In re Bilski is Good Law Until the US Supreme Court Says Otherwise (Article – WSJ.com)

Article – WSJ.com. Subscription required after WSJ takes this article off the free space on its site.

In re Bilski is being applied as it waits for its hearing before the US Supreme Court in the fall as Bilski v. Doll. A Ninth Circuit district court judge ruled a business method patent invalid based on the Bilski standard of transformative use. The patent holder, DealerTrak Holdings, Inc., intends to appeal the holding.

This is a good chance for me to take a flying leap of logic and talk about how case law and the courts work in the USA.

We have two court systems: the federal system (which holds exclusive jurisdiction over matters involving federal statutes like patent and copyright) and the states’ systems (which holds jurisdiction over state-based matters like contracts and torts). These systems come in hierarchies. I’ll talk about the federal system only (state systems vary from state to state, but they follow this same basic model).

In the federal system, the lowest court is the district court. These are the trial courts; this is the only place where the parties actually have to show up. This is where juries are sworn, testimony is taken, and a record of the litigation is produced (through transcription and discovery). The record is very, very important. There is at least one district court in every state.

The district court judges, who are Article III judges with lifetime appointments just like their appellate brethren, can appoint, under Article I of the Constitution, so-called “magistrate” judges (I was lucky enough to take my law-school Trial Advocacy class with the New Hampshire magistrate, Hon. James Muirhead). Magistrates handle a lot of pre-trial work; they also sometimes handle the trial, if the parties agree. Magistrates report to the district judges. Magistrates’ appointments are for a term of years, not for life.

The district court judges and magistrates must follow the holdings of every appellate court that sits directly above them as they make their decisions. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) sits above each and every district court in matters where the CAFC has exclusive jurisdiction — like patent matters. This means that the district court judges must know and apply CAFC law when deciding matters that fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the CAFC, no matter which so-called “circuit” the district court sits in. If the matter does not fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the CAFC, then the district court must apply the case law of its own individual circuit court of appeals, as well as its own case law. It must also, of course, follow US Supreme Court case law. The district court can overturn its own case law, but it must follow the case law from its own circuit court and the CAFC, and from the US Supreme Court.

The US has 13 circuits (numbered 1-12, and the federal circuit). Each circuit has one regional court of appeals; they hear the cases that come out of the district courts with a decision with which one of the parties is unhappy. They rule based solely on the record of the case (which is why the record is very, very important), the attorneys’ briefs, and sometimes oral arguments, and on existing law, including their own and US Supreme Court case law. It is free to overturn its own case law. It can follow the holdings of other circuits or it can branch out on its own and hold something entirely different.

When there is a split in the circuit courts of appeal on a question of law, the field is ripe for the US Supreme Court to step in to settle the matter (another ripening field for the US Supreme Court is when one of the lower courts rules in a way that they think needs to be examined). The US Supreme Court can pick and choose most of the cases it will hear (there are some that it must hear, specifically those with which original — trial — jurisdiction rests with them, such as disputes between the states), and it does not choose to hear most of the petitions for writs of certiorari (“cert”) that come before it. Denying cert says nothing about the case below; it simply says that the US Supreme Court chooses not to hear the matter.

The US Supreme Court sits above all other courts (both state and federal) in the country. The only case law it must apply (and it is free to overturn this) is its own.

Courts do not like to overturn their own case law. It tends to make something of a splash in the legal world when a court does that, and the higher the court is, the bigger the splash an overturned case makes.

Bilski has been decided by the CAFC. The holding — well, the parties disagree with it; hence the petition for cert to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court granted cert on this one; they will hear and finally decide the questions presented by the case. Until the Nine Wise Ones (or at least a majority of them) say otherwise, the CAFC rule of “transformative use” stands, and by the CAFC ruling the district courts are bound.

Twitter attempts to trademark the term tweet

Twitter attempts to trademark the term TWEET.

Huh.

Twitter wants to register TWEET as a mark, but they’re planning to peaceably coexist with those who use the mark in the same commercial space as Twitter does.

