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  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,...

Even today, sources on inventions list six by Franklin that are still in active use today. One of those sits in my back hall, cheerfully and economically heating the back of my home – the Franklin stove. Another sits on the bridge of my nose as I write this – a pair of bifocals. But this is about Franklin’s greatest invention, one that the lists never mention because it is mere words, not a physical object. Franklin made seven trips to Europe, as a diplomat and scholar. He was welcomed into all the learned societies that existed in Europe then....

[...] Inventors have always held a special place in American history and business lore, embodying innovation and economic progress in a country that has long prized individual creativity and the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers and researchers have given society microchips, personal computers, the Internet, balloon catheters, bar codes, fiber optics, e-mail systems, hearing aids, air bags and automated teller machines, among a bevy of other devices. [...] A larger pool of Mr. West's colleagues echoes his concerns. "The scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations...

When Sprint Nextel filed its lawsuit last month against theglobe.com, Voiceglo and Vonage Holdings for allegedly infringing on its proprietary technology, it may have catapulted all voice over IP (VoIP) service providers into the complicated world of patent litigation. Whether the two defendants eventually have their day in court or settle matters privately still remains to be seen. As of this article's publication date, no response has yet been filed by either defendant. But legal experts familiar with the case generally agree that Sprint is executing on a well-constructed legal strategy that the puts the defendants before an uphill climb....

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. patent office has reportedly granted a patent for an anti-gravity device -- breaking its rule to reject inventions that defy the laws of physics. The journal Nature said patent 6,960,975 was granted Nov. 1 to Boris Volfson of Huntington, Ind., for a space vehicle propelled by a superconducting shield that alters the curvature of space-time outside the craft in a way that counteracts gravity. One of the main theoretical arguments against anti-gravity is that it implies the availability of unlimited energy. "If you design an anti-gravity machine, you've got a perpetual-motion machine," Robert...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will publish history’s first “storyline patent” application today from an application filed in November, 2003. Inventor Andrew Knight will assert publication-based provisional patent rights against the entertainment industry. Falls Church, Virginia (PRWEB) November 3, 2005 -- Further to a policy of publishing patent applications eighteen months after filing, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is scheduled to publish history’s first “storyline patent” application today. The publication will be based on a utility patent application filed by Andrew Knight in November, 2003, the first such application to claim a fictional storyline. Knight, a rocket engine...

It reads like an Onion parody, but it is real. Here's the USPTO published application: Process of relaying a story having a unique plot Abstract A process of relaying a story having a timeline and a unique plot involving characters comprises: indicating a character's desire at a first time in the timeline for at least one of the following: a) to remain asleep or unconscious until a particular event occurs; and b) to forget or be substantially unable to recall substantially all events during the time period from the first time until a particular event occurs; indicating the character's substantial...

Taiwan has responded to bird flu fears by starting work on its own version of the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu, without waiting for the manufacturer's consent. Taiwan officials said they had applied for the right to copy the drug - but the priority was to protect the public. Tamiflu, made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, cannot cure bird-flu but is widely seen as the best anti-viral drug to fight it, correspondents say. Bird flu has killed at least 60 people in Asia since December 2003. Scientists fear the lethal H5N1 strain of the virus could combine with human flu or mutate...

One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented, Study Reveals Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News October 13, 2005 A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities. The study, which is reported this week in the journal Science, is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs. "It might come as...

Hollywood and large U.S. software companies chalked up another crucial yet little-noticed victory last week with the final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. You wouldn't know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law. Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.