Final Week: IEOR 190G Spring 2016 Summary

What I learnt from the class:

About patents:

• Great introduction to patent law and understanding how patent cases work. 
• Learnt about key terms in patent cases: anticipation, prior art, obviousness, infringement, patent trolls through examples and studying cases.
• Learnt how to read patents, understand claims, and detect possible infringement (may be). 

How patents/IP can be a deadly weapon:

• Learnt the importance of companies having a diverse and strong IP portfolio by studying IPs of unicorns like Airbnb and Uber. 
• Also learnt about important cases like Apple vs. Samsung, and how patent cases affect companies' finances and PR, and how a good IP strategy can destroy competition.
• Through cases like Microsoft and Google, I learnt the that sometimes it is better to not enter in a legal battle and focus energy on innovating, but this is only possible if you have a good IP portfolio. Microsoft, for example, makes a lot of money by licensing its patents.

Learning from social media:

• Making youtube videos made me comfortable with recording myself, and the fact that the videos were supposed to be 3 minutes or less taught me how to be informative yet concise. 
• Researching cases, writing about them, and reading others posts got me more interested in IP and following more IP cases, and showed me how social media can be a great learning tool.

Looking forward:

I learnt the importance of having a good IP portfolio, and as someone passionate about healthtech and entrepreneurship, I will be mindful of this and file patents when the opportunity arises. I learnt, as mentioned earlier, that a good IP strategy is not only important but necessary. 

Suggestion: Randomly assign students to eachother each week, so everyone gets feedback on their work!

I would definitely recommend this class to students for next semester. Thanks for a great semester everyone! It was great to learn from you.

Final Week: Use of Social Media as a learning tool

I am a strong proponent of social media as a learning tool, because it is easy and accessible. I liked that Prof. Lavian thought so as well and crafted this semester accordingly--it is great to see a professor who thinks with the time. 

How this is different than other type of learning: 

• Learn together: Traditionally, you are not supposed to "copy" eachother's work, which is how each work is supposed to be "unique". We have to pretend that we didn't take any help from our friends in any homeworks but in fact, all of us do. However, Prof. Lavian rightly noted that learning is not a stand-alone activity--we can learn together without copying from eachother. Each work was therefore unique but also inspired by other students at times. Each student had access to other student's work, and we were encouraged to look at eachother's ideas and understandings, which made it different as well as fun. 
• Consolidated, accessible information: I liked that the we could club all of our work through the hashtags #Berkeley190G and #IEOR190G so it was easy to access at all times. So whenever I wanted to see what other people wrote about, I could just look at these hashtags and go from there. 
• Double the information and different perspective: The fact that we were supposed to comment on other people's work was great as well because we learn about more cases than our own and even read the same case but from a different perspective. It was also great to get feedback from classmates. 

What I learnt from it:  Through social media, we can learn easily and from eachother. It is a two-way street, where you can put content out there and people can respond to it.  It makes learning more interesting and more of a conversation, instead of it being just turning something in and getting a grade from a teacher in return. I learnt that social media can be more than just a socializing tool, but also a learning tool-- much like how facebook now makes "trending" news more accessible.  

Other comments: It was useful and effective. I really enjoyed using social media as a learning tool. Prof may want to consider expanding to a facebook group later.

Week 13: Smartphone Patents #2: LG vs AMD Graphics

Company that filed the case: Advanced Micro Devices launched a suit in California federal court in March 2014 alleging LG Electronics Inc. infringed nine patents belonging to the processor maker and its ATI Technologies ULC unit. The allegedly infringing products in the nine-strong patent row include LG televisions, smartphones, tablets, Blu-ray players, projectors and appliances that embody or practice the patented inventions

Accused Company: LG Electronics Inc. challenged that the case claiming that the patents were invalid because of prior art references.

Patent Details: One of the patents that was recently reviewed in the case was U.S. Patent Number 7,742,053 B2 , which described a "multi-thread graphic processing system comprising of at least one memory device storing a plurality of pixel command threads and a plurality of vertex command threads."

After an investigation undertaken by The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), it was found that patent for graphics processing was unpatentable because the claims were obvious or anticipated at the time of filing. At issue were patent claims 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7, according to the decision that was published.
Let's look at one of the claims (Claim 1):

A graphics processing system comprising:
at least one memory device comprising a first portion operative to store a plurality of pixel command threads and a second portion operative to store a plurality of vertex command threads; and
an arbiter, coupled to the at least one memory device, operable to select a command thread from either of the plurality of pixel command threads and the plurality of vertex command threads based on relative priorities of the plurality of pixel command threads and the plurality of vertex command threads.

As mentioned above, the patent was challenged by LG and was deemed unpatentable because prior art references — referred to as Stuttard, Moreton, Whittaker and Lindholm — rendered them obvious or anticipated. This was an important win in LG's effort to combat an infringement lawsuit over multiple patents chipmaker AMD.

