also include a display device for displaying an output of the swing parameters.

Further aspects of the invention relate to novel methods and algorithms for calculating measurements relating to the swing parameters.

Google Nets Major Video Object Recognition Patent

August 29, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Google Inc. was issued a patent on Tuesday covering technology allowing for automatic recognition of large objects in videos without any need for a user’s assistance, pointing the way to possible new online video applications on YouTube or elsewhere.

U.S. Patent Number 8,254,699, titled “Automatic large scale video object recognition,” involves an object recognition system that performs a number of rounds of dimensionality reduction and consistency learning on visual content items such as videos and still images. This results in a set of “feature vectors” that accurately predict the presence of a visual object represented by a given name within a visual content item.

The feature vectors are stored in association with the object name which they represent and with an indication of the number of rounds of dimensionality reduction and consistency learning that produced them. Consistency learning involves comparing a feature vector to other feature vectors, such as those for the same object name, and those for different object names, and calculating a score based on the comparisons.

The feature vectors and the indication can be used for various purposes, such as quickly determining a visual content item containing a visual representation of a given object name, according to the patent description.

“Currently, automated recognition within a digital video of images of real-world objects of interest to a user, such as people, animals, automobiles, consumer products, buildings, and the like, is a difficult problem,” the patent description says. “The use of unsupervised learning techniques, in which the explicit input of human operators is not required to learn to recognize objects, has not yet been achieved for large-scale image recognition systems.”

“Conventional systems rely on direct human input to provide object exemplars explicitly labeled as representing the object, such as a set of images known to include, for example, dogs, based on prior human examination,” the patent description says. “However, such human input is expensive, time-consuming, and cannot scale up to handle very large data sets comprising hundreds of thousands of objects and millions of images.”

This is particularly a problem in the context of video hosting systems, such as Google Video or YouTube, in which users submit millions of videos, each containing numerous distinct visual objects over the length of the video, according to the patent.

Inventors Ming Zhao of San Jose, California and Jay Yagnik of Mountain View, California filed the application for the patent in February 2009.

Apple Awarded Patent For iPhone Case That Reduces Background Noise

July 19, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – Some might call this a year of innovation for Apple, as the pace of new and improved products seems to be increasing. New smartphones, head-mounted computer display devices, a sophisticated new stylus, and new technology abounds as the California company further increases its market share and pushes its stock price even higher.

Smartphone cases were one of the more recent innovations that were both functional, practical, and allowed users to express their personalities with a variety of colors and designs. Apple’s most recent contribution to its patent portfolio is a noise-canceling iPhone case. The newest patent involves a “windscreen”, designed to reduce distracting background sounds that are usually picked up by the device’s microphone and result in decreased sound quality. The patent is also good for all portable electronic devices that enable two-way conversations in real time.

Originally filed January 11, 2011, patent application number 20120177239 shows a diagram with a windscreen over the microphone, which is specially designed to reduce wind noise, air blasts and any other noise that may negatively affect call quality. The patent includes a diagram that shows a “windscreen” sealed across the opening of the case, aligned with the device’s microphone port.

The new product would effectively allow intelligible speech despite background noise and without requiring the user to increase call or voice volume. According to the patent application, the case will be formed from plastic, acrylic, polycarbonate, silicon, or rubber. The screen will likely be of mesh, foam or a feather-like material. And like the current products, the new noise-reduction cases will be available in different colors and designs. A release date for the new iPhone case has not been determined yet. However, judging by the shape of the case in the diagram, it appears that iPhones will remain the same size and shape or the new case will be released prior to any changes down the road for iPhone designs.

Microsoft Patent Published For Customizable Xbox

July 18, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – Everyone knows someone who owns a videogame system or someone that is anxiously waiting for the latest great thing in that industry. According to recently published patent documents, Microsoft’s latest patent for a scaleable console would allow consumers to customize their Xbox.

Much like what PC gamers can do with desktop computers, the new patent would allow users to add or remove components, creating a video gaming system to suit individual needs. Under the recently published patent application, Microsoft described a basic platform that would be offered with hardware resources to scale up or down according to needs of the user. In addition, the product would have two smaller gaming consoles combined for single use that can be upgraded with an optional third console to assist the other two.

Xbox fans who are clamoring for new products are already wondering what the practical application is for the newest Xbox rendition. Microsoft answers many of these questions in its patent documents which show that the new product will be capable of running apps and opening a strategy guide simultaneously while playing games. Under the new patent, one hardware component would handle the game while another would deal with the apps and other functions. According to Microsoft, this new form of “communication fabric” allows maneuvers and links the console properties, while performing the critical regulation of bandwidth. As such, each hardware component is regulated so as to not unnecessarily leech system resources from critical components.

In addition to a new look and hardware composition, the newest version of the Xbox could be subsidized with monthly payments and yearly updates, eliminating backwards compatibility issues. And although the patent application was only recently filed in 2010, parents and video game enthusiasts are fervently hoping the product will make its way into the marketplace in time for Christmas 2012.

Tech Giant Qualcomm Restructures Business To Protect Patent Portfolio

July 16, 2012, by Mandour & Associates, APC

Los Angeles – Qualcomm owns thousands of patents and has dozens more in development to add to its significant patent portfolio. Additionally, as a leader in mobile technologies and chip manufacturing, Qualcomm has long captured a significant market share by ensuring that its products are embedded in the top computers, phones and other hand-held devices.

However, its mobile technologies have become more and more important in its company growth plan. Mobile technologies account for 90% of Qualcomm’s patent licensing revenues and a large chunk of the company’s revenue on the whole. Moreover, Qualcomm’s patents are becoming increasingly significant as the use of 3G and 4G networks proliferate. Consequently, the San Diego based communications specialist and chip manufacturer recently determined that its current business structure did not adequately support the desired direction of its development and sales. As such, Qualcomm announced that it has plans to restructure its business operations. That reorganization includes the addition of new units to handle its chip business, effectively separating that part of its business from its key mobile communications and other intellectual property.

This is not to say that Qualcomm’s chip development is not also an integral part of its business. Apple is one of Qualcomm’s biggest customers using Qualcomm’s baseband chips in its tremendously popular iPhones and iPads. Additionally, the Snapdragon chip for smart phones and tablets is being used in Google’s Android and future laptops supporting Microsoft’s Windows RT Operating Systems. Qualcomm is highly motivated to continue its growth in the chip manufacturing field, thus the separation of its critical portions of business are expected to yield positive results almost immediately. To that end, Qualcomm expects that it’s reshuffling of business operations will allow products and services to be delivered more quickly and efficiently.

The tech behemoth also anticipates that separation of its open-source contributions from its 3G/4G patents will allow for greater efforts to increase market shares in both areas. Qualcomm is one of the more prolific and aggressive patent licensing companies with a significant patent portfolio. However, the nature of its internal organization did not allow for as much development in open-source software as many other top companies in the industry. It is anticipated that the recent reorganization will allow for greater contributions to open-source communities, as well as concurrent patent development. Patents are not necessary for contribution, but the restructure will now allow Qualcomm to compete with IBM and other significant open-source contributors without weakening the company’s market share.

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