Posted by Greg McKallagat on Thu, Aug 26, 2010 @ 11:39 AM
Article One Researcher Pierre (msasangu) was the Winning Researcher for Study WTL 486 – Modular and Customizable Process and System for Capturing Field Documentation Data in a Complex Project Workflow System. Pierre hails from Canada where he is currently an independent contractor.
Q. How did you first learn about Article One?
Pierre: Last year in November, I travelled to New York City to visit my relatives. By accident I was surfing the "NY Craig Lists" and I noticed that you were looking for Researchers. At that time I did not realize how global this activity was. When Back to Canada I contacted AOP and expressed my interest to be a Researcher. But I have been really active only in the last 6 months or so and I enjoy it.
Q. Where do you live?
Pierre: I live In Canada. I am a Canadian Citizen
Q. What, if any, background do you have in patent research or research in general?
Pierre: While at University completing my PhD in Chemistry, I had a compulsory course in literature search. This helped me a lot during my career as R&D Scientist. I have been involved in R&D for more than 10 years in both private and public sectors. I am now an independent contractor and will put all my knowledge to the contribution and the advancement of this community. I want to stress that motivation; passion and interest are the most important factors of success even as Researcher. I love to make Research of any sort even the most difficult ones. I am always motivated to solve "that problem" first and the reward will be added to it when the problem has been correctly fixed.
Q. What is your profession?
Pierre: I am a Professional R&D Scientist. I have one Patent, issued recently for the moment but I hope to invent more in the near future.
Q. What is your education background?
Pierre: Chemical Engineering and PhD in Chemistry
Q. Please explain your expertise which you find most relevant to your work with Article One.
Pierre: As I mentioned before, R&D Jobs I have previously required a lot of literature search. This helped me a lot, but I still think that that motivation, passion and interest are the most important determinant factors for success even in this business
Q. What do you like best about being an Article One Advisor?
Pierre: Freedom and also learning new things constantly on a regular basis. I believe that life is a learning process regardless of your origin, sex or age.
Q. Do you know of any good patent research educational texts, resources or websites?
Pierre: I normally use a combination of the following databases: WIPO, Espacenet.com, Boliven.com, Google and Google patent. Most of these databases are relational databases and that makes the search relatively easy to do.
Q. Which study so far have you most enjoyed researching?
Pierre: All studies are important to me regardless the field of study and the level of difficulty
Q. How do you choose which studies you participate in?
Pierre: I read the abstract first and the main text thereafter. If the text is really difficult, I will read it again at least 3 times before I start selecting important key words to search and relate them to the whole entire patent or study.
Q. Which research tools do you frequently use?
Pierre: Intuitive, inductive and mostly effectual reasoning and curiosity
Q. What is your primary language?
Pierre: French
Q. Are you fluent in any other languages?
Pierre: Yes, English and Swedish
Q. In which language(s) do you conduct your research?
Pierre: English of course
Q. Do you have special access to any particular databases which you leverage for your research?
Pierre: As I mentioned earlier I normally use a combination of the following databases: WIPO, Espacenet.com, Boliven.com, Google and Google patent. Most of these databases are relational databases and that makes the search relatively easy to do.
Q. Do you conduct research in any non-English databases?
Pierre: Only one time in French
Q. You won one of the AOP studies right? Which study?
Pierre: WTL 486
Q. Where did you find the prior art which won the study?
Pierre: I do not remember exactly but it was a combination of at least two databases
Q. What was the process that led you to the winning prior art?
Pierre: I just made the research, submitted my answer(s) and I did not know that I will win. Can you really know in advance that you can win? Definitely not!
Q. What did you do with the reward money?
Pierre: I will invest in a fast computer system and my wife will make the budget for the rest of the money. She is good at that.
Q. Which Article One Studies are you currently researching?
Pierre: Semiconductors or so I believe
Q. What advice would you give to a new Advisor researching his/her first Article One Study?
Pierre: Passion, passion, passion and interest, then things will be fun! Think to solve the problem first. Forget about reward, because it will be added to, when the problem is solved correctly.
Q. What would you say to somebody who was considering becoming an Article One Advisor?
Pierre: Come onboard. It fun and you will learn a lot for your own sake.
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Posted by Cheryl Milone on Tue, Aug 03, 2010 @ 10:29 AM
In a notice published in the Federal Register last month (75 Fed. Reg. 39493), the United States Patent and Trademark Office requested comments on its 2010-2015 Strategic Plan. The period for comments closed yesterday, August 2nd.
In the spirit of openness, I want to share what I submitted. I invite any comments on my thoughts below.
