Edison as a patent troll, or where is California headed for stem cell research?

December 9, 2022 0 Comments

In March 2006, there was renewed concern about the patent system, manifested not only in the discussion of NTP v. The RIM (BlackBerry) case, which settled for $612.5 million, but also about the fate of the use of injunctive relief in patent infringement cases, will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in eBay v. MercExchange. The Wall Street Journal wrote that US patent law is “deterring research and penalizing innovation” and that the patent system “is fast becoming a detriment to US competitiveness, not to mention basic fairness”. The idea that patents are not critical to innovation can also be found in the philosophy of some venture capitalists, who will tell you directly “patents are not the reason we are investing.”

Although some people, such as Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner, suggest that the patent problems are of recent origin, with changes in the last 20 years that have led to a decline in the quality of patents but a strengthening of rights patent, empirical evidence because this is thin. Many of the problems we see now have been around for a long time.

Aspects of the history of the light bulb are discussed below. According to the VC point of view, JP Morgan invested in Edison, the man, before Edison’s key patent.

issued. To attract the attention of influencers, Edison installed the first commercial electric power plant near Wall Street, just as RIM (BlackBerry) has made an impact through the opulence of

their customers After a commercial beachhead was established, the patent wars began. Edison’s ultimate success in the patent wars was established on both offense and defense, and was largely

assisted by his high profile. It is suggested that certain legal problems faced by Thomas Edison in the 19th century will soon appear before stem cell workers in the 21st century. [Of various suggestions that Edison was troll-like in his behavior in not making product, one observes that Edison himself obtained the funds from investors to set up the first electric power plant, and then created the power plant. He made product. Whether he was actually the inventor of the light bulb is a different story.]

DID EDISON INVENT THE LIGHT BULB?

Although not widely discussed, Edison’s famous US Patent Application No. 223,898, granted January 27, 1880, was involved in interference with competing inventors Sawyer and

Man and Edison lost on the disputed point.

Subsequently, the successors of Sawyer and Man challenged Edison’s patent. Edison’s basic statement read: An electric lamp for giving light by incandescence, consisting of a high-strength carbon filament, made as described, and secured to metal wires, as stated. The trial court noted that Edison “was the first to make a carbon from materials and by a process which was specially designed to impart to it a high specific strength; the first to make a carbon in a special shape for the special purpose of imparting to it high total resistance; and the first to combine a burner of this type with the necessary accessories of lamp construction to prevent its disintegration and give it a long enough life”. The trial court also noted, somewhat

cryptically, “There are many adjudicated cases where it appears the inventor built better than he knew; where a patent has been held for an invention whose full significance was not appreciated by the inventor when it was made. In the case of the patent for the Bell telephone there was much doubt as to whether Mr. Bell had the talking telephone in mind when he filed his patent application, but the court said: “It describes an apparatus which was an articulated telephone, whether Bell knew of it or not.” Edison’s patent survived.One problem with the court’s analysis is that the distinctly long life of Edison’s filaments arose from the use of

bamboo, which was not disclosed in Edison’s patent.

In a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the relevant Sawyer and Man patent, asserted against Edison’s interests, did not survive. The first claim of US Pat.

317,076 (related to the ‘205,144 patent) read: An incandescent conductor for an electric lamp, of carbonized fibrous or textile material and in the shape of an arch or horseshoe, substantially as

before exposed. The Supreme Court noted: “It is admitted that the lamp described in the Sawyer and Man patent is no longer in use and was never a commercial success; that it was not

they incorporate the principle of high strength with a small light surface.” As to the breadth of the Sawyer/Man lawsuit, the Supreme Court stated: “But if timbers in general were not fit for purpose and yet the If the patentee had discovered a wood having certain qualities, which gave it a peculiar suitability for such a purpose, it would not be an infringement for another to discover and use a different type of wood, which was found to contain similar or superior qualities.” The court further noted that Sawyer/Man “made an extensive claim for every fibrous or textile material, when in fact an examination of over six thousand plant growths showed that none of them possessed the peculiar qualities which fitted them for that purpose. Was everyone then prevented by this broad statement from doing more research? We think not.”

The court noted that Edison “found only about three species of bamboo suitable for his purpose.” After discussing the amount of work Edison did with the bamboo, the court asked: The question

really is whether the imperfectly successful experiments of Sawyer and Man, with charred paper and charcoal, granting all that is ascribed to them, entitle them to subject them to

tribute to the results of the brilliant discoveries made by others.” previous use of said material”.

