invalid

Another Apple touch-screen patent in trouble

One of Apple's broad patents covering touch-screen technology is under fire by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, following a re-examination.

The USPTO ruled this week that all 20 claims included in the patent are invalid, according to a filing spotted by blog Foss Patents.

The decision, which was handed down Monday, is not final.

It's the second such Apple patent to be deemed completely invalid following a re-examination by the USPTO. A similar decision for an Apple patent covering the company's rubber-banding bounce effect came in late October, and is also subject to an appeal. … Read more

Scoop: Bounty set for invalidating Lodsys patents

Lodsys, a group that's targeted companies big and small for infringing on its patents, is now in the crosshairs of a company offering to pay a bounty for research that seeks to invalidate those patents.

Article One Partners, a business that crowdsources intellectual property (IP) research, has launched three new studies into patents held by Lodsys (1,2,3). Each offers a reward to the party that finds prior art, or examples of pre-existing technologies or other IP that could be used as evidence to invalidate one or more of Lodsys' patents.

Article One Partners became involved in a … Read more

Variables editor

Environmental variables are Windows elements that specify basic system properties and control how various programs behave. They're stored in the Registry, and modifying them changes how the system or a particular program behaves. Experienced users can tweak their systems by modifying environmental variables, and Windows offers several methods, including the temporary Set command and the Registry Editor. We tried out Rapid Environmental Editor, or Rapid EE, from RapidPDF. It's a free tool that adds some sophistication, features, and ease of use to the process by replacing the cumbersome Windows dialog with a full-featured interface.

Before we ran Rapid … Read more

Clean your computer's clock

This program, like many others, promises to clean your Registry, make your computer run faster, and, if you're lucky, do your dishes, too. At least when it comes to cleaning your Registry, Advanced Registry Optimizer seems to do a pretty good job.

The scan process was easy to initiate and was done in about 3 minutes, although don't forget that the scan time depends on the computer system. A smart-looking row of five tabs and their labels makes navigating the program options stress-free, and the lack of lag on the system was much appreciated. The user interface has … Read more

Is an unsecured FTP server publicly accessible?

Unlike other areas of the law where doing something in public can land you in a lawsuit (or at least a courtroom with a nice, slightly used orange jumpsuit), sometimes in patent law doing things in public can get you out of a lawsuit.

When a company finds itself in court defending against a patent lawsuit, it will usually assert two major defenses. First, the company will say "I don't practice (or produce) what is claimed in this patent." Second, a defendant in a patent lawsuit will also attempt to "invalidate" the claims of the patent by showing that "prior art" described the claims in the patent prior to the application date of the patent. While this defense can take multiple forms (see, for example, 35 U.S.C. ? 102 ), a defendant must often show that the prior art relied upon was in fact publicly known or publicly used. So now its time for a pop quiz--which one of three options would you consider not being "publicly accessible" for the purposes of United States patent law:

A: The use of a centrifuge in a secure laboratory at the National Institute for Health;

B: The posting of a paper on an unsecured FTP server; or

C: Indexing a dissertation in a paper file and placing it on a shelf...in Germany.