Week 8 #1: patent trolls

In this blogpost, I'll be going over a brief overview of a patent troll.

A patent troll is considered a derogatory term to describe people or companies that misuse patents as a business strategy.
Essentially, a patent troll obtains the patents beings sold at auctions by bankrupt companies attempting to liquidate their assets, or by doing just enough research to prove they had the idea first. They can then launch lawsuits against infringing companies, or simply hold the patent without planning to practice the idea in an attempt to keep other companies productivity at a standstill.

Just by doing my initial research on patent trolls, I had a very negative feeling towards them. They seem to discourage innovation and serve only a single purpose to hurt other companies. Trolls are sometimes also known as non practicing entities, which means that their sole purpose is to hold a patent (without using it for products or services) and then sue other companies for money.

In the next few blogposts I will also be talking more about infringement, trolls, and patent litigations.

Assignment 7b: Video Clip #2 (for 3 units)

Below is a summary and personal thoughts on the video about prior art search.

This is where you can find inventions in the prior art, otherwise defined as the information available to the public that can be found in a printed publication format. These can be in a variety of places such as magazines, books, Internet, patents, published patent applications, and others.

So a prior art search is an attempt to find your invention in all the above prior art source locations as described above. We are searching for prior art in a printed publication format, which consist of the sources described and many others.

This step to Obviousness is crucial because you need to know whether your invention is obvious or not. And a way to determine that is to see what has already been filed and see if your invention has made a novel leap from what has already been created. It is very important to do the prior art search otherwise the patent office will do it themselves and if results come out to be obvious, then your patent may be up for rejection.

Assigment 7b: Video Clip #1

Below is a summary and my personal thoughts on the video that is embedded.

If a prior art search of your invention shows obviousness, then you will require the assistance of a patent practitioner to help overcome the finding of obviousness.

Consider a venn diagram. It consists of two circles. If the two circles don't overlap, that means the two circles pertain to different sets, or in other words, they are different and non-obvious.
The video says that if at any point, your circle (which is your invention) completely overlaps with the circle of all known things and inventions, then your invention is "already known" and therefore, obvious.

The idea of the venn diagram is then applied to the prior art search, where your invention is compared to inventions that were previously filed. At this point, if your patent is deemed obvious, you would have to provide arguments to the patent office to overcome the rejection of the invention.

Assignment 7a: Thoughts on Obviousness (#2 for 3 units)

Here I will further talk about the subject of Obviousness.

There are five basic requirements for patentability: Subject matter requirement, written description, utility, novelty, non-obviousness.

The whole idea behind non-obviousness is that it taps into multiple sources of prior art and makes sure that a person with ordinary skills would not have easily thought of the invention that is trying to get patented. The key here is that it needs to be novel, and that given previous prior art, this invention should shed a new light or bring in something new.

Also, Title 35 USC Section 103 helps one to argue whether a patent is obvious or not. It says: A patent may not be obtained through the invention if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.

Lastly, I just wanted to talk about the TSM test, which says that there must be a teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the prior art to combine elements in the prior art in order to find a patent obvious.

Assignment 7a: My opinions on Obviousness

This post will be about my personal understanding from research on the subject of Obviousness.

There are a couple things that are important and come into play:

First thing is that it has to be novel. One must conduct a prior art search because you want to make sure your idea is novel and that it has not been filed as a patent beforehand. And just as a good general thing to do, one should do these searches in order to gain a better understanding of the patent field.

Second part is the part that pertains more to your invention. This part focuses on making sure that your invention is non-obvious, or in other words, the invention needs a little bit more unexpectedness than just an obvious change to the original product / idea. Good rule of thumb here is that your invention must be non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field of your invention. Something that I learned was that there are patent attorneys who will help you determine whether your invention is obvious or non-obvious because there is a blurred line here and many people are confused about it.

Obviousness can also be determined by looking at prior art. Looking at similar products in the prior art search can help one determine whether there was a non-obvious leap in the new invention.

Assignment 5 for 3 units (Elaborating on 2 select patents)

In this post I will select two specific patents from a previous post and go more indepth in the analysis. I will target anticipation for one of the patents and obviousness for another. I will also be analyzing each patent's Claim #1.

Anticipation:

Temperature-indicating sleeve and related container

I thought this invention was great because it took what we had before (which are insulating sleeves that protect users from the hot/cold contents in the beverage) and took it to the next level. What I mean is that with the insulating sleeve being great for the grip and all, the next step is to know whether the hot/cold drinks could damage our tongue or inside of our mouth.
That's where the temperature indicator comes into play, because now that we have our outer variables controlled and safe, we want to make sure that the contents don't damage our mouths. It is a great invention that has built up from other inventions.
The claim in this invention says that the invention is a container body with a known insulating factor, a detachable sleeve with a known insulating factor, and a temperature indicator that is able to indicate the temperature or a range of temperatures to the user.

Obviousness:

Protective sleeve

I thought this invention was rather obvious in my opinion because it only slightly changes from the insulating sleeves that were previously patented and made. This one focuses on the design of the sleeve, specifically the arch. I do agree that the arch was a great idea and that it definitely saved on sheet material, but I also think that any regular manufacturer of previous sleeves could have seen this and made the design changes themselves.
As opposed to the patent I talk about above, this one is more obvious to me and requires less engineering/prior knowledge. Nevertheless, I'm glad it's here because the reduction in material must be tremendous.
The claims focus on the geometry and design of the sleeve. The claims mainly talk about the design and then it goes into manufacturing of the sleeves, mainly on the material and methods for manufacturing.

Personal view of the insulator cup patents

Hi guys, this is a post regarding my personal view on the list of patents I went through in the previous post.

Anticipation
This part relates to novelty. The patents listed in the previous post all have some kind of novelty to them, and that's why each got their own patent. Every patent's background found a current issue with the cups / sleeves and found a better or different way of solving problems.
The anticipation in many cases are design, but some are also the insulation and the technology behind everything.
Personally, I found interesting to see the different models of sleeves and was certainly amazed at how many patents are out there for just a sleeve. I thought a sleeve was a very mindless invention that is just a piece of paperboard, but in reality, there's quite a lot of engineering that goes into the invention.

Obviousness
This part relates to whether these patents are the same as one another. We can clearly see that each iteration of the sleeve patent seeks to create a better product, whether in functionality or design for the sleeve and the insulator cup. However, after all, all these patents are aimed at one simple thing which is an insulator sleeve.
As a result, the patents don't deviate too much from each other. But I still think that the little things matter, so even though they may not seem to be very different, each serves its own purpose and aims to achieve a different goal.
As I mentioned earlier, I never knew so much thought was put into an insulator sleeve, but after reading about them and further thinking and analyzing about them definitely opened my eyes. Personally, I thought this assignment was very interesting.