Although the Supreme Court did not address the issue, Edison argued at trial that Sawyer/Man had amended their application to conform to Edison’s work: “There is no such invention

was stated in the original application, but was first introduced more than four years after it was filed, and after the same material had been used by Edison and claimed by

him in a patent application.” The trial court agreed, saying that “after Edison’s inventions on this subject were published to the world, there was a complete change of base by Sawyer and Man, and that the application was amended to give it an entirely different direction and purpose than it had in its original form…. [Testimony] shows that the idea of ​​claiming coals made of fibrous and textile materials was an afterthought and not part of the purpose of the original application.”

On the subject of invention, the text within the court cases expresses distrust as to whether or not Edison was the inventor of the light bulb. In 1875 Henry Woodward and Matthew

Evans patented a light bulb, the rights to which Edison bought. In 1878, Joseph Wilson Swan invented a light bulb that had a useful life of about 13.5 hours. Edison’s light bulbs in 1880, derived from a bamboo-derived filament, lasted 1,200 hours.

The issues in the 1895 case are not unrelated to those in LizardTech v. Land Resources Mapping, 433 F.3d 1373; 2006 US Application LEXIS 137; 77 USPQ2D 1391 (CAFC 2006) and are not

unrelated to issues in the current discussion of alterations in the practice of continuous applications.

[Endnote 13, which appears here in the text, states: 71 Fed. Reg. 48 (Jan. 3, 2006). Abuses of applicants while awaiting developments in similar or parallel technology caused by amending the pending application to cover developments. If the

amendments are covered by the disclosure, this practice is allowed. PIN/NIP, 304 F.3d 1235.]

MOTHER CELLS

The situation faced by courts in the 1880s trying to find out who invented the electric light bulb stepper will soon be faced by courts in the 21st century trying to find out who made the stepper. Step. carried out invention in embryonic stem cells. Although there are currently numerous patent applications on somatic cell nuclear transfer [SCNT] At various stages of embryonic stem cell generation, scope of invention and enablement questions exist today, just as there did in the 19th century. Although many people now claim

large, with perhaps limited clearance and written description, the ultimate winner will be the person who identifies the idea to make the whole system happen and gets the patent

protection about it.

UPGRADE TO “ONLY SEEN TWICE”

In the November 2005 issue of Intellectual Property Today, I presented some data on the PTO’s Fiscal Year 2004 continuing applications and noted that the USPTO is evaluating the possibility

to limit continuations, which crystallized in the Federal Register in January 2006. Two Chicago readers, Kevin Noonan and Paul Reinfelds, submitted data for fiscal year 2005 and noted, with the small number of “second” continuation requests, that the PTO’s proposal to limit continued applications, even if done, would probably not solve the problem facing the PTO.

[Endnote 18 stated of the data for FY 2005: There were 63,000 continuing applications, which included 44,500 cons/cips and 18,500 divisionals. Of these, 11,800 were second, or subsequent, applications. Separately, there were 52,000 RCEs, of which 10,000 were second, or subsequent. Thus, 21,800 applications of

384,228, were second or subsequent, which is 5.7%. As for FY2004, RCEs were the single most abundant “continuing” form, 52,000 of 384,228 [13.5%]. All “continuous” forms combined

constituted 115,000 of 384,228 [30%].
The content of Note 18 was quoted in comments made to the USPTO on proposed rulemaking in the area of ​​continuing applications:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/comments/fpp_continuation/ebert.pdf.

The comments were in reference to my April 2006 article in Intellectual Property Today, which I was unaware of at the time of the comments, was not actually published by Intellectual Property Today. These comments to the USPTO objected to the proposed limitations on second and subsequent continuing filings on the grounds that, even if implemented, the proposed limitations would NOT resolve the backlog issue AND, separately, would adversely affect many reasonable uses of the practice of continuous requests. ]

Of Carhart’s book, “Lost Triumph,” the publisher is Putnam, not Putman. Two other reviewers have disputed the novelty of the book, despite the theory about the possible existence of JEB Stuart

The paper had been published years before Carhart’s book.

[After March 2006, the Supreme Court decided the case eBay v. MercExchange. Therein, the Supreme Court made clear that entities such as universities and individual inventors, who don’t make product, could satisfy the four-factor test and obtain permanent injunctions to bar infringement of their patents.]

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