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Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release August 7, 2009 STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY On Friday, August 7, 2009, the President signed into law: H.R. 2245, the New Frontier Congressional Gold Medal Act, to award gold medals on behalf of the United States Congress to Neil A. Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon; Edwin E. `Buzz' Aldrin, Jr., the pilot of the lunar module and second person to walk on the moon; Michael Collins, the pilot of their Apollo 11 mission's...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study challenges the traditional view that patents foster innovation, suggesting instead that they may hinder technological progress, economic activity and societal wealth. These results could have important policy implications, because many countries count on patent systems to spur new technology and promote economic growth.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide what sorts of business methods might be patented, an issue with the potential to reshape significant parts of the economy. “This is the most important patent case in 50 years, in particular because there is so much damage and so much good the court could do,” said John F. Duffy, a law professor at George Washington University who submitted a brief in the appeals court in support of neither side. “The newest areas of technology are most threatened by the issues at stake here,” Professor Duffy said. “The court taking...

Six months ago I noted that the European Patent Office had embarked upon a fairly abstruse process: a referral of a “point of law” concerning software patents by the President of the European Patent Office (EPO) to the EPO “Enlarged Board of Appeal”, something that seems to happen quite rarely. Now, you do not have to be a genius to see the problem with this; essentially, the EPO is asking itself whether it wants to widen its own jurisdiction, increase its power and boost its income by allowing software patents. Unless the Enlarged Board of Appeal consists entirely of self-denying,...

TomTom and Microsoft have settled the patent litigation. Here's TechFlash's coverage. According to the Microsoft press release, TomTom will remove functionality regarding the FAT patents within two years, which is no big deal, frankly, and in the meantime, they are covered "in a manner that is fully compliant with TomTom’s obligations under the General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2)": Peter Spours, Director of IP Strategy and Transactions at TomTom N.V., stated: “This agreement puts an end to the litigation between our two companies. It is drafted in a way that ensures TomTom’s full compliance with its obligations under the GPLv2,...

A Northern Arizona University political science professor is working with Southern African farmers studying their agricultural expertise and exposing trade agreements that could threaten the world's food supply. For more than 30 years, Carol Thompson has been consulting on international agriculture trade issues, spending months or years at a time living in Southern African countries studying agricultural expertise and working to "expose constraining trade agreements imposed upon African farmers." Her recent book, Biopiracy of Biodiversity - Global Exchange as Enclosure, analyzes current international agricultural trade policies, explains how they originated, and how they are impacting the world and indigenous cultures....

Confessions of a Very Old Man My name is Benjamin. Here I lie in Philadelphia. I caught lightning with a kite. wrote an Almanac. I perfected a postal service. I coaxed a treaty with France. But most important of all, 221 years ago last week I encouraged 39 men To sign a four-page document To give you a republic, If you can keep it. Yes, the 17th of September was the 221st birthday of the Constitution, and I choose to talk about it through the three great contributions that Benjamin Franklin made to that document. Plus, of course, his summary...

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The latest thinking in the Silicon Valley scene regarding the Microsoft-Yahoo-Carl Icahn Saga, which is not going away, might be about some sort of killer patent owned by Yahoo. Right now financial researchers everywhere are trying to figure out what exactly the patent is. The blogosphere has been abuzz with various notions that the real reason Microsoft Corp. wants Yahoo Inc. has to do with a patent that Microsoft needs to implement its future money making philosophies. One of the hot articles with the most details regarding these possibilities is written by blogger-essayist Usman Latif, who...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Two consumer groups have filed an appeal with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office contesting its March ruling upholding the exclusive patents for stem cells. The office said the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which holds the original patent on embryonic stem cells, can keep its patents. The patents cover all embryonic stem cells used in the United States and any scientists or research firms wanting them must pay WARF's hefty prices for them. The California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the Consumer Watchdog Foundation are the groups behind the lawsuit and it said WARF...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently received an application seeking a patent for what was claimed to be a better way to stand in line while waiting to use an airplane toilet. Jon Dudas, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said the example may be extreme, but it illustrates the declining quality of U.S. patent applications his agency has seen since 2000 as more applicants attempt to game the system. Speaking at an IP symposium here on Wednesday (April 16), Dudas said the quantity of applications for U.S. patents is skyrocketing--more than 500,000 applications are expected this...