Comments for Draft USPTO 2010-2015 Strategic Plan
I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments about the Draft USPTO 2010-2015 Strategic Plan. First, as a member of the patent bar and a patent attorney, I am impressed with the Plan on numerous levels: the extensive breadth and scope of improvements Director Kappos and his team seek to address; the powerful multifaceted approach to improve patent quality both by the Patent Office Examiner corps and applicants by, for example, altering Examiner work plan incentives, providing better IT tools for Examiners and enabling applicants to prioritize examination of applications; and, the delivery of efficiency and execution demonstrated by the Office’s timely Interim Guidelines for Bilski.
The patent bar has had high expectations of Director Kappos and this Plan validates those expectations. I hope that the factors upon which the Plan relies for success will be realized.
Second, I offer high-level suggestions with the notion that they require further analysis of decision-making authority and other legal or practical limitations. They are intended to address issues in the patent industry on a practical level:
a) “Forum” shopping considerations for the approach that the source of prior art searches is first patent office (U.S. or international) in which a patent application is filed. One area to consider is the variation in quality that may exist between patent offices and the potential of “forum” shopping to offices where there may be more favorable search results. While the U.S. pilot and subsequent execution are assumed to have quality control processes, a misalignment may occur where stakeholders detect a process advantage at a given patent office. Additional stakeholders seeking the same patent office can exacerbate the problem. Rising volume at a given patent office, either due to more favorable or expedited search results, also may put pressure on the quality produced by the office as the volume increases.
b) Cost-effective post issuance patent quality review. The NPE litigation data continues to show an increase in litigation assertions particularly in jurisdictions viewed as friendly to NPEs. There also is wide recognition and a target set by this Patent Office of patent quality improvements.
With the statistic that nearly half of all patents litigated to judgment are found to be invalid (John R. Allison & Mark A. Lemley, “Empirical Evidence on the Validity of Litigated Patents,” 28 Am. Intell. Prop. L. Ass’n Q.J. 185 (1998)), and the general notion of $1 million in costs for alleged infringers pre-trial, litigation is not the optimal venue to analyze issued patents asserted in litigation in the first instance. Alleged infringers have attempted to direct this analysis in reexamination requests to the USPTO as an alternative to trial. However, there is an uneven response of courts to stay litigations even where alleged infringers have not received notice of infringement. Often, alleged infringers’ first awareness of patent infringement assertions is from complaints filed to initiate litigations.
One basis for this unevenness is the long pendency of reexaminations. In one recent decision, the denial of a stay for a filed reexamination was simply on the prejudice of the average pendency of the litigation being much less than the average pendency of inter partes reexamination. Telecommunication Systems, Inc. v. Sybase 365, Inc, 2:09cv387. E.D.Va. (Dec. 2009). One approach for the coordinated action between the USPTO and federal judiciary suggested in the Plan is for reexaminations filed within a predetermined period of time from litigation filings (e.g., 6 months), to be processed while the litigation is stayed. Reducing the reexamination pendencies, which already is a stated goal of the USPTO, would need to be an important component of the coordination to reduce the burden to alleged infringers and the public of the cost of litigation where patent quality generally remains uncertain. Successful implementation of the USPTO 2010-2015 Strategic Plan requires time to filter through the patent application process. It will be several years before the success of this Strategic Plan is realized by the private sector.
Cheryl Miione, B.S.E.E., Esq., CEO and Founder of www.ArticleOnePartners.com
Posted by Cheryl Milone on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 @ 01:36 PM
I applaud Rebecca Burn Callander’s post on Wikilitigation and the insights Ms. Callander offers on the use of crowdsourced evidence to shed light on the accuracy of medical research. The circuitous and expensive path of litigation would have been the alternative, subjecting the public to a decision on important medical topics to a battle of the experts. The risk here was not for Mr. Singh alone but for the public in need of access to accurate medical data. On a broader level, the public subsidizes the current legal system in both the U.K. and U.S. so the public pays in multiple ways.
Clear and efficient analysis is what is needed to provide accurate information to the public on topics subjected to litigation. The personal interests of parties are regularly served by the machine that makes up the legal system - attorneys, experts, consultants, judges and service providers supporting these components. These stakeholders generally are compensated based on the continuation of a legal dispute, not on its settlement. As such, the incentives to serve the public and provide justice as a public policy basis are misaligned with the stakeholders responsible for realizing these policies.
In this litigation, the risk to an individual and the public was great enough to spur public action. And the result is dramatic in providing evidence that becomes incontrovertible, as it is the aggregation of knowledge from everyone with an interest in the topic. The aggregation of knowledge is greater than that of any one individual. When the aggregate answer is clear, the power of providing certainty becomes as important as the answer itself.
