A new website was officially launched today: FedCirc.Us. This is what the site says about its purpose: “FedCirc.us is a portal of patent caselaw information built on a foundation of timely, accurate and considerate reviews of appellate level court decisions.?  Content is organized to provide quick updates on the latest developments in the law and to facilitate focused legal research.”

From my experience, the value of this site will depend upon the quality, quantity, and timeliness of the information, just like everything else on the ‘Net. I hope that the site is successful, it could be a tremendous resource.

Important – just as the site disclaims – the content is for informational purposes. Just like anything you read here, if the summary/characterization sounds interesting, go look at the original source and see what it actually says and then always discuss with your competent counsel prior to undertaking any action.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has made a damages study available – a summary that asserts that damage awards are increasing and trial tactics are changing. You may use this link to sign up to receive the short 32 page brief study.

I found this study by reviewing this post. My comments to the post are reproduced below.

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Thank you for pointing out this PWC Study – I enjoyed the overview and agree with several points.

However, I have reviewed the study and find some points where I disagree with your characterizations. First, while 53% of the cases result in damage awards according to the study, since the study does not count injunctions, summary judgements, and motions to dismiss. The “success” of a plaintiff in achieving an injunction can sometimes be far more valuable than damages. In this case, the 53% damages figure from the survey does not directly support the assertion that plaintiffs “win barely more than one half of the time.”

Second, while the survey does assert that 30% of the damage decisions issued by US federal district courts were affirmed, the ‘other’ 70% were overturned, adjusted, or remanded. The survey does not indicate what happens in these 70% of the cases, from my experience the damage awards can be increased.

There are, of course, other costs of litigation not directly quantified in this survey, particularly the mind share and distractions of the executives and technologists in participating in the litigation. I am not sure that many people who have been sued feel victorious, no matter the outcome.?

I am certainly not a financial advisor and I am not recommending that you invest in this product. I am writing about something that is new to me, and therefore I believe it may be new to some of you. (When I started working at Townsend and Townsend as a young associate almost 20 years ago as a patent prosecutor, my mentors would always stress that we (patent prosecutors) as a group are famously poor investors in new patents/tech. I have come to begin to understand why this is true – as it is quite tempting to focus on the technology rather than the business, market, and management metrics that can easily predominate over “cool tech” – one of the lessons I am trying to pass on to my clients).

Ocean Tomo (a group that has been conducting public auctions of patents for the last year or two) is offering what it asserts is the first intellectual property index. This index looks to be an ETF (exchange traded fund) and may be early in the testing phase, if you are truly a risk taker, patent evangelist, or ???.

ETFtrends has an article about the Patent Index here. Some basics on ETFs from ETFtrends can be found here? if you are so interested.

Again, this is not legal or? financial advice and I am not making any recommendation for (or against). If interested, please review. If more interested, consult with your competent financial advisors.

In view of the official closing of the Federal Government offices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), on Tuesday, January 2, 2007, the day proclaimed by President Bush as a National Day of Mourning, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will consider Tuesday, January 2, 2007 a ???Federal holiday” so responses filed Wednesday, 3 January 2007 can be timely if properly filed.

Last Friday, the USPTO issued a? press release? describing its performance as the best on record in over 20 years. The press release summarizes it annual report? and included this chart:

??? I am not sure why the USPTO chooses to emphasize this. Similar to a judge’s desired impartiality (e.g, she is not supposed to care who wins), the USPTO should not care whether you get a patent, as long as the USPTO “gets it right.” Perhaps it is a response to some of the recent criticisms that the USPTO is letting too many worthwhile patents through. Most comments like this I read do not provide many details as to how we know what a worthwhile patent is or how we determine the “correct” number of patents.

Some other numbers from the report: the USPTO did not meet its target for patent average first action pendency – Target is 22 months (nearly 2 years before you learn anything substantive on your application) and actual is 22.6 months. Being an average, there are many of you upwards of that 22.6 month number, sometimes significantly above.

The patent average total pendency (months) has a target of 31.3 months and actual average total pendency is 31.1 months. While the US Examiners I work with are generally very good, it is interesting that the USPTO would emphasize a “record year” that includes the lowest allowance rate.

