Patent Violations Among High Tech Companies

new competitors and they will tend to copy the ideas of products and try to dominate the

The Akamai case has potential wide-ranging implications in patent litigation and transactional law pertaining to joint technology ventures. The case has been litigated since 2006. Following this latest Federal Circuit decision, Akamai announced that it would seek a Federal Circuit en banc review of the most recent ruling and, if necessary, take the joint infringement issue to the U.S. Supreme

America's century-old antitrust law is increasingly irrelevant to our current worldwide information technology market. This law is outdated, in accordance to the modern Microsoft situation, because in the past there wasn't technology as there is now. Recently the government has been accusing Microsoft as being a monopoly. "Techno-Optimists" claim that "efforts by government to promote competition by restraining high-tech firms that acquire market power will only stifle competition." Some analysts disagree. They concede that dynamic technology makes it tough to sustain market power. Still, consumers will want compatible equipment, which will lead them to buy whatever product other consumers are using,

Invention is the result of a long study, research, and experimentation (Innovation, n.d.); Innovation is “the discovery and the execution of pioneering ideas that create value” (Greco, 2011), in other words, new application of known concepts. A practical example of invention is the alkaline battery that provided a light-weight, small, and portable power source; innovation applied this concept to anything possible from communication devises, mecanich and construction tools, and even toys. Technical workstream leaders understand that innovators are today’s competitors reducing times, and maximazing profits with new techniques; but inventors have the potential to reshape the landscape of today’s markets leaving dominant companies out of bussiness. Who remembers door-to-door salesmen or “dear John”

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, passed on September 16, 2011, was the most significant reform to the patent system in the United States since the Patent Act of 1952, which redefined the patentability of patent to include being nonobvious in addition to new and useful (1). The demanding need for patent reform had been discussed and debated frequently both within the literature focusing on patent trolls and consistently in Congress with the introduction of many patent reform acts that were never enacted: the Patent Reform Act of 2006 at the 109th Congress, the Patent Reform Act of 2007 at the 110th Congress, and the Patent Reform Act of 2009 at the 111th Congress (2-5). The enactment of the America Invents Act in 2011 after the failure of previous reform attempts signifies its importance in addressing the pressing issues of the United States patent system. The America Invents Acts specifically aimed to confront problems that were impeding innovation: the ever-increasing expense of the patent process, the exploitation of the patent system by patent trolls, and the unnecessary complexity and inefficiency of the patent process as a whole.

A patent is a twenty year exclusive monopoly on the right to make, use and sell a qualifying invention. This legal monopoly is considered a reward for the time and effort expended in creating the invention. In return, the invention must be described in detail to the Patent Office, which publishes the information, thus increasing the amount of technological knowledge available to the public. To obtain a U.S. patent, an inventor must apply to the Patent Office and demonstrate that the invention is new (as compared to prior technology), useful, and "nonobvious." An invention is nonobvious if it is more than a trivial, obvious next step in the advance of the technology. Software patents can be extremely powerful economic tools. They can protect features of a program that cannot be protected under copyright or trade secret law. For example, patents can be obtained for ideas, systems, methods, algorithms, and functions embodied in a software product: editing functions, user-interface features, compiling techniques, operating system techniques, program algorithms, menu arrangements, display presentations or arrangements, and program language translation methods. Since patent rights are exclusive, anyone making, using or selling the

General Motors applies the IEEE Spectrum Patents Scorecard to measure its patent prowess in the automotive and parts industry where GM was ranked third in the 2010 patent power rankings. This was a decline from the number one position it held in the 2008 patent power rankings. (7) Correspondingly, GM Engage is another tool that is exercised to measure innovation. It is a crowd sourcing instrument designed to harness the knowledge and creativity of every GM employee for product innovation. In other words, how receptive the culture is to open innovation. (8) On a whole the importance of innovation cannot be overestimated because it leads to prosperity and a higher quality of life for everyone.