Whenever an answer is knowable if enough people are asked and the same set of people is burdened by a failure to uncover the right answer, asking everyone would seem to be a natural evolution. Hence, I believe that Wikilitigation is not only going to survive but it will be the dominant form of input from an increasingly sophisticated public. The notion of citizen’s review is discussed in every branch of government from those agencies, which grant rights to citizens to the legal system, which adjudicates those rights.
One excellent example is the grant and adjudication of patent rights. A patent is, in essence, a description of technology as of a certain date (in the U.S., the date is called the invention date). The determination of whether to grant a patent is based in part on research about whether the description of technology is in an earlier dated publication. Courts later review the same question, and litigants in a patent dispute further research the earlier publications. While the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office does high quality work, its resources are limited to fully research this evidence, which can be publicly available documents in any language from anywhere in the world. The burden on the public for improperly granted patents is the payment of monopoly pricing for products and systems covered by the patents.
Article One Partners, which I founded in November 2008, provides the opportunity to the public to weigh in on these questions based on a platform that crowdsources this evidence. An incentive is added to the platform so that researchers are compensated for uncovering premier evidence. In this way, the public can weigh in on patents and correct an improper grant thereby providing savings to the public.
This takes the goal of making the court accessible to the public a step further, by compensating the public for their efforts – in effect monetizing a public good.
In the same manner as the publicwas given clarity about the efficacy of medical claims in the chiropractic field, public input on scientific research underlying patents can support the proper scope of some patents which provides litigants with the evidence needed to correct improper grants.
The community of Article One Partners provides a valuable service along the lines of Wikilitigation in the patent industry. We invite members of the public interested in pursuing these goals to join our efforts at www.ArticleOnePartners.com. While the evidence provided cannot definitely provide an answer on patents, just as the litigation against Mr. Singh continued past the revelation of the public information, it can drive settlement of litigation and enable the parties to proceed more efficiently.
Posted by David DiGiammarino on Fri, Jul 09, 2010 @ 08:37 AM
Recently, I was looking at a great museum of obscure patents, compiled by Gene Quinn of IP Watchdog. These patents range from absurd (but believable) to mind-boggling (and unbelievable).
One of the patents that is a bit on the 
absurd side is the "Pest Death Ray" (pictured) that vaporizes insect with a blast of radiation. Yes, radiation. Are pests are ever really that annoying?
Others that are mind-boggling include the "Homeopathic X-ray" where "the patient and health care provider entangle their finger/thumb O-rings and then hover them over the part of the patients body that needs to be imaged." Somehow hovering o-ringed fingers over your body will produce an X-ray, apparentely by electromagnetic fields.
If you're wondering how this patent got issued, you're not alone. Gene Quinn wrote, "this one absolutely must fall into the WHAT WAS THE EXAMINER THINKING category." The interesting part is that the examiner had a good head on his shoulders. It was the system that allowed this patent to be issued. From Gene Quinn:
As it turns out, one of my close personal friends was the supervising examiner in the Art Group that issued this patent. As you can probably imagine I have had many conversations about this particular patent with him. What I picked up on when I first wrote about the patent was one particular part of the invention, but the main part of the invention is a diagnostic tool. The patent examiner, a fellow that I am told was extremely technically sophisticated, did not personally believe that this invention would work. He issued appropriate rejections and then the inventor submitted affidavits of so-called experts to say that it did work.
The patent examiner is legally required to take the word of the inventor when affadavits are filed, so he did what he had to do by law. Unfortunately, that just makes for a poor patent.
A final example from IP Watchdog's museum is one of poor quality: Better Mouse Trap. Yes, for real, a better mousetrap. Gene points out that "a search of the Patent Office online database shows that since 1976 some 44 patents have been granted with the term 'mouse trap' in the title." It's doubtful that this patent is truly novel, compared to all the past patents out there.
There are over a dozen other obscure patents in IPWatchdog's museum. It's worth taking a look.
Posted by Cheryl Milone on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 @ 09:22 AM
The IP world is overflowing with news and reactions on the Supreme Court's Bilski decision this past Monday. I wanted to take a moment to highlight the analyses of two highly acclaimed IP blogs, and offer my own thoughts. A quote from each follows -- but both are worth reading in their entirety.
Gene Quinn, of IPWatchDog, writes:
Today, after a wait of nearly 8 months the Supreme Court has seemingly got it right, at least based on early analysis. In doing away with the machine or transformation test as the sole test for determining whether an invention is patentable subject matter the Supreme Court has kicked open the door and will not allow it to be closed on new technologies and innovations that we cannot today imagine.
