Posts Tagged ‘intellectual property’

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Federal Court Affirms BPAI in Dawson v. Dawson and Bowman

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

This is a guest post from Theresa Stadheim of Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner

In Chandler Dawson v. Chandler Dawson and Lyle Bowman, Appeal Nos. 2012-1214,-1215,-1216, -1217 (Fed. Cir. March 25, 2013) (a copy can be found at the end of this post), the Federal Circuit affirmed a Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) interference decision that Chandler Dawson was not the sole inventor of the inventions covered by U.S. Patent No. 6,239,113 (“the ‘113 patent”) and U.S. patent No. 6,569,443 (“the ‘443 patent”).

Chandler Dawson was an employee of UCSF in the summer of 1997 when he gave a presentation to the World Health Organization (WHO) about topical use of an antibiotic for treating eye infections.  During the presentation and during subsequent presentations and discussions about the antibiotic, Dawson stated that he was having trouble formulating a delivery mechanism for the eye drug.  After a delivery mechanism was created, without the assistance of Dawson, Dawson and another party, Dr. Lyle Bowman, filed patent applications assigned to InSite that later issued as the ‘113 patent and the ‘443 patent.  UCSF then filed a patent application, essentially copying the ‘113 and ‘443 patent specification and claims and naming Dawson as the sole inventor, to provoke an interference proceeding.  The issue in the interference proceedings came down to a determination of who conceived of the inventions, and when they conceived of the inventions.

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In Re Hubbell

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Guest post by Theresa Stadheim of Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner)

In In Re Jeffrey Hubbell, Jason Schense, Andreas Zisch, and Heike Hall, Appeal No. 2011-1547 (Fed. Cir. March 7, 2013) (a copy can be found at the end of this post), the Federal Circuit affirmed a Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision that claims of U.S. Patent Application No. 10/650,509 (the ‘509 application”) were obvious under the doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting.

The invention disclosed in the ‘509 application was based on research by Jeffrey Hubbell and Jason Schense while they were employed at California Institute of Technology (“CalTech”).  The ‘509 application was assigned to CalTech.  Hubbell left CalTech and joined the faculty of Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich (“ETHZ”) five years before the ‘509 application was filed.  An application that later issued as patent number 7,601,685 (“the ‘685 patent”) was based on research by Hubbell and Schense at ETHZ.  The ‘695 patent was assigned to ETHZ and Universitat Zurich.  The ‘509 application was rejected by the Examiner for obviousness-type double patenting over the ‘685 patent and other patents.  (A copy of the ‘509 application as published and the ‘685 patent can be found at the end of this post).  The BPAI affirmed the rejection, rejecting Hubbell’s argument that common ownership is required for obviousness-type double patenting.

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UK National Stem Cell Network Report – The Patent Watch Landscape

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

If you have either a passing or passionate interest in stem cell patenting, this report is worth some of your time. (A link to the report can be found at the end of this post.)

The report analyzes the stem cell patent landscape from November 2008 to Oct 2009 and from November 2008 to October 2011. The “patent watch dataset” is based on patent applications published or patents issued/ granted by the PCT and in the US, EP and  UK. The top applicant of published applications is Kyoto University and the top applicant on granted patents is WARF.

However, the report goes far beyond a simple numbers game; it analyzes the therapeutic areas of research represented by the stem cell IP. The report provides topography maps of the various areas such as pluripotent cells (e.g., embryonic stem cells) that is still a very active area, as is research in the areas of hematopoietic stem cells and neural stem cells. Even more interesting is the analysis that maps collaborations between high-filing universities and their spin-offs or start-up companies, as well as established companies.

Having done some of the early IP work on pluripotent adult stem cells, I found the report as addictive as a box of chocolates – I never was sure what would be on the next page.

informatic-stemcells

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Brilliant Instruments v. GuideTech – Doctrine of Equivalents on Review

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Contributed by Theresa Stadheim of Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner

In Brilliant Instruments, Inc., v. Guidetech, LLC, Appeal no. 2012-1018 (Fed. Cir. February 20, 2013) (a copy can be found at the end of this post), a panel of the Federal Circuit reversed and remanded the Northern District of California’s summary judgment that Brilliant Instruments, Inc. (“Brilliant”) did not infringe GuideTech’s patents: 6,226,231 (the ’231 patent), 6,091,671 (the ’671 patent) and 6,181,649 (the ’649 patent). (A copy of each patent can be found at the end of this post.)

One issue was whether there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Brilliant infringed the ’671 and the ’649 patents under the doctrine of equivalents.  The particular claim limitation at issue recited in claim 1 of the ’671  patent: “wherein said shunt and said capacitor are operatively disposed in parallel with respect to said first current circuit.”

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