So what exactly happened to the storied and controversial business method patent yesterday? Read Joe Mullin's post on The Prior Art. at the link above.

Earlier today, the CAFC handed down its most momentous decision since it granted its blessing to business method patents in the State Street Bank case back in 1998. Brett Trout, a patent attorney who blogs at BlawgIT says, "This ruling will certainly come as a shock to the thousands of companies in possession of the over 50,000 business method patents the United States Patent and Trademark Office has already granted. These companies have spent hundred of millions of dollars on these patents, with many staking their entire livelihood on these government granted monopolies. This obviously comes as good news to competitors seeking to enter these previously patent-protected markets."

Hugh MacLeod has this announcement on his blog, gapingvoid.com: It was two years ago today that I first posted the Blue Monster on this blog. Thanks mainly to Microsoft's Steve Clayton running with the idea, it's been quite an adventure for me, to say the least. Microsoft's James Senior posted this two days ago: "About a year ago, my pal Steve Clayton (happy birthday buddy) unleashed a genius viral marketing ploy aimed at starting a conversation about Microsoft. It was really a call to arms challenging the company to reinvent itself. To innovate. To change the world."

The District Court granted Abbott a preliminary injunction "to preserve the status quo" using the conventional four-factor test: whether there was a "(1) likelihood of success on the merits of the underlying litigation, (2) whether irreparable harm is likely if the injunction is not granted, [considering] (3) the balance of hardships as between the litigants, and (4) factors of the public interest." Click on the link above to read a detailed report on the case  by Kevin E. Noonan on the well-regarded Patent Docs blog.

Citizen Media Law Project marks the ten year anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which President Clinton signed into law on October 28, 1998. "For background on the DMCA, see our legal guide... Now that we've had a decade to get to know the DMCA, it's time to reflect on the changes this important law has engendered."

According to biotechTransfer week, the IRS set to look over the financial statements of public and private colleges and universities for unrelated income sources like tech transfer. The Internal Revenue Service is looking to gather information from hundreds of US colleges, universities, and affiliated organizations such as foundations and academic medical centers about their financial practices, including those related to technology licensing, investments, and corporate sponsorship, according to the agency. Click the link above for more on this story at Stephen Albainy-Jenei's Patent Baristas.

Patent Buddy is a social network for patent lawyers and patent agents designed to facilitate networking, recruiting, and client development.

Bob Brill, patent IP lawyer with business sense, was asked to speak for the Entrepreneur Idol Class on Intellectual Property (IP) as part of InNUvation at Northwestern University.

"You can always rely on Marshall Phelps, Corporate VP for IP policy and strategy at Microsoft, to give good value at events where he is speaking... In a session at the LES USA and Canada meeting in which Phelps was one of the panellists, he told delegates that within two years Microsoft would have a portfolio of around 50,000 patents – 25,000 in the United States and 25,000 in the rest of the world." -- IAM Magazine

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

Dennis Crouch at Patently-O has an interesting blog post that begins: "In Cohesive Technologies, the Federal Circuit issued a reminder that the novelty analysis of 35 U.S.C. §102 is separate and distinct from the nonobviousness analysis of 35 U.S.C. §103(a). The court notes that some prior art evidence – such as inherent elements of a disclosure – used for anticipation argument may not be used in obviousness analyses." More follows, and a discussion breaks out at the link above.

Ron Friedmann at Strategic Legal Technology directs our attention to the annual Innovative Lawyers edition from London's Financial Times.

How do the two major presidential candidates differ in their views on innovation? The New York Times recently published an interesting story analyzing some of the similarities and differences between the candidates’ perspectives.

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

Which Presidential administration do you think might be smart enough to do that?

Conflict Resolution Day is being celebrated around the world today.

As most of you know, Research in Motion, makers of our beloved BlackBerry smartphones, are based out of Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA. It seems like a good time for all the RIM folk in Canada to take a day off and relax with friends and family and eat some Turkey.... we know the next couple of months are going to be CRAZY for them, with an unprecedented number of new devices rolling out in such a short time frame (think Bold, Storm, Pearl Flip and Curve 8900).  Happy Thanksgiving Day, Canada.

While it is commonly understood that prior art references that anticipate a claim will usually render that claim obvious, it is not necessarily true that a verdict of nonobviousness forecloses anticipation. The tests for anticipation and obviousness are different.

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

Authors of the March 2007 report entitled, "China’s Guidebook for Pharmaceutical Patent Protection," Wu Yifeng and Labwu Zengxian of Access China, provide information on the legislative climate in China and discuss various aspects of patent rights protection in the country. At the link above, Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Updates has an excerpt from a November 1, 2007 article that appears at PharmaAsia.

Even in Thomas Jefferson's day, there were patent trolls. As part of the ECT News Network Podcast Series, interviewer Blake Glenn speaks with Jeff Matsuura, who authored a book on Jefferson's role in crafting U.S. intellectual property law, and also as an inventor. Matsuura is an intellectual property attorney with the Alliance Law Group, based in Falls Church, Va. He's also the author of the just released book, Jefferson vs. the Patent Trolls: A Populist Vision of Intellectual Property Rights.

Dennis Crouch at PatentlyO, the nation's leading patent law blog, notes that over the past 33 years, the sheer number of prior art citations have steadily risen. In the mid 1970's less than one percent of issued patents cited more than twenty prior art references. Today, more than thirty percent of recently issued patents reach that benchmark. A commenter on that blog adds, "It would be interesting to see how well this data correlates to how easy it is to search for prior art."

"If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you'll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion," writes Julian Sanchez, reporting on an  investigative study by Ars Technica, which concludes that "the two numbers that are invariably invoked whenever Congress considers the need for more stringent IP enforcement are, at best, highly dubious. They are phantoms. We have no good reason to think that either is remotely reliable. Perhaps more importantly, both numbers are seemingly decades old, gaining a patina of currency and credibility by virtue of having been laundered through a relay race of respectable sources, even as their origin recedes into the mists."

According to IP Law & Bus., Sept. 2008 at 42, an IP department should agree with executive management as to the ultimate purposes of the department. Rees Morrison has paraphrased the three basic objectives on his blog, Law Department Management, at the link above.

"I promise," says Mike Dillon on the legal thing blog, "I do have other subjects to write about; however, immediately after my last blog we received some additional news of interest concerning the NetApp litigation."

Henry Paulson just came out with a very thoughtful piece in Foreign Affairs Magazine, entitled, "A Strategic Economic Engagement: Strengthening U.S.-Chinese Ties." Dan Harris at China Law Blog says, "This is the kind of article that can and should change minds."

It's official: Blawg Review, and legal blogging, have arrived.

"Could it be that the patent troll, once believed to survive only in the concrete jungles, high-tech valleys, and small Texas towns of North America, has extended its range to Europe? A case pending before a German court in Mannheim could signal its arrival,"  wirtes Philippa Maister in an article in IP Law & Business, linked above. The plaintiff is IPCom GmbH & Co., of Pullach, Germany. The defendant is Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone company. IPCom [which has no relation to IP.com] is claiming payments that could total a whopping 12 billion euros ($16.8 billion) for infringement of its patents on mobile telecom technology.

DMCA junkies, start your engines. Once again, the movie industry is going after a new technology it believes violates copyright laws. The majors — including Walt Disney, Warners, News Corp.’s Fox, Universal, Paramount and Sony — are ganging up to sue RealNetworks Inc. over a new software program, called RealDVD, that let’s consumers copy DVDs onto computers, reports the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.