The Patent Statute states that an inventor is entitled to a patent, unless… The unless being various items that the USPTO must demonstrate that the inventor is, in fact, NOT entitled to their patent. The burden is on the USPTO, and given a decrease in allowance rate may suggest that the USPTO is working even harder. From a perspective of a person in the trenches representing solo and small start-up inventors, I am not sure what all of this means. Stay tuned for more analysis.

? Other interesting data from the report: total US applications filed in 2006 increased to 443,652 from 409,532 (number of provisional applications filed increased from 11,753 to 121,307). While the allowance rate dropped, the absolute number of allowances increased to 186,593 from 182,254.

Just to let you know where you stand, the total number of pending applications now exceeds 1,000,000 applications (1,003,884) versus 885,002 a year ago). The number of total applications pending has increased each year since 1986 (there were only 207,774 that year).

As a group, residents of California are the most prolific in filing applications by a huge margin – in 2005 (the last year data is available), patent applications filed by residents of California were 52,401, followed by Texas at 13,903, then New York at 13,482, then Washington at 10,149.

For non-US residents, residents of Japan filed the most (73, 250), then Germany (21,598), then the Republic of Korea (16,643), and Canada (9,114).

Our government agencies were busy – at the time an application was issued, 287 were owned by the Navy, 187 by the Army, and 108 by the HEW/HHS.?  NASA was fourth at 88, followed by the Air Force at 58.

The USPTO did not release much information about contested cases (e.g., Appeals and Interferences). We do know that the number of Appeals pending at the end of FY2005 was 882, that 3,349 new cases were filed in FY2006, and that the total number of cases pending at the end of FY2006 increased to 1,357.

Stay tuned

Today was a busy day for many bloggers, commenting that Microsoft had applied for patents on RSS or that Microsoft was going to get “the” patent on web feeds!

As? we’ll see, this is? not? the case at all so we can all rest easy. Here are the two applications so you can read along yourself and see that I have nothing up my proverbial sleeves:

PatentApp_1, PatentApp_2

One thing I want to help my readers do is to begin to understand the patent process and think logically and critically.

? Here is claim 1 from the 20060288011 publication:

1. A computer-implemented method comprising: presenting a user interface having a subscription control to enable a user to subscribe to a feed; receiving, via the user interface, a user selection of the subscription control; and responsive to receiving the user’s selection, initiating a feed subscription process.

Claim 1 from the 20060288329 publication:

1. A system comprising: one or more computer-readable media; computer-readable instructions on the one or more computer-readable media which, when executed, implement: an RSS platform that is configured to receive and process RSS data in one or more formats; and code means configured to enable different types of applications to access RSS data that has been received and processed by the RSS platform.

The first claim is clear, Microsoft believes that it has invented a new user interface implemented on a computer. This interface has a subscription control that, when actuated such as by clicking, initiates a feed subscription process. I personally like “1-click” subscription and think that this a good thing.

The second claim is a little more murky because of the claim? language and claim construction principles. However, the general idea is that they assert that they have invented an RSS platform that receives and processes RSS feeds AND that there is additional code to enable different types of applications to access RSS data that has been received and processed. That may be useful, depending upon what those other applications do.

Did Microsoft invent these?? We’ll have to wait and see. What we do know now (just as always) there are risks to characterizing a patent or a publication. Any summarizing we do generalizes the invention to the point we cannot have much meaningful discourse because the measure of a patent or of an application begins at the precise and specific claim language. A patent is awarded based upon all the claim elements, each noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, in the precise relationship used by the claim drafter. Besides the exact claim language, you sometimes refer to the rest of the patent to understand what the specific terms mean, such as what a subscription control is, what it means to initiate a feed subscription. It may be the case that this language is too broad, covering a mailto: command that sends a message: Sign Me Up! That is what the USPTO trains its Examiners for, to evaluate the specifics of claims and prior art.

An additional point should be made. These patent applications apply to user interfaces (in the first case) and to RSS platforms (in the second case). If either of these patents are allowed and issued, we will need to look at the specific? language just like we did above. Until then, relax and subscribe to your favorite feed subscription and enjoy your RSS platforms!

we are about to launch our new website – www.yourpatentguy.com. In this space, I will provide some of my own views on the happenings in the world of patent law. This BLOG (or blawg) is just underway, please continue to check back.

There are many people who have been blogging for a good long time and offer great resources. I will be including some of them in my blogroll – please check them out!