First of all, they haven’t been using TWEET as a mark. TWEET, in the Twitter world, is a noun; trademarks are adjectives.

Second, their proposed use flies in the face of US trademark law and in the face of trademark usage. Trademarks are in place to protect the public from confusion as to the source of goods and services in the stream of commerce. If the mark is used by many to describe goods and services for many sources in the same commercial space, the public will be confused as to the source of goods and services sold or marketed under the mark. Thus, the mark would not be usable as a trademark is intended to be used.

Sorry, Twitter. If I were the examining attorney on this one, I’d deny the registration of the TWEET mark based on genericism. That’s what your own strategy makes of it.

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In re Bilski again

The US Supreme Court has granted cert on In re Bilski (now styled Bilski v. Doll). The case is now pending before the Nine Wise Ones. Here are the court filings (from the point of view of the USPTO).

Bilski, as you recall, requires that business method patents have some sort of “transformative” characteristic — that is, the invention must somehow transform data or information input into something surprisingly different coming out.

The questions presented to the Court are:

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.

I hope Bilski gets overturned; I don’t like its holding. I REALLY hope Bilski gets overturned.

Oops, iPhone Trademark Already Taken In China AAPL

Oops, iPhone Trademark Already Taken In China AAPL.

THIS is why a trademark search is important BEFORE you invest $millions into branding your product. If you intend to market internationally, get the trademark search done in every country that you intend to market in. And search to register in the correct category or categories….

iPhone can’t be iPhone in China. There’s a Chinese company that has registered the mark in the telephones category (Apple owns it for hardware and software). That, folks, is about 1/4 of the world’s population to which Apple cannot market under the current name of the product without going through some sort of legal maneuvering (getting the existing Chinese mark invalidated or reaching some sort of deal with the mark’s owner).

Best laid plans….

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U.S. patent office shortfall worsens: official | Politics | Reuters

U.S. patent office shortfall worsens: official | Politics | Reuters .

Awww…poor babies. They’re collecting “just” $5.9 million per day (yep, you read right) in fee-based revenue and they’re not happy.

Damn. Let’s do the math. $5.9 million/day times 365 days/year … that’s $2,153,500,000 per year. Not bad. Of course, they’re down from $6.9 million per day … same equation, substitute that number and you get $2,518,500,000. Well, heck, they’re still above $2 billion dollars in fee-based revenue. Of course, it’s $365,000,000 less now than they were collecting in fee-based revenue before the recession (if that’s what we’re in) hit….

Still, I have no sympathy. This agency has more than $2 billion dollars per year in fee-based revenue; I could balance that budget with little difficulty. So suck it up, USPTO, and live within your means, just like the rest of us have to do.

Ain't No Plagiarism in Harry Potter Says Publisher – Yahoo News

Ain’t No Plagiarism in Harry Potter Says Publisher – Yahoo News.

Hmm. Copyright infringement and plagiarism seems to be coming out of my ears these days. Here the plagiarism, if found, would be for the general plot line. Harry Potter fought in the Triwizard Tournament and rode the Hogwarts Express (a train); the claimant’s wizard was a hostage and rode a train. The claimant’s book is The Adventures of Willy the Wizard No. 1, Livid Land.

The grounds for copyright infringement in the US are: (1) a valid copyright, which the estate of Adrian Jacobs may indeed have; and (2) a SUBSTANTIALLY similar work, which is where I think the estate falls flat. Lots of characters are held hostage and ride on trains. Not so many characters are wizards, but surely a wizard riding on a train and getting into a hostage situation … plagiarism?? Harry does many, many things besides ride on the train and get into a hostage situation.

The Hogwarts Express entered the Harry Potter lexicon with the first book. So did Voldemort … and Voldemort took a hostage in the second book (a witch named Ginny Weasley). The fourth book,  which all the hoopla is about, was published in July, 2000. I will point out that it’s now 2009; the book has been around for awhile. Why the wait to sue, Plaintiff?

Seems to me that this is one of the more stupid lawsuits. Best wishes to Rowling defending this one; it shouldn’t be too tough to do.