On October 22, 2009, the Finish cell phone giant, Nokia, filed suit against Apple in the Federal District Court of Delaware.  Nokia alleges that Apple infringed against ten of their patents which covered various wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption technologies.  According to Nokia, every cell phone produced by Apple since 2007 has violated these patents.  I will speculate why Nokia has brought such a suit later in this blog, but, first, I will explain patent infringement. Read the rest of this entry »

Brainstorm Patents focuses on working with individual inventors.  While a lot of inventors are leaps and bounds ahead in technical areas, they may not have a solid understanding of the patent system and what it can (and can’t) do to help them in their ever growing quest for marketability and product success.

The post below is a continuation on the first question in a series that aims to shed some light on the details of patent work.  I will do my best to answer everything in layman’s terms.  If you need more clarification, contact us, and we’ll be glad to help!

Question #1: I just came up with a great idea.  What should I do now?

In the previous post, the beginning stages of idea conceptualization were touched upon.  The “Eureka!” moment fills you with excitement, anticipation and visions of grandeur and success.  While the “Eureka!” moment is the most important, the “Now What?!” moment is a close second.  An idea without any action will always be an idea.  Ideas are very tough to cash in for fame and fortune.  In order to be successful, your idea must become something – a product, a business, a process, a system.  We at Brainstorm Patents aim to help you take your idea and turn it into something of value.  Let’s pick up from where we left off last post….

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The Big Idea Group has announced a new search for commercial products with a submission deadline of March 31, 2010.

Big Idea Group is searching for inventions that could become the basis of a profitable microbusiness. BIG plans to form a venture to bring the best invention (or inventions) to market. The winning inventor(s) will receive not only a royalty on products sold, but also an equity stake in the new business that we form to launch the invention. Multiple inventions might be selected.

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WHAT TYPE OF PATENT SYSTEM IS BEST FOR AMERICA?

There is much debate today about whether the United States should retain its current first-to-invent patent policy or should it conform to the rest of the world and adopt a first-to-file patent policy.  The Patent Reform Act of 2007 was passed by the House of Representatives in September of 2008 and it is still waiting for a vote in the Senate.  If the Senate approves the act, it will change America’s patent system to a first-to-file system.  I believe that such a change would be devastating to the American economy, as well as our form of capitalism.  I will explain the two systems and articulate why I believe that the current system (first-to-invent) is the better option.

1. The policy behind the United States Patent System

The modern American patent is a government issued grant, which confers upon the patent owner, from the time the patent issues, the right to exclude others from “making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a period of 20 years from the filing date of the patent application.  In return for obtaining this grant, the inventor must disclose the invention in detail to the public so that a person of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains can make use of the invention.  This “contract” between the government and inventors ensures that inventions will be made public as quickly as possible so that others can build upon the technology.  A patent is essentially an incentive for an inventor to spend large sums of time and money to create an invention that will be disclosed to the public and will benefit the public.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brainstorm Patents focuses on working with individual inventors.  While a lot of inventors are leaps and bounds ahead in technical areas, they may not have a solid understanding of the patent system and what it can (and can’t) do to help them in their ever growing quest for marketability and product success.

Below is the first question in a series that aims to shed some light on the details of patent work.  I will do my best to answer everything in layman’s terms.  If you need more clarification, contact us, and we’ll be glad to help!

Question #1: I just came up with a great idea.  What should I do now?

CONGRATULATIONS! Your great idea is the beginning of a long, challenging, and oftentimes, extremely exciting and fun journey.  Did I mention LONG?  This journey will test your patience, your financial priorities, and your personal drive and commitment.  So, think long and hard before you set off on this potentially life-altering adventure….

For the sake of the blog, I’m going to use an imaginary example that I will carry throughout the process to further drive home key points and concepts.  Here goes nothing – enjoy!

I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich yesterday and got frustrated at how much time, how much effort, and how many resources it took to make my sandwich.  And then the best idea EVER popped into my head…A PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH MAKING MACHINE!!!!!  WOW!  How did I not think of this earlier???  I was so excited that I couldn’t even finish making my PB&J.  I quickly ran to my computer and did a search for “I just came up with a great idea.  What should I do now?”  To my chagrin, nothing useful popped up.  So, I resorted to calling a friend of mine to help me chart my course to becoming a multi-millionaire.

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The purpose of this blog post is to simply summarize the Bilski case and its relationship to Section 101 of the U.S. code.

Summary of the case

This case dealt with a patent application that described a method for providing a fixed bill energy contract to consumers.  The invention calculated the amount a consumer would pay for a future bill based on prior bills.  For further details on the application see patent application number 08/833,892.  The patent examiner rejected all 11 claims on the grounds that “the invention is not implemented on a specific apparatus and merely manipulates an abstract idea and solves a purely mathematical problem without any limitation to a practical application, therefore, the invention is not directed to the technological arts.”  The applicant appealed the rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI).  The BPAI affirmed the rejection, on different grounds than the “technological arts” test.  Their reasoning was that the Applicants’ claims did not involve any patent-eligible transformation.  Finally the applicants appealed the rejection to the Federal Circuit, which upheld the rejection, 9-3.

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Introduction

Currently there is a huge debate regarding whether the United States should have universal healthcare.  This debate seems to have energized both sides of the argument.  However, there is a sub-argument that is often overlooked by the usual participants: should there be a short or long exclusivity period for biosimilars (also called follow-on biologics).

After reading many articles and listening to the pundits of cable news regarding healthcare reform, I noticed that the arguments tended to always center on the pharmaceutical industry.  This is because the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries share a symbiotic relationship such that as one goes, so will the other.  The future of the pharmaceutical industry lies with biotechnology.

Biotechnology related drugs account for around ten to fifteen percent of the current pharmaceutical market.  Moreover, biotechnology is outperforming the pharmaceutical industry as a whole in terms of growth, because much of the biotechnology sector revolves around biosimilars.  Biosimilar is the term coined for protein drugs that are similar, but not identical to, an existing pharmaceutical product.  Biosimilars are different because a single protein can exist in many forms because of a protein’s ability to change conformations.  A single protein can react one way when it is in one conformation, and totally differently when the conformation is changed.  For example, as pharmaceutical companies do not disclose the techniques that they use to create the biosimilars, it is almost impossible for a generic drug producer to use a process identical to the process responsible for creating the original drug.  Since the drugs created by biosimilars are essentially different from the original drug, they are able to obtain patents on their own merits.  In addition to patent protection, companies who create biosimilars are given an additional exclusivity period on their data.

Today there are two schools of thought regarding the data exclusivity period.  There is what I will call the “Howard Dean School” where it is argued that the exclusivity period should be between twelve and fourteen years and the “Obama School” which advocates that the exclusivity period should be seven years.  I will try to sum up the two schools and explain why I believe that Howard Dean is right and the President is wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the brand new Brainstorm Patents blog! We should have some posts up soon, so stay tuned!