Hey Everyone!

This is my fourteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post. In this post I will be continuing my discussion on Silly Patents.

This selection of patents are pretty out there, so I hope you enjoy the read!

The first patent I would like to talk about is: Banana Suitcase

This invention is made along the line of "no-one likes a bruised banana!' however making a banana a suitcase as if it were a professional photo camera is pretty silly. Apart from the fact that a banana is one of the fruits with complete natural packaging that already features a wall a half of an inch thick, it is a novel, and non-obvious invention as I doubt anyone would normally think of putting their bananas in Samsonites!

The next patent I would like to discuss is: Gas Factory

                                                         

This patent is a contraption to capture the methane gas that a cow emanates when farting. Now as silly this device is, the main reason for how absurd this device is that the methane produced by a single cow is close to absolutely nothing. To be able to actually do anything with the gas collected, this contraption would have to be harnessed to hundreds and thousands of cows. It doesn't seem very practical and even if it is novel and non-obvious, it is absolutely not useful!

The third patent I want to show you is: Pedal operated mower

This patent is for a lawnmower that is operated by pedals attached to a tricycle! The apparatus is actually novel, but also non-obvious as we are talking about the early 1980s. As nowadays such an invention would be obvious due to the amount of motorized lawnmowers we have, this patent's date is what makes it legitimate (even if it has expired by now). 

I hope you enjoyed these hand-selected patents and feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!

                                 

Hey Everyone!

This is my thirteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post.

This time I will be talking about Silly Patents. Following some research, it is amazing to see how many crazy patents have been awarded! In this first post I would like to show you some Patents which are completely legitimate but are pretty silly in terms of what their uses may be.

The first patent is titled:Patent Acquisition and Assertion by a (Non-Inventor) First Party Against a Second Party

This patent basically outlines how to be a Patent Troll. Even as legitimate this patent may be due to lack of prior art, in 2008 it seems to me that any Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) dealing with patent law would be well aware of how to conduct this practice! Aside from the fact that trying to patent a method to assert patent infringement as a non-inventor seems quite ludicrous to me.

The second patent is titled:Light bulb changer

How many engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Jokes aside this is a very novel machine and there is no prior art making it un-patentable. However, I would like to call the practicality of this invention into cause. Is this machine really useful? How is having a huge contraption permanently taking up significant space on the floor that changes light-bulbs for you when they run out once every couple of MONTHS? Seems pretty silly to me!

The third patent is:Frameless glasses attaching to body piercing studs

This patent is for eyeglasses that attach to a body-piercing either on your nose or eyebrows. This invention is novel and not by any means obvious! however, at the same time who would ever use them? The weight of the glasses seem to be a safety issue as there is a risk of ripping a piercing off of your face! Quite silly!

That's all for this first blog post and as always, feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!

Hey everyone! This is my twelfth IEOR 190G Blog Post and the third in a series of posts regarding Patent Trolls.

In the previous two posts I defined and illustrated what a Patent Troll is a delved a little into their significance in our modern market. This time I would like to look a little bit into what companies can do to protect themselves from Patent Troll litigation. Some of these strategies are:

• Design Arounds -- used to place an upper limit on licensing fees often equal to the cost of "designing around" the patent in discussion

• Patent Watch -- routinely monitoring patents related to a company's own business activity to determine what is already patented.

• Clearance Search -- a search of patents and pending patent applications that cover important features of a potential product before it starts to be developed. These patents can be acquired to avoid litigation, or the design process can shift to a different product

• Opposition Proceeding -- One can call for a reexamination of a patent with certain limitations

• Litigation -- Going on the offensive can be advantageous. By examining prior arts that question the patentability of the specific patent they can question whether the technology in question is actually infringing the Troll's patent. If this un-patentability of the troll's patent is proved, then not only do the company win their case, but the troll will also lose the option of suing. This is such a scary alternative that oftentimes trolls will back off from the case or at least lower its settlement request.

• Early settlement -- can oftentimes be less expensive than litigation costs or late settlement costs.

• Patent infringement Insurance -- this is a special kind of insurance that protects companies when they infringe patents by accident.

• Defensive Patent Aggregation -- this is the purchase of patents from specific patent holders to avoid their acquisition by trolls. The patents are searched for in relation to the company's specific necessities and products. This phenomena can also be performed by groups of companies to mitigate costs.

Therefore it is now evident that companies aren't completely at the whim of Patent Trolls as it had seemed to me.

That's all for this week! Feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!
See you in class!

Hey everyone! This is my eleventh IEOR 190G VideoBlog Post and this time I will be continuing my discussion on Patent Trolls.

In my last Blog Post I talked a little about what a Patent Troll is giving a few examples of the companies most frequently involved in these cases and what some of the largest cases were.

This time I would like to look a little bit into the significance of Patent Trolls for our modern market.

Their name suggests that Patent Trolls are a nemesis to society, however it is not evident that this stigma is true. Whilst they are painful and seem "sneaky" to traditional inventors who use the patent system to protect themselves, the rising popularity in this new form of litigation has redefined a new way for entities to use the Justice System to turn a profit.

A study made by Northwestern Law school's Michael Mazzeo and Jonathan Hillel reveals some interesting facts about this practice. They find that the economic value of the Patent doesn't change whether the holder is a practicing or non-practicing entity, but the incentives that govern different patent assertion practices are different for both of these groups.

What this could mean is that this new practice of Patent "trolling" is not affecting the economic validity, and/or value of the patents in question, but rather changes the landscape regarding whether or not a lawsuit to assert the patent's protection is worth the suers while.

