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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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why companies are suing | 157 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

why companies are suing

Authored by: DieterWasDriving on Friday, August 17 2012 @ 01:47 PM EDT

With a design patent, there is little that can be reviewed. It's very, very
thin coverage. It counts on the sanity of the parties to realize that if their
design is very similar to others, they are only protected from exact and
near-exact copies. If you have a design patent on a knit, collared shirt with
crocodile logo, you might have a valid complaint against the same style shirt
with an alligator, but not one with any random animal.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

To defend the Patent Examiner

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 17 2012 @ 02:38 PM EDT

First: as noted by DieterWasDriving, quite often the Patent Examiner's hands are tied. Remember, for a while there was a rule in place that prevented them from searching the Internet.

Second: Even when the Examiner rejects a patent, the Patent Appeal's Board can easily override them and grant the patent anyway.

Given some of the patent history that has been disclosed during some of these cases, I highly suspect:

A: The Patent Examiners are far more technically oriented then the patents being granted would lead one to believe. They really want to deny these patents. and

B: The Patent Appeals Board is not staffed with technical individuals... it's staffed with Lawyers. I could easily be wrong on those deductive conclusions based on very little evidence - and that evidence only being circumstantial.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

To defend the Patent Examiner - Authored by: rcsteiner on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 08:29 PM EDT

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