With automakers patenting more parts to enhance dealers' service and repair revenues, the knockoff business is taking a big hit. The patenting of more run-of-the-mill auto part designs is roiling small body shops, many of which make their living by fixing cars with knockoffs of original equipment parts such as grilles, hoods, lights, mirrors, side panels and fenders. Such pieces are anywhere from 10% to 50% cheaper than the real McCoys, but increasingly, the law forbids their use. Automakers have long sought patents on certain extra-stylish ornamentation to prevent other automakers from cribbing the design for their vehicles. But the...

Within the patent attorney/patent trolling world, there's been a story gathering steam over the last couple months that seems to only get more bizarre every week. It started, simply enough, at the beginning of September when a company, which was just formed a few months ago, called Illinois Computer Research, sued Google for patent infringement. The patent in question (which amusingly enough, can be found hosted at Google) is officially for "Enhancing touch and feel on the internet". The details show that it's really just describing how you might represent a book online -- and, in fact, the lawsuit points...

(Minneapolis, Minn.) — Honeycrisp has been a sweet little item for the University of Minnesota. "It's generated over $6 million for the University," according to Jay Schrankler, director of the University of Minnesota's office for technology commercialization. That places Honeycrisp, Schrankler says, among the U's top five earners among the institution's inventions. (Royalties from a vaccine patented for fighting HIV amount to tens of millions of dollars.) The U splits royalty income three ways. One third goes to the inventors, one third goes to the college and department where the faculty work and one third goes into a fund for...

The House yesterday passed the most comprehensive patent reform in half a century, delivering a victory for computer technology and financial services companies and leaving drug companies, small inventors, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office bracing for a bigger fight before the bill hits the Senate floor. The bill, which passed 225 to 175 with strong bipartisan support, is meant to reduce the mounting number of patent infringement cases by changing the ways patents are awarded and challenged. Because much of the bill is perceived to be favorable to targets of patent-infringement suits rather than patent holders, it has...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed Friday (Sept. 7) a sweeping and controversial patent reform bill. HR1908 aims to raise the quality of patents and reduce patent litigation and abuse. Sharply divided reactions came quickly in the wake of the 219 to 176 vote that was led by Democrats. A companion bill in the Senate has yet to be brought up for a vote. President George W. Bush might exercise a veto on any final legislation that does not meet administration requirements set out in a statement released earlier today. Similar bills have been proposed in several past legislative sessions...

Congressman Rohrabacker was on the floor railing against H.R.1908 due for a vote on the floor Friday. Just caught the last three or four minutes of his speech. He called it the STEAL AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY ACT. Asked all Americans to call their congresscritters and demand that they vote this bill down as we did for the Shamnesty bill. I don't know everything this bill holds, but he was very angry so I thought I should get it out their. He claims that congress is being very quiet about this bill, because they don't want "us" to be aware of it....

AUSTIN, Texas - Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine. An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline. By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of...

The companies are accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Polaris IP. The patent has a long history in litigation, but all the cases have been settled out of court. Six major Internet companies have been sued for using computers to process their e-mail. AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo stand accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Texas-based Polaris IP. Attorneys representing Polaris IP filed a claim of patent infringement on Monday in U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas. The lawsuit charges the companies...

In extraordinary Senate-House coordination, the two Judiciary committees in the same week voted out a bill (S.1145 and H.R.1908) which, if it becomes law, will spell the end of America's world leadership in innovation. Called the Patent Reform Act, it is a direct attack on the unique, successful American patent system created by the U.S. Constitution. Prior to 1999, the U.S. Patent Office was required to keep secret the contents of a patent application until a patent was granted, and to return the application in secret to the inventor if a patent was not granted. That protected the legal rights...