Although I do not understand the technicality of the claim, the case does demonstrate the importance of prior art references, obviousness, and anticipation that we learnt in class, and so I decided to write about it.

Week 13: Smartphone Patents #1: Apple vs Patent Troll

Company that filed the case: Marathon Patent Group is a non-practicing patent holding company representing the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In other words, it is a patent troll. When RPI decided that it wanted to monetize the patent, it went to Dynamic Advances, which later became a part of RPI.

Accused Company: Apple

Topic of accusation: Siri's voice control on the iPhone and iPad

Patent Details: The patent in question is patent number 7177798 which describes a system for "processing natural language input" and dates back to 2000. It also covers the use of natural language to process database queries--this is what Siri does when you say, "Call Mom"-- it looks for a command (AKA Call) and searched "Mom" in the database (contact directory). From looking at the patent, it does look like Apple had been infringing on the patent- knowingly or unknowingly.

Settlement: $24.9 million
About half of the money ($12.5 million) from the settlement will go to MPG, and the rest will go to RPI, an unnamed exclusive licensee, and the legal team handling the case.

Apple was willing to settle the case instead of going to trial, which is interesting. We can make one of two assumptions about this stand:  Apple's legal team knew MPG would win in court, or Apple felt it was more cost effective to settle than pursue a legal fight.
Either ways, it is sad because the patent troll won again. And as we have repeatedly talked about it in our posts, patent trolls need to be stopped because they hinder technological growth and innovation by discouraging innovators in the fear of being sued. 


[MPG said it has plans to go after other companies, too, and it'll no doubt make sure everyone knows Apple already agreed to pay up.]

Week 11: Silly Patents #2 Suitcase for Squishy Fruit

Patent No and Name: US6612440 B1 | Banana Protective Device

Patent: A banana protective device for storing and transporting a banana carefully. The banana protective device includes a container having a first cover member and a second cover member being hingedly attached to the first cover member and being adapted to store a banana therein.

Think about a briefcase, but small and in the shape of 2 bananas places in opposite C's. 

Is it useful? Yes. I, for one, have had bananas squished in my bag. 
Is it novel? The use of a banana guard is known in prior art, but this particular design is novel. 
Is it obvious? It is non-obvious because a skilled person would not have thought of solving the problem of a accidentally squishing a banana by creating a suitcase for it. If they do, then I am sure they won't design it in the shape of a banana- a normal rectangular box would do too. 

So, technically it makes sense for this patent to be issued, but I personally think that this is really stupid. If this were ever to be commercially produced, I wonder if anyone would buy it. 

 My final thoughts: As I mentioned, I have had bananas get squished in my bag before, but I have never really wanted a briefcase for it when that happened. I assume someone felt very strongly about their banana getting ruined or a squished banana ruin something of theirs, but this is a little ridiculous. 

Week 11: Silly Patent #1 Stop crying, you baby!

Patent No and Name: US6068649 A | Pacifier Securing System

Patent: A pacifier securing system for securing positioning of a pacifier in an infant's mouth.  The pacifier securing system includes a pacifier having an outwardly extending guard plate, apertures in opposite sides of the guard plate, and adjustable straps employing hook and loop fasteners to form loops for engaging the straps between the apertures in the guard plate and an infant's ears.

Think about a surgical face-mask, but the same system used with a pacifier.

Is it useful? Strictly speaking, yes.
Is it novel? Yes. The use of pacifiers is known in prior art, but this particular design system is not.
Is it obvious? It is non-obvious because a skilled person would not have thought of solving the problem of a crying baby by adding a strap on to a pacifier, I hope.

So, technically it makes sense for this patent to be issued, but I personally think that this is stupid because it's a bit too extreme (for a baby).

 My final thoughts: I understand that it is difficult to pacify a crying baby sometimes, but is shutting it up with a strap pacifier really the solution?

Week 10: Teaching Away and Obviousness in patents

I mentioned the key-points from the case we discussed in class between KSR International and Teleflex in my previous blogpost. 

Through the case, the Supreme Court provided guidance on predictability- if there is a market pressure to solve a specific problem with a few possible solutions and predictable results, then a skilled person has good reason to pursue the invention, and his or her ultimate success might be viewed as obvious. If, however, the field prior to the invention is littered with cautionary tales that "taught away" from the invention- for example, failures or concerns about the feasibility, safety, or efficacy of the invention, then the inventor's ultimate success would not be deemed obvious.

One such example is the litigation involving Takeda's Actos, which is a $2 billion diabetes drug. It demonstrates the importance of "teaching away" in assessing patent obviousness. The infringer alleged that the patented compound was obvious over known "compound b". However, compound b had negative effects including increased body weight. Therefore, because of these effects, the court determined that modifying compound b was not a "predictable" solution for diabetes and hence, not obvious.