The 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers Patent Litigation Study has been released.  Peter Zura's excellent 271 Patent Blog summarizes some highlights as follows:

Interestingly, with the alleged "explosion" in patent litigation, there were no identifiable increases in time-to-trial. In fact, since 2005, the median time-to-trial has dropped by more than 6 months.

Regarding the "Top Ten" Rocket Dockets, the breakdown is as follows, along with the median time-to-trial (in years):

1) ED Virginia - 0.88
2) WD Wisconsin - 0.91
3) CD California - 1.71
4) MD Florida - 1.71
5) ED Texas - 1.79
6) Delaware - 1.89
6) Kansas - 1.89
8) ED Pennsylvania - 1.91
9) SD Texas - 1.99
10) ED Michigan - 2.03

Some notable "Crawler" dockets include Massachusetts (3.76 years) and Connecticut (4.66 years).

The "Top Five" patent-friendly jurisdictions, along with overall success rates, include:

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The lists are starting to roll in.  Check out Pogo's Chronicles of Dissent: Top Ten Privacy Breaches of 2007, and Threat Level's look at the year 2007  from a privacy/security perspective.  The Metropolitan Counsel provides us with the Advertising, Marketing And Promotions Law Year In Review,   and the USPTO Announces it's year end results, touting "historic improvement in the quality of patent and trademark reviews and subsequently the quality of issued patents and registered trademarks."  Euclid Managers offers its Predictions for 2008 Security Threats, PatentlyO offers Ten Ways to Spend your Holiday Bonus (I got the Nuvi), the TTAB Blog reports that the Leo Stoller Blog Has Returned, and Chevy Chase reports that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead. 

Happy Holidays, and Best Wishes for a prosperous 2008 from the TechKnowledgy Blog!

This is an excellent article that takes on the issue of design patents being issued in situations where even the low threshold of originality required for copyright protection is too high, such as in the case of design patents on business forms.  Excerpt:

The standard for copyright protection is notoriously low — the work must be independently created by the author and possess a minimal degree of creativity. Nonetheless, even with that generous standard, the courts and the Copyright Office recognize that certain works do not contain even that minimum level of creativity such that they are categorically refused copyright protection. Blank forms, and other forms that do not convey information, fall within this category. 

In contrast, and for good reason, the standard for design patent protection is much more burdensome. Design patents protect new, original, ornamental, and non-obvious designs. This more difficult standard, which generally subsumes the copyright standard, would lead one to assume that anything failing the low copyright would not be eligible for design patent protection.  Then again, one might be wrong. The Patent and Trademark Office has issued design patents for blank forms and recent case law has either upheld design patent protection for blank forms or declined to categorically refuse such protection.

This article explores the blank forms doctrine in copyright law, the overlap between copyright and design patent protection, why the law's refusal to protect blank forms under copyright law is necessarily inconsistent with the law's protection of blank forms via design patents, and possible judicial, Congressional, or administrative solutions to resolve this inconsistency.

Read the whole article here.

On April 18, 2007, bipartisan legislators in both the Senate and House of Representatives introduced sweeping legislation in the Patent Reform Act of 2007.  It is being well covered by others, particularly Dennis Croutch, so we won't reinvent the wheel, but it is one to follow.   See also the Good and Bad in Patent Reform Act of 2007.

(That is a mouthful of P's).  Seems the Patent and Trademark Office is about to launch its test project whereby certain inventors can elect to have their patent applications available for review over the Internet, where anyone can comment on them, primarily for the purposes of identifying relevant prior art.  Of course, that leads to the potential problem of the credibility of those making the comments.  To solve that credibility issue, the USPTO will use a reputation rating system similar to the public feedback systems used by Slashdot to rate it's commentators, and Amazon to rate its reviewers.  Ultimately the "Top Ten" comments will be passed on to the Patent Examiner for consideration.  The hope is that this will be wildly successful and lead to long term patent reform, and it has the backing of some technology industry heavyweights.    From the Community Patent Review Project website:

The patent system needs our help. The United States Patent Office is actively seeking ways to bring greater expertise to bear on the review of patent applications and ensure that only worthwhile inventions receive the patent monopoly. Currently, underpaid and overwhelmed examiners struggle under the backlog of applications. Under pressure to expedite review,

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Doing what it does best, Google has now made each and every patent that you can find at the USPTO available as part of an easily searchable database using the Google search engine.   This includes patents issued from the 1790's through today (although there is some lag on current patents).  Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search, Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search Home Page, or visit the Advanced Patent Search Page to search by criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.  Very cool.  You can find stuff like this device, that supposedly accelerates radio waves beyond the speed of light (who knew?), to the much maligned patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or the Wright Brothers patent on the flying machine, all as easily as looking for pizza in 90210.

The just concluded 109th Congress largely failed to deliver on technology issues, from data breach notification, patent reform, Net neutrality, H-1B visas,  copyright/digital rights management, and the R&D tax credit.  CNet has a good round-up here.

Calling the current test of obviousness "gobbledygook", the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in  KSR International v. Teleflex, a case which questions the very foundation of all of patent law.   During the oral arguments, Chief Justice Roberts intimated that the current "teaching-suggestion-motivation" test relied too little on common sense, while Justice Scalia made the "gobbledygook" comment.  Dennis Crouch provides a good background on the history of the TSM test at his PatentlyO blog.  And if you have an appetite for Supreme Court arguments, you can find the transcript here.

Experts expect the Supreme Court to raise the bar on the obviousness test, which has been widely criticized, particularly in the area of software and business method patents, which would ultimately make it more difficult to obtain patent protection. 

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It will be interesting to see what the TechKnowledgy Landscape will look like in the coming months. With Democrats controlling the House and Senate, the mood in the technology community appears upbeat. MediaNews reports that Nancy Peolsi has committed to giving more attention to tech-sector issues, from renewing the research and development tax credit, to more direct investment in scientific research. With the Dems in power there is also a hope for more H-1B visas for tech workers, and Internet companies are expecting support on their push for network neutrality initiatives. 

Meanwhile, it seems as though the technology lobbyists are not so sure.  CNet reports that they are frantically pressing the republicans for last minute legislation to cover these very topics before the democrats take over.

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The European Commission has stated that patents granted on computer programs are subject to being invalidated in court proceedings as excluded subject matter.  The stance has confused opponents of software patents, as the statement is inconsistent with those made by the EC just last year, when it said that the European Patent Office would continue to grant patents on software patents that make a technical contribution.