Patent infringement occurs when there is a violation of the patentee’s exclusive right. In their work, W. Kintner & L. Lahr, (1975) argue about the three types of infringement encompassed in the US Patent Act, which are: direct, active inducement and contributory.

Patent trolls, often referred to as Patent Holding Companies (PHC) in the media, are a defamation to the ideals that the United States patent office were meant to promote, that is protection for the innovators and inventors of America. Wikipedia defines patent trolls as “a person or company who enforces patent rights against accused infringers in an attempt to collect licensing fees, but does not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question…”.1 ("Patent troll.") Not only do they undermine the ability of small companies or individuals to experience success and profitability through invention, they also hamper the progress of society, especially in fields of technology. PHCs are a devastating problem in the United States, not only in terms of their impact on global markets and progression, but also in terms of how many PHCs there are and how big they can become.

I'm writing today to ask you to put your full support behind the Innovation Act, also known as H.R. 9, and help stop patent trolls from damaging our economy. The number of frivolous lawsuits these individuals and their greedy attorneys file is unbelievable. Each year, they cost businesses around 80 billion dollars in settlements and legal fees. For some companies, particularly the smaller ones, these lawsuits can drive them out of business while others survive only by passing the cost on to consumers.

After listening to the American Life episode broadcast, it seems as though there are many issues related to today's patenting industry. More specifically, the idea that it is hindering the advancement of technology. There is little to no motivation for people to start businesses in today's society because many entrepreneurs fear they will be sued due to infringement. Chris Sacca, a wealthy venture investor says, “We are at a point in the state of intellectual property, where existing patents probably cover every single behavior that is happening on the internet and on our mobile phones today." Because many patents are so vague, Chris believes that all startup companies violate aspects of certain patents

Tessera was an innovative developer company for the miniature technologies which were widely used in the production of consumer electronics devices. Company’s inventions mainly focus on advanced chip packaging for microelectronic devices and image capturing devices. The company practiced what intellectual property attorneys referred to as “ carrot licensing”. Carrot licensing is a model where a company invents and patents a new idea. Then the company is licensing the idea to other companies with the trade secrets and know-how, and helps them to implement the innovation to the production. The opposite model to carrot licencing is the “stick licensing”, in which a company used either the threat of or actual litigation to

Innovators are so scared that they have gone to far extents just to please dominant NPE cities, such as Marshall, Texas. Samsung has built a ice rink in Marshall, Texas to please the city so the court goes to their favor since there is a strong NPE influence. Samsung has to maintain the ice rink in a dry hot landscape just to please a court system for every time they are sued repeatedly for every little issue in their electronic products. People may wonder, why are NPEs so successful in these cities? NPE cases are taken by many judges because NPEs can help influence the court system to have the judges re-elected so many judges use the opportunity to take patent cases and go in favor of the NPE or plaintiff, person suing/prosecuting (usually NPE). High rank federal judges even make laws in favor of patent trolls and place patent cases to be held in high influential NPE cities and this occurs,

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, product or process that provides a new way of doing something, or that offers a new technical solution to a problem. An invention in general must fulfill certain criteria in order to be protected by a patent. For example, the Patents Act, 1970 in S. 2(1) (j) defines invention as a new product or process involving an inventive step and capable of industrial application. In other words, an invention in order to be patentable must show an element of novelty, must show “an inventive step”, and must be of practical use. Particularly, the Patents Act, 1970 defines “inventive step” as a feature of an invention that involves technical advance as compared to the existing knowledge or having economic significance or both and that makes the invention not obvious to a person skilled in the art. In other words, patent rights are not available for new advances that are merely obvious extensions or modifications of prior designs. Besides, the requirement of difference over prior art, there is a requirement to establish the extent of common general knowledge that exists while

There is a intense rivalry among the big players of this industry. There have been some legal processes involving cases such as false advertising claims and patent infringement.