This dynamic is why facing a patent troll in a court of law is a very particular case unlike many other court cases. Many strategies that large corporation use against smaller legitimate companies are useless when employed against Patent Trolls. For example: litigation costs for the defendant are significantly higher than for the plaintiff who can use a contingency-fee lawyer, and plaintiff-friendly courts can be hand-picked by the Patent Trolls to ensure a better chance for success.

Furthermore, many defensive strategies used by corporations in Patent law litigation can't be applied to Patent Trolls. For example when companies monitor the patent activity of their competitors to avoid infringing, this is obviously useless against NPEs as they are not competitors and generally aren't coming up with new patentable designs in a specific field. Another strategy is to approach the litigation using a "scorched earth" defense that significantly raises litigation costs, however NPE's funds are collected specifically to pay for litigation costs, the sole income for their industries, thus this strategy is also ineffective.

Following this reasoning, we can now see how the introduction of NPEs, or Patent Trolls, into our modern marketplace have had a few interesting implications for corporations across many industries.

That's all for this blog post and please watch the below video for a discussion on the above! See you all in class!

Hey everyone this is my 10th IEOR 190G Blog Post and the first of a series of posts regarding Patent Trolls.

In this first post I would like to introduce Patent Trolls, defining them and giving a few examples.

There are many names for Patent Trolls: Patent Holding Company (PHC), Patent Assertion Entity (PAE) and Non-Practicing Entity (NPE), but all of these differently named organizations all take part in the same practice: the enforcement of patent law on competitors' products that they themselves never intended to manufacture.

More simply put this means that a Patent Troll is any entity who acquires a patent either through the normal application process, or via acquisition from an inventor and sues other entities for infringing their patent even though they themselves never intended to produce the product having the qualities their patent protects. This can occur if a company doesn't have the necessary funds to carry through with a manufacturing plan, but in many cases these Patent Trolls have this type of activity in mind since the acquisition of the patent.

The five companies that are most frequently in these Patent Troll cases unsurprisingly are Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, AT&T and Dell. Some of the largest and most famous cases of patent infringement reach settlements upwards of a billion dollars! A few of the more famous examples are:

• Cystic Fibrosis Foundation v. Royalty Pharma with an award of $3.3 billion in 2014
• Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology with an award of $1.5 billion in 2014
• Apple v. Samsung with an award of $890 million in 2013.

The magnitude of these cases illustrate how big of a deal these patent cases can be, so these Patent Trolls are definitely an entity to be aware of in the business world as even the largest and most powerful companies like Apple and Samsung spend millions of dollars every year in this type of litigation.

That's all for this blog post, See you all soon in a second blog post continuing my discussion on Patent Trolls. Please view the video below for a conversation on the above!

Hey everyone! This is my 9th IEOR 190G Blog Post.

This time i will be discussing a few videos that I found online regarding Obviousness in patent law.

The first video I will discuss is :

Novelty and Non-obviousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cv6DbegPxY 

This video is of a lawyer in Goldstein Patent Law discussing the two requirements for patentability of inventions: Novelty and Non-obviousness.
He first gives a brief definition of both of these terms illustrating why they are necessary for patentability. As we already know, novelty is easy and non-obviousness is a little bit of a trickier topic. He continues by guiding us through the process of what we have to do to prove these to obtain the patent and emphasizes the importance of finding the best "closest" prior art/s to your invention to make the best case.
This is an interesting video because it not only clearly describes the concepts to us, but also gives us some good insight regarding how to act and how people perceive the concepts. I find it quite interesting that at some points as he is blatantly pointing out places where his service would benefit a client. It seems that one must seek legal help to protect themselves in this patent process. To me it seems that dealing with such a case without legal counsel would almost be impossible due to the sheer magnitude of prior art out there for every field of invention.. food for thought..

The second video I would like to discuss is :

Patent Office Litigation Prediction #3: Obviousness is King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4PbnA99ev4 

This video clip that I found is of a lawyer presenting his findings and predictions that he published in a book regarding new adaptations to patent law. The observation discussed in this video is that now "Obviousness is King" in patent law cases and inventors need to behave accordingly to maximize their chances of being awarded patents.

This is quite cool as it is extremely similar to certain discussions that we had in class regarding how to behave in real life situations. I found the advice given to us at the end of the video to be really useful: Specifically regarding being organized about recording the evidence for non-obviousness of prior art usage as these cases have a one-year time frame. 

As there are so many delicate parts to patent law litigation, it is important to keep in mind that there are time constraints in the process that need to be met. And if experts need to be consulted etc. this can turn out to be a non-trivial process.

I agree with the notion that nowadays, with so much prior art out there, proving the non-obviousness of your invention is going to be the key in its assessment.

That's all for now and I hope that you enjoyed the video selection!

Hey everyone and this is my eight IEOR 190G blog post.

This time I will be discussing Obviousness regarding Patents and their legitimacy.

Obviousness has to do with determining whether or not a patent is actually creating a new original invention or simply combining already existing inventions in a way that is "obvious". What this "obvious" means is the root of all discussion and delicacy.

Initially for a patent to be called obvious one simply applied the TSM test:

• In its prior arts there needs to be a Teaching, Suggestion or Motivation towards the combination of the elements that make up the new patent.

But this is too easy to bypass and the definition needed an update! Following the KSR v. Teleflex case, TSM is no longer the norm and can't be rigidly applied as a POSITA (Persona of ordinary skill in the art) is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automation, and behaves accordingly.

This implies that now many patents are disallowed due to obviousness if they yield a predictable result in combining prior arts, if it is common sense for a POSITA and if it an improvement likely to have been thought of. 

Graham analysis

Graham v Deere

This new method is an improvement on the existing system allowing for a more dynamic analysis of inventions. 

Please view my below video for a discussion on the above!