Dennis Crouch, of Patently-O, writes:
Business as Usual: In general, the [Bilski] opinion offers no clarity or aid for those tasked with determining whether a particular innovation falls within Section 101. The opinion provides no new lines to be avoided. Rather, the outcome from the decision might be best stated as "business as usual."
Business Methods: Section 101 does not categorically exclude business methods from patentability.
Software: Although the court expressly refused to rule on the patentability of software, it appears that software will largely remain patentable.
These two posts highlight how the decision maintains the status quo. In my view, while greater clarity on the standard for patentable subject matter would assist the USPTO and the private sector in evaluating their rights and obligations, the decision is better than some expected.
The elimination of business method patents as a class of eligible subject matter would have called into question not only business method patents but also software patents. The ripple effect of such an outcome would have been dramatic. The notion of categorizing classes of patentable subject matter to exclude business methods or software directs the patent system in the wrong direction, away from meritorious inventions which can be evaluated on the basis of advancing the knowledge of the public with previously unknown inventions.
While areas of innovation change over time, from tangible (e.g., during the industrial revolution) to intangible products and services such as software that drive our economy today, the ideal patent system would reward deserving innovation. The public is best served with this opportunity for patent protection and a reduction in the burden of premium pricing and other societal costs of a patent system where patent quality needs to improve. My hope is for clarity on standard and better access to prior art by the USPTO through organizations like Peer-To-Patent.
I also was struck by the following passage in the decision as it applies to the Article One community of researchers.
"This Age puts the possibility of innovation in the hands of more people and raises new difficulties for the patent law. With ever more people trying to innovate and thus seeking patent protections for their inventions, the patent law faces a great challenge in striking a balance between protecting inventors and not granting monopolies over procedures that others would discover by independent, creative application of general principals. Nothing in this opinion should be read to take a position on where that balance ought to be struck."
Bilski v. Kappos (2010), p10 [download]
The recognition of the patent system as a living system providing rights and obligations that eventually flow to the public is tremendous. Article One's vision is that the public, which both benefits and is burdened by the current system, should be asked to participate in the decision of whether an innovation is worthy of a patent grant.
Posted by David DiGiammarino on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 08:06 AM
Today is the final day of the Supreme Court's term, which means we should be hearing about the decision of Bilski v. Kappos. (Unless, of course, they push it until next term.) The issue at hand is the patentability of business methods.
SCOTUS will be live-blogging the issuance of decisions starting at 9:45a ET. Until then, here are four posts about Bilski v. Kappos to keep you busy:
IPWatchdog.com - Bilski and Software Patents: A Programmers Perspective
Unlike many of the visitors and contributors on this site, I am not a lawyer. I am a programmer who found this blog while chasing links across the Internet looking for information on software patents and what has now become one of the most anticipated Supreme Court decisions ever; Bilski v. Kappos. That was almost eight months ago at a time when I held what is probably a common view of software patents among programmers. Specifically, that they are immoral, unfair, and restrictive to innovation and creativity. I have since found that things are not as black and white as they appear and I'd like to share with you the problems as I see them, from a programmer's point of view. Read more...
Ruminations from IP Strategist - Happy Bilski Day!
As with probably all patent folks, I am looking forward to seeing what The Supremes have to say about business method patents. No matter what happens, we can be assured that the press will be full of all kinds of statements like “the end is near” for patents. In reality, Bilski is not a very big deal, and effects only patents that are poorly written or that cover inventions that really shouldn’t be patentable. Read more...
SCOTUS - A Preview of Big Monday
And then there’s Bilski,
the case that will consider the validity of business-method patents. These sorts of patents — Amazon’s one-click checkout and Priceline’s reverse auction represent two examples — have been kicking around for over a decade, ever since the Federal Circuit’s State Street decision, which expanded the scope of processes that could be patented. The high court must now determine whether such swaths of modern business activity deserve patent protections (thereby opening the door to infringement lawsuits) or belong in the public domain (depriving their inventors of monopoly profits.) Read more...
Patently O - Bilski, Kenny Rogers, and Supreme Court Rule 46
Kenny Rogers’ hit song The Gambler provides some wise strategic advice, valid not only in cards and but also in law and perhaps in life generally: If “fold ’em” is an option, sometimes it is the best one. Supreme Court Rule 46 on “Dismissing Cases” provides petitioners in Supreme Court cases the opportunity to “fold ’em,” and in the days remaining before the Supreme Court delivers an opinion in its Bilski v. Kappos case, the most puzzling question in the case has become this: Why won’t the petititoners in Bilski fold? Read more...
