A unanimous Supreme Court has struck down a patent over diagnostic methods in medicine, the latest in a series of controversies over the bounds of patentable subject matter. [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Marcia Coyle/NLJ, SCOTUSBlog, Timothy Lee/ArsTechnica] As I noted last fall, my Cato Institute colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee filed an amicus brief on behalf of the side that prevailed yesterday, arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.”
Tagged as:
medical,
patent law,
Supreme Court
Bad enough to be an established software firm and get hit with lawsuits from competitors or patent trolls. But even companies at the early startup stage now face legal attack, and patent law (unlike copyright) assigns liability even if there has been no knowing act of imitation or appropriation, which complicates the task of defense. “Merely asking a patent lawyer to evaluate the case and advise a company on whether it was guilty of infringement could cost a firm tens of thousands of dollars. And a full-blown patent lawsuit could easily carry a price tag in the millions of dollars, with no guarantee of recovering attorney’s fees even if the defendant prevailed.” In practice, some firms like Microsoft whose portfolios amount to “patent thickets” can establish themselves as gatekeepers to the industry. [Timothy Lee, Slate]
And: “New Patent Regs May Inspire More Litigation, Not Less” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
Tagged as:
Microsoft,
patent law,
technology
My Cato Institute colleagues have filed an amicus brief arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.” [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee, Cato]
Tagged as:
medical,
patent law
Congress might provide a do-over for a drug firm that inadvertently missed filing for a patent extension by a day or two, and in so doing spare the prominent law firm WilmerHale a possible malpractice payout [Andrew Pollack, New York Times]
Tagged as:
lawyers,
patent law,
politics
- Truth through intimidation? U.K.: “Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants” [Guardian] Nanotechnologists are target of Unabomber copycat [Chronicle of Higher Education]
- Blogger (and frequent Overlawyered commenter) Amy Alkon criticizes intrusive TSA agent by name, agent threatens $500K libel suit [Mike Masnick/TechDirt, Mark Bennett]
- NYT fans “pill mill” hysteria, heedless of the costs [Sullum]
- Patent litigant “pursued baseless infringement allegations in bad faith and for an improper purpose.” More loser-pays, please [NLJ, PoL]
- Great moments in link solicitation [Scott Greenfield] Quality bar at feminist lawprof blog may not be set terribly high [Popehat]
- “Wow, this photo got over 475 views from being reposted on Overlawyered” [Erik Magraken]
- “Popular Comic Strip Has Fun With Wacky Warnings” [Bob Dorigo Jones]
Tagged as:
bloggers and the law,
libel slander and defamation,
loser pays,
patent law,
pharmaceuticals,
science and scientists,
wacky warnings
- Maine Supreme Court agrees that not having to show up in court might be reasonable accommodation for plaintiff claiming PTSD disability [Volokh]
- Guess how much Richard Kreimer, the New Jersey homeless guy, has made in his many lawsuit settlements [Newark Star-Ledger, PoL]
- Given the problems with business-method patents, you can see why banks would want to dodge them [Felix Salmon]
- Contempt: “Calling the jailing of a person ‘civil’ doesn’t mean they put curtains on the cell windows.” [Greenfield]
- “Class Counsel Request $90.8M In Fees In Black Farmers Case” [BLT]
- Law school accreditation, recusal standards, international law among topics in new issue of Federalist Society’s ABA Watch;
- Electricity-wise, EPA puts the squeeze on the juice [Andrew Grossman, Heritage; Weston Hicks, AgendaWise; Tatler]
Tagged as:
banks,
contempt,
disabled rights,
international law,
Maine,
patent law,
recusals,
Richard Kreimer
- More on CPSC’s crib ban train wreck [Commissioner Anne Northup, more, earlier]
- One man’s nightmare of false accusation [LA Times via PoL]
- How many plaintiff’s-side flicks is HBO going to air this summer, anyway? ["Mann v. Ford," Abnormal Use]
- Apple granted “incredibly broad patent” over screen gesture technology [Tabarrok]
- Will Congress reverse this term’s much-attacked SCOTUS decisions? [Alison Frankel] Podcast on Wal-Mart v. Dukes with Brian Fitzpatrick [Fed Soc] “Wal-Mart ruling no knock-out blow for class actions” [Reuters] Contrary to some assertions, current law does strongly incentivize individual job-bias claims [Bader] More on case: Dan Bushell, and welcome Craig Newmark readers.