James Bottomley is really on top of things (sorry -- we had to say it) when it comes to Linux. The CTO of SteelEye Technology is also on the board of the Linux Foundation. In that capacity, he helps smooth the transition of disparate Linux organizations into the still fairly new Foundation. As such, Bottomley's obviously got some insight into Microsoft's continued patent deals with Linux distributors. Those patent deals took another turn this week as Redmond claimed that its deal with Linspire didn't cover software developed under the latest version of the license that governs Linux use, the now...

The globalists are making a new attempt to circumvent and weaken a right explicitly recognized in the U.S. Constitution: Americans' exclusive ownership of their own inventions. Fortunately, Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., have exposed this mischief and called on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to slow down and discuss the proposed legislation before making costly mistakes. As we've learned with "Comprehensive Immigration Reform," we should all be on guard any time politicians patronize us with pompous talk about "reform." The so-called Patent...

Paging U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab: Please call us on your cell phone. And better do it fast because cell phones may soon be harder to come by thanks to one of the dumber rulings ever by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Excerpt - A federal agency on Thursday barred the import of new models of cell phones that contain semiconductors made by Qualcomm Inc., because the chips violate a patent held by a rival, Broadcom Corp. The U.S. International Trade Commission's decision represents a compromise between a ban on all phones with Qualcomm chips, as Broadcom requested, and a ban only on the chips themselves, as recommended by an ITC administrative law judge late last year. ~ snip ~

Microsoft should have admitted that Linux matters sooner. For years, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant seemed to be in denial as the open-source operating software made gains against its Windows franchise. But now a series of deals is finally allowing Microsoft to argue that it's ahead of the curve--with the entertaining upside of making some of the open-source community's truest believers even angrier. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) announced a pact with Linux software distributor Xandros Monday that will the offer tiny company's customers so-called "patent covenants," protecting them from the threat of litigation from Microsoft. So...

First you get everyone riled claiming open source and Linux infringe on your patents, then you won't detail those patents. Why? The paperwork. Yes, Microsoft cited administrative overhead for not detailing the 235 Microsoft patents its chief legal counsel recently told Forbes exist in Linux and open source. Microsoft patents attorney Jim Markwith told OSBC it would be "impossible" for Redmond's bureaucrats to respond to the volume of responses that would result form disclosure. Also, apparently, it's ungentlemanly to name names. "Most people who are familiar with patents know it's not standard operating procedure to list the patents," Markwith said....

"Microsoft patent threat to Linux! The world ... It ends!" shriek the headlines. There's so much hysteria over this it's like a being trapped in pre-teen sleepover. "And when they got home, a bloody hook was hanging from the car door handle!" "SQUEAL!!" Can we all get a grip, just for a few minutes, pretty please? Ignore all those sources of conventional wisdom who rarely dig into a story, but simply slap together a Frankensteinian blend of warmed-over press releases and quotes from random people who get quoted just because they answered the phone. I know, we all love gossip...

How is an untouchable superpower defeated? In many cases, it foolishly engages itself in an unwinnable war and simply consumes itself. Microsoft, threatened by the encroachment of competition from open source, has long waged a detached propaganda war against free software and in particular Linux, but has recently escalated its conflict into a full blown attack. Here's what's happening, and why it will greatly accelerate the company's undoing.Bill Gates' Infatuation With Software. Back in the dawn of desktop computing, Bill Gates led the ideology that software was going to be the sole currency of the new economy. Throughout the 80s...

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers....

This morning the Supreme Court came down with two decisions about patent law that both take small, but extremely important, steps towards reigning in some of the worst abuses of the patent system. In both cases, it's disagreed with the position taken by the Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). This isn't a huge surprise, as many observers figured that the Supreme Court's recent interest in all sorts of patent cases meant that the justices weren't at all happy with the way CAFC was moving. This is a good thing, as the past twenty-five years or so of CAFC...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has made a preliminary decision to revoke three fundamental patents on human embryonic stem cells. If the decision stands, some scientists and consumer groups say it could loosen restrictions on research in a promising new field. Patent examiners rejected all the claims of the three patents that are based on the work of James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, who is widely viewed as having been the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells and grow them in culture. The oldest patent was issued in 1998 and the most recent was...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp infringed on audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. The report said that Alcatel-Lucent had accused the world's biggest software maker of infringing on patents related to standards used for playing computer music files.

Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies, enabling millions in poor countries to be cured of infectious diseases and potentially slashing the NHS drugs bill. Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, based at Hammersmith hospital, calls their revolutionary new model "ethical pharmaceuticals". Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn it technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug company and can be...

At Christmas, we traditionally retell Dickens's story of Scrooge, who cared more for money than for his fellow human beings. What would we think of a Scrooge who could cure diseases that blighted thousands of people's lives but did not do so? Clearly, we would be horrified. But this has increasingly been happening in the name of economics, under the innocent sounding guise of "intellectual property rights." Intellectual property differs from other property—restricting its use is inefficient as it costs nothing for another person to use it. Thomas Jefferson, America's third president, put it more poetically than modern economists (who...

A patent feud between IBM and Amazon.com took a new twist this week as the e-commerce giant countersued Big Blue for infringement and blasted its earlier accusations as "meritless and misleading." In Thursday filings with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the Seattle-based Internet retailer denied infringing on five IBM patents and claimed that just the opposite situation was occurring. "IBM has chosen to infringe Amazon.com's patents willfully and to obtain the commercial benefits of Amazon.com's technology without authorization or compensation," attorneys for the company wrote in their responses to IBM's patent infringement allegations. In late...

The design of Google's search results page earned U.S. patent protection this week, bringing the total number of patents held by the search giant to some three dozen. Design Patent No. 533,561, awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, covers "the ornamental design for a graphical user interface" as shown in several screen shots (click for PDF) of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's search results pages. The screen shots depict lists of the company's search results, with blocks of news-related and sponsored advertising links at the top. A graphic of the word Google, spelled out with...

The greatest differentiator between OS vendors is no longer a question of features, function, performance, customer support, security, reliability or any feature of the product itself. The future of computing may depend on the lawyers.The last month has seen both Oracle and Microsoft take their gloves off in their competition with open source software. Where Oracle has taken a seemingly straightforward approach of copying the competition and undercutting their prices, Microsoft's move to invoke intellectual property and the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL) to counter open source competition is much more potentially damaging. What's more, while Oracle's success...

A U.S. official leading a business delegation here called India's patent and copyright laws antiquated and unable to offer protections necessary for foreign companies to operate here. "Patent and copyright laws in India are old and back-dated and they no where match the world standards," said Franklin Lavin, undersecretary of Commerce for international trade. India and the U.S. "need to sit and work out a proper regulatory framework by identifying the weak areas. India needs to seek more participation by U.S. companies." Addressing a business seminar in New Delhi, Lavin said India needs to modernize its patent and copyright laws...

Excerpt - A recent out-of-court settlement between Apple Computer and a Vermont-based inventor has landed Apple the rights to a prestigious software design patent that may allow the company to seek royalties on a broad spectrum of digital downloads. Michael Starkweather, a lawyer and author of the 10-year old patent, issued a statement on Thursday calling it a "billion dollar patent" that will have affects on the future of the "cell phone, iPod and PDA" industries. "I believe that, with this patent in hand, Apple will eventually be after every phone company, film maker, computer maker and video producer to...

Brigham Young University has accused pharmaceutical giant Pfizer of cheating the school out of profits and credit for the development of Celebrex, a blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug that has earned the company billions of dollars. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City against Pfizer and several of its predecessor companies after years of unsuccessful negotiations, BYU said. The suit seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages, but notes Celebrex sales have exceeded $20 billion. It also seeks corrections in 75 patents in order to credit Professor Daniel L. Simmons for his discoveries. The suit alleges Simmons...