Posted by Greg McKallagat on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 @ 03:21 PM
Researcher Yossi Shain (yshain) lives in Israel and has been involved in the semiconductor industry for the past fifteen years. For the bulk of that time, he was involved in R&D commercializing parallel processing arrays based on content addressable memory, for video and 3d graphics. In his current capacity as IPR manager of Neonode Technologies, Yossi works with Soquel Group, who referred him to Article One. Yossi has authored several patents, including novel methods for addition and subtraction using content addressable memory cells.
Yossi is a liberal-arts enthusiast (and amateur tennis player), who arrived at engineering in the course of his work. He attended the School of Visual Arts, Juilliard, and City University of New York, before he began drafting patent applications for a patent attorney in 1996. Two years into that job, he was asked by an inventor to join his semiconductor start-up as a technical writer. As he became proficient in the company's technology, Yossi began giving technology seminars to engineers at large multinational corporations and was invited several times to guest lecture in the Tel Aviv University MSEE program. Yossi then joined Neomagic and became a software engineer and in-house guru for porting algorithms to the company's unique hardware, eventually managing a team that developed a 3d graphics library for the company's processor. Two years ago Yossi began working for Neonode, a small mobile phone start-up in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is IPR manager.
When conducting research for Article One Studies, Yossi's familiarity with the technology landscape directs his search. He is very involved in mobile handset hardware, from SoC chips to touch screens. Yossi says, "Article One had a great idea to apply a social network model to harness the wealth of experience and knowledge out there and I am happy to be a part of this. Actually, it's the first social network scheme that I have seen successfully applied to deriving tangible results in any field. I am confident this model has exciting potential in many fields and look forward to watching how it develops across different industries."
Posted by Paul DiGiammarino on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 @ 08:36 AM
Reporting from the 3d Annual IP Business Congress meeting here in Munich, sponsored by Intellectual Asset Management magazine.
Well attended by more than 400 delegates, speakers and sponsors.
Terrific plenary session this morning on the evolving IP business market. Marshall Phelps, former Corporate VP and Deputy General Counsel for IP and Licensing at Microsoft and IBM, emphasized importance of collaboration among companies and importance of this to achieving success at Microsoft and IBM. He also shared that 41% of patents litigated are proven invalid and importance of using new tools and technology to improve patent quality. Carl Horton, GE Chief IP Counsel, had great insights on the topic of IP Policy and Politics during his talk.
Crowd is energized and fully engaged.
Looking forward to Bruce Berman's talk this afternoon on the future of the USPTO and the IP Hall of Fame Gala Dinner.
Posted by David DiGiammarino on Thu, Jun 17, 2010 @ 08:31 AM
[Update 10:37AM: No Bilski decision today. With the opinion for Schwab released, Bilski remains the only case not yet decided from the November argument.]
The Supreme Court is approaching its summer recess, and one remaining decision that has the attention of those of us in the patent space is Bilski v Kappos.
The Supreme Court is expected to announce some decisions this morning at 10AM. There is speculation that re Bilksi could be one of them.
This case, and the forthcoming decision could affect business method patents. Anticipate This writes:
1. Whether the Federal Circuit erred by holding that a “process” must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transform a particular article into a different state or thing (“machine-or-transformation” test), to be eligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101, despite this Court’s precedent declining to limit the broad statutory grant of patent eligibility for “any” new and useful process beyond excluding patents for “laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.”
2. Whether the Federal Circuit’s “machine-or-transformation” test for patent eligibility, which effectively forecloses meaningful patent protection to many business methods, contradicts the clear Congressional intent that patents protect “method[s] of doing or conducting business.” 35 U.S.C. § 273.
We'll be paying close attention this morning to see if there are any updates.
Posted by David DiGiammarino on Mon, Jun 07, 2010 @ 11:16 AM
USPTO Director David Kappos wrote yesterday, in his public USPTO blog, about how critical it is for his office to focus on improving the reexamination process. He wrote:
All hyperbole aside, it is no stretch to say that the work of our reexamination team is critically important to the U.S. and global economy, and to our Agency. We know there are jobs locked up in our backlog; well, I’m sure there are lots and lots of jobs riding on the patents we have in reexamination.
The first initiative to improve reexamination is a best practice document, available here. This document includes FAQs and has a goal of minimizing defective reexam requests, which is problem in "many requests for reexamination".
The best practices document was created based on responses and comments from the patent. It is exemplary that the USPTO is actively listening to its user community and producing documents to assist in effectively utilizing the patent system.
Kappos concludes by sourcing for more input from the patent community, saying: "As always, comments are welcome. Thanks for keeping them coming!" If you have any thoughts, go ahead and post -- the USPTO is listening!