- Mississippi stops proceedings in $322 million asbestos case to consider judge’s possible conflict [JCL, earlier here, here]
- Nice coat, where’dja get it? [annals of incompetent crime, UK Daily Mail]
Tagged as:
CPSC,
environment,
Ford Motor,
Mississippi,
patent law,
recusals,
Wal-Mart v. Dukes
The nutritional paste seems to be a really useful invention in getting international food assistance to the poor. Does that mean it’s okay to break its patent? [Alanna Sheikh, AidWatch]
Tagged as:
patent law
In June we reported on a boomlet in freelance lawsuits accusing companies of marking their products with outdated patent numbers or with other violations of a federal statute that prohibits the use of false or misleading patent marks on products. On December 28 the Federal Circuit issued a decision that may greatly stimulate the activities of what are already being called “marking trolls”. It holds that courts have discretion to impose the law’s $500 penalty per mislabeled item sold, which means that total penalties might rise to gigantic levels; lawyers who bring the cases then split the proceeds with the federal government in qui tam fashion. Coverage: George Best and Jeffrey Simmons/Foley & Lardner, Robert Matthews, Jr., Patently-O, Rebecca Tushnet and more, Patent Prospector.
Tagged as:
patent law,
patent marking,
qui tam
- “Common sense makes a comeback” against zero tolerance in the classroom [USA Today]
- Slip at Massachusetts antiques show leads to lawsuit [Wicked Local Marion]
- Update: Washington Supreme Court takes up horn-honking case [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- MICRA as model: “California’s Schwarzenegger stumps for medical liability reform” [American Medical News]
- “Inventing a better patent system” [Pozen, NYT]
- Google Books settlement narrowed to countries with “common legal heritage” [Sag, ConcurOp]
- One way to make ends meet: cash-strapped Detroit cops are seizing a lot more stuff [Detroit News via Business Insider]
- What temperatures are hot coffee actually served at? Torts buffs (including our Ted Frank) want to know [TortsProf exchange with Michael Rustad and followup, more and yet more]
Tagged as:
California,
forfeiture,
Google,
hot coffee,
Massachusetts,
medical malpractice,
patent law,
Ted Frank,
Washington state,
zero tolerance
Tagged as:
Australia,
Brazil,
fraud,
Kentucky fen-phen settlement fraud,
libel slander and defamation,
McDonald's,
Nevada,
Ninth Circuit,
patent law,
Phoenix,
police,
third party liability for crime
Bounty-hunters crestfallen: a federal judge has rejected a Washington, D.C. lawyer’s suit against Solo Cup for stamping its product with expired patent numbers. [AP/Washington Post, earlier]
Tagged as:
patent law,
qui tam
Annals of bounty-hunting: “A recent ruling on an obscure, century-old statute has opened the door for people familiar with the finer points of patent law to sue companies that stamp their products with expired patent numbers.” Washington, D.C. patent attorney Matthew Pequignot “noticed the patent marks on the lid to his daily cup of coffee, did some research and found that the lid’s maker, Solo Cup Co., was continuing to claim patent protections for disposable lids that had expired nearly 20 years ago.” So he’s sued Solo and E.D. Va. federal judge Leonie Brinkema has allowed his case to go forward, ruling that the requisite harm to the government is satisfied because the government’s laws against “false markings” were violated. (A federal judge in New York, however, ruled differently on the harm-to-government issue in a recent case with similar facts.) Pequignot has offered to settle the Solo suit for $9 million and has sued Gillette on similar theories; the bounty-hunting law allows claimants to keep half of the recovery.
Pequignot, for his part, says he does not expect an avalanche of false markings lawsuits, despite the fact that [attorney Raymond] Stauffer and some others have already followed in his footsteps. He said that, even as a patent attorney, it took him many hours of research to be able to file his lawsuit.
[AP/Fort Wayne Journal Gazette via ABA Journal; Sheri Qualters, NLJ]
Tagged as:
patent law,
patent marking,
qui tam