  PATENT OFFENDING In October 1976, an Alaska pipeline engineer named John Moore became seriously, mysteriously ill. Eventually, he found himself at the UCLA Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with a rare, progressive form of blood cancer called hairy cell leukemia.To slow the disease and perhaps save his life, Moore's physician - Dr. David Golde - recommended removing Moore's spleen. The surgery was successful. Moore recovered and eventually returned to Alaska, with instructions to visit Golde for annual checkups.  Over the next eight years, Moore did so. During each visit, Golde would extract samples of Moore's blood, skin,...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Creative Technology Ltd. on Monday filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Apple Computer Inc., charging the maker of the market-leading iPod media player of infringing on Creative's patents for some of its own music-playing devices. Creative (CREAF : 5.46, -0.10, -1.8% ) said that it wants the ITC to investigate whether Apple (AAPL : 67.79, +0.09, +0.1% ) violated the Singapore-based patents for the former company's Zen brand-name device, and is asking the organization to force Apple to stop "engaging in sales, marketing, importation or sale after importation into the United States"...

"Who's that tripping over my bridge?" Thus spake the troll in the famous children's tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." Miffed that the goats were encroaching on his property, the troll threatened to gobble them up. But the trolls' adversaries had the last laugh.

Holding Hu to account. Listening to the American political conversation recently, one would conclude that the foremost threats to the U.S. economy are the purchase by foreigners of our “critical infrastructure” and an insufficient supply of unskilled labor to pick our lettuce. These two nonissues have been part of the red-hot debates over the (since jettisoned) Dubai ports deal and illegal immigration. As is so often the case, where there is heat in American politics, there is no light, and if you want to discover a truly important issue, it is often necessary to look to one that is relatively...

Burst.com has filed a countersuit against Apple Computer claiming that the iTunes software, the iPod and the Quicktime streaming software all infringe on patents held by Burst.com, Burst announced Monday. [more]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court debated the rights of inventors Wednesday, weighing in on a dispute between eBay and a small Virginia patent holder. The case's outcome could mean millions of dollars for inventors working in their garages or in large pharmaceutical labs - including those who develop a product and those who opt only to patent ideas. The dispute between eBay, the Web-based marketplace, and MercExchange is one of several high-profile legal battles that are calling attention to the nation's patent laws, which some critics - including Amazon.com, Yahoo! and Xerox Corp. - say need updating to keep...

• The Earth revolves around the Sun. • The speed of light is a constant. • Apples fall to earth because of gravity. • Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes. • Elevated uric acid is linked to gout. • Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease. • Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins. ACTUALLY, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for...

The Indian and Chinese drug discovery outsourcing market is riding a crest with companies from outside Asia increasingly seeking to outsource drug discovery to these countries for greater cost savings. Other major factors driving this shift to Indian and Chinese companies are the better access to expertise, productivity gains, process improvements, variable costs, avoidance of capital outlays and opportunities for companies to focus on specific niches. With competition in the global market escalating, multinational companies are aggressively seeking innovative strategies such as outsourcing production. Global pharmaceutical manufacturing was worth nearly $50bn in 2004, and India and China have the potential...

Microsoft has begun e-mailing its corporate customers worldwide, letting them know that they may need to start using a different version of Office as a result of a recent legal setback. The software maker said Monday that it has been forced to issue new versions of Office 2003 and Office XP, which change the way Microsoft's Access database interacts with its Excel spreadsheet. The move follows a verdict last year by a jury in Orange County, Calif., which found in favor of a patent claim by Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado. Microsoft was ordered to pay $8.9 million in damages...

Indian proofreaders to the rescue!Almost every US patent contains at least one mistake, according to new research. The vast majority are trivial errors, most of them the fault of the USPTO; but two per cent of the patents examined were found to contain serious mistakes that weakened the core claims. The findings come from Intellevate, a firm that offers support services to intellectual property lawyers, such as prior art searching and patent proofreading, from facilities in Minneapolis and India. Proofreading is an important last step in the process of obtaining a patent because it can identify errors that can affect...

Ending a two-year battle over the FAT file system, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has reversed a non-final ruling from October and upheld Microsoft's patents on the technology. Despite the prior setbacks, Microsoft had remained steadfast that it would be victorious all along. In June of 2004, the USPTO agreed to review the patent after questions arose surrounding its validity. A group known as the Public Patent Foundation disputed Microsoft's claims to FAT in April 2004, saying it had become ubiquitous as a format and found in many devices. After an initial rejection of the patents in September 2004,...