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Our Current Newsletter

Ten Important Patents

• 10. Amazon's "one-click" shopping technology; "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network"; U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411. The "one-click" shopping patent is infamous for the controversy it created. The patent describes an online system allowing customers to enter their credit card number and address information just once so that on subsequent visits to the website a purchase merely requires a single mouse-click. The patent was used to obtain an injunction against an infringing feature of Barnes and Noble's website and has been upheld after repeated litigation and also re-examination.
• 9. "Magnetic tape cartridge transducing apparatus and method"; U.S. Patent No. 3,555,245. The famous inventor Jerome Lemelson (who reportedly slept with a notebook next to his bed to record ideas he had during the night) developed the idea of using magnetic tape to store images when he and his wife were doing a manual search at the United States Patent Office. The mechanism for using the tape led to audiocassette and videocassette recording technology. Lemelson later licensed the patent to Sony for use in their Sony Walkman device.
• 8. "Cotton Gin"; U.S. Patent No. X000072. The cotton gin automated the separation of cottonseed from cotton fiber. Prior to the cotton gin, farming cotton required intensive manual labor. Eli Whitney's cotton gin generated up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily and made cotton production profitable. The patent number is preceded by an "X" because the patent is an "X-Patent" - one of the patents that burned in a fire in December of 1836 while in temporary storage, and then reconstructed based on the copy in possession of the inventor.

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Our Past Newsletters

Importance of Trademark Protection
An intellectual property attorney will often tell you that trademark protection is something that every business, regardless of service or industry, should have. Instead of merely reciting the benefits of registering a trademark, I would like to share some personal experiences about how different things are in a country that lacks laws designed to protect trademarks ...
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Importance of Patent Language
On July 25th, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the highest patent court, issued an opinion that may change the way patents are written. The lawsuit, Phillips v. AWH, 03-1269, related to infringement of a patent for steel panels that are load-bearing, impact-resistant, and also insulated against fire and noise. The panels are designed to be linked together and used in prisons. Phillips, the inventor, agreed with AWH to manufacture and to sell the panels. AWH continued to market panels after the agreement ended ...
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WINTER 2007 — Google released a beta version of a patent search engine (www.google.com/patents) on Dec. 13, 2006. Using the public domain information available from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and implementing new features not available on the current Patents Office search engine, Google has made patent searching signifi cantly easier. The database is limited to patents available on the Patent Offi ce website, which goes back to the 1790's, and also does not include published patent applications, foreign patents or patents issued within the past few months. Nevertheless, over seven million patents are searchable using Google Patent Search. ...
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FALL 2006 — IBM Leads The Way in Patent Reform to Foster Innovation! International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the United States' largest patent holder, announced a plan to change their patent disclosure and filing procedures to alleviate some of the work load at the U.S. Patent Office. IBM's plan includes: 1) publishing all IBM patents on the world wide web for public examination after filing; 2) clarifying ownership of IBM patents which were filed by companies owned by IBM; and 3) reducing patent application fi lings for business processes lacking technical merit. ...
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SUMMER 2006 — A Death Knell For Patent Trolls? The phrase "patent troll" is used to describe a person or company that fi les or buys patents not to use them, but instead acquires patents to license them to others. A patent troll offers to license a patent to a company that is currently utilizing technology contained in the troll's patent, and threatens a lawsuit if an agreement is not reached. The most potent tools in the patent troll's arsenal is the ability to ask a court for a permanent injunction against an infringing party. ...
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SPRING 2006 — Tivo's Multimedia Time-Warping System is a Slam Dunk in Texas. TiVo and EchoStar Communications met head-to-head in a Federal District Court in Marshall, Texas to address claims that EchoStar's Dish Network infringes U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389 granted to TiVo on May 15, 2001. TiVo's patent relates to time-shifting technology within digital video recorder (DVR) set-top boxes. In the lawsuit, TiVo claims that EchoStar infringes the patented technology by providing DVR set-top boxes for watching a TV show recorded earlier on one channel while simultaneously recording a show on a different channel. ...
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WINTER 2006 — 3,000,000th U.S. Trademark! On September 27, 2005, Alert-All Corporation received U.S. Trademark Reg. No. 3,000,000 for the mark "TOT FINDER". The trademark was registered for use on stickers to be placed in locations where helpless persons are in need of assistance. These persons (namely children and invalids) may be located using these stickers in the case of emergency or disaster. ...
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FALL 2005 — An Application In Time Saves Nine ...
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