A Rockville, Maryland technology company has filed suit against Japanese gaming giant, Nintendo over the controllers for its popular Wii game system.  The seven-year old company, Hillcrest Labs asked a U.S. trade panel to stop Japan-based Nintendo from importing its Wii system into the United States and filed a suit in federal court for unspecified damages. Hillcrest labs claim that it owns the patents to the underlying technology of the Wii system.  According to an interview with the Washington Post, Hillcrest claims its technology “allows users to select movies, browse the Web, control their cable box or otherwise interact with content — not by pressing a button on a conventional controller, but by moving a device left, right, up and down in front of a television or computer screen.”Hillcrest later said in a statement, “while Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property rights…”.  Nintendo has decided not to comment until it receives formal notification of the suit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003562.html?hpid=sec-tech

According to a report in eFluxMedia and the Wall Street Journal, several large tech companies have formed an organization called the “Allied Security Trust” to purchase patents for technologies that members of the trust are planning on using.  This is just another way many of America’s largest tech companies are fighting back against patent trolls.   The “Allied Security Trust” is only for companies that can afford it steep membership fee - $250,000 to join and a $5 million dollar deposit!

 http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Tech_Companies_Form_Alliance_Against_Patent_Trolls_19735.html

According to Bloomberg News and the Houston Chronicle, a jury in New York yesterday awarded Cornell University $184 million or 1% of the $23 billion dollars in sales of Hewlett-Packard processors.

Cornell University had claimed that one of its researchers, “in the 1980s, developed a way to speed up computer processors by having them perform multiple functions at the same time.” Cornell contended that Hewlett-Packard used that process in a line of processors introduced in 1996 and promoted at the time as “the world’s fastest.”

Hewlett-Packard claimed that the patent did not cover a new invention - but the jury disagreed.  HP has not yet said if they will appeal the decision.  The patent, issued in 1989, has since expired.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5817645.html

According to an interesting article in Business Week today, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) claims to have received 694,000 patent applications in 2007. That puts it far ahead of both the U.S., with 484,955 applications, and Japan, with 443,150.

The article also mentions an equally interesting study conducted by Evaluserve, an intellectual-property analytics company, which notes that over the last two decades, “China has taken a variety of steps to enhance its patent system, including creating an online, searchable patent database and a hierarchy of courts for handling intellectual-property disputes.”

We have know that in the past few years patent filings in China have been up as much as 20% per year, but according to the article, this could be a sign that China is starting to appreciate the value in protecting intellectual property rights.  Only time will tell. 

 http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2008/db2008063_332712.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology

According to a report by TelecomTV, an Australian man has begun enforcing international patents which he believes potentially entitle him to a license fee from every website in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States that publishes a URL-linked image, graphic or banner.

Mr. Ronald Neville Langford of Battery Hill, Queensland successfully filed for patents over the connection of a visual image to an Internet URL between 2001 and 2004.Now, Vuestar, a company located in Singapore, claims to have been hired by Mr. Neville’s company to enforce his existing patents.  Vuestar has recently been sending invoices for $5,000 to website operators demanding “annual license fees”, in order to be able to embed URL links in graphics and images on their websites.   

http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=43241&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&view=news

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, a Japanese court ruled Thursday  in favor of Coca-Cola Co., which had been demanding registration for its so-called “contour bottle” since 2003, Maki Morino, spokeswoman for the company’s Japan unit, said Friday

The familiar curvaceous shape of the Coca-Cola bottle is now officially registered as a trademark in Japan — this nation’s first such recognition of a three-dimensional bottle form devoid of any lettering.

This protracted battle with the Japanese Patent Office had gone on for over 5 years after the Patent Office rejected Coca-Cola’s request and claimed that the bottle was similar to other bottles.  The Patent Office has not decided if it will appeal the decision. 

The bottle has been registered as a trademark in the U.S. since 1960, and is likewise registered in Russia, Great Britain, China and other nations, according to Coca-Cola.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/30/business/AS-FIN-COM-Japan-Coca-Cola-Bottle.php

On behalf of Express Search, Inc., we offer a heart felt thanks to the enitre staff of AIPLA for the spectacular Spring Conference held last week in Houston, Texas. 

Check out the AIPLA Conference website and see for yourself.

 http://aipla.org/

CNN is reporting that Teledyne Technologies Inc. (TDY) and Honeywell International Inc. (HON) have agreed to enter into a patent cross-license and settlement agreement related to aircraft data communication systems.  Terms have yet to be made public, but the court case that has involved these two companies has been dismissed. 

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200804240903DOWJONESDJONLINE000775_FORTUNE5.htm

Getting a bill on the Senate Floor is often much harder than passing it.  That’s because the Senate operates on Unanimous Consent agreements (UC’s, as they are called) – meaning that any time, any Senator can block a piece of legislation from coming to the floor.  With Senate floor time closely guarded, it appears that the Patent Reform Bill might just fall victim to a tight floor schedule and continued squabbling between key senators.  As of Thursday, April 10 – negotiations between Senators Hatch, Leahy and Specter seem to have collapsed.  Thus effectively killing the bill for the year.  This is by no means the end, but as time goes on, it will be harder and harder to the Senate to fit this bill into its already busy schedule. 

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200804111432DOWJONESDJONLINE000870_FORTUNE5.htm

Just days after a U.S. Federal Court struck down the USPTO administrative rule changes (See April 3, 2008 post), the United States Senate appears ready to take up the task of reforming the U.S. Patent system.  However, debate is expected to be contentious as Senators attempt to make the first substantive changes to U.S. patent law in nearly 50 years.  A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, stated publicly last week that the Patent Reform Bill (S. 1145) could come to the Senate Floor the week of April 7, 2008. 

The House has already passed their version of the Patent Reform Bill (H.R. 1908) last year.  If the Senate version is passed, it will need to be reconciled in a conference with the House passed version.  Additionally, the combined legislation will need to pass both chambers again and be signed into law by President George W. Bush. 

 http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207001664