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.

Week 10: Predictibility and obviousness in patents

We talked about KSR International v. Teleflex in class on Monday, and I wanted to reiterate some important points to draw from the case:

• In ruling of the case, the Supreme Court for the first time in decades commented on the meaning of "obviousness" under patent law. 
• According to the Court, when a patent simply combines previously known elements to produce a result that was no more than expected, the combination would be obvious.
• On the other hand, inventions involving known elements that work together in an unpredictable manner would not be obvious.

Thus, an important principle reaffirmed in KSR is that a patent is more likely to be upheld if an invention is unpredictable in view of what was already known. This is good news for pharmaceutical innovators, because drug development is notoriously unpredictable.

Such an emphasis on unpredictability was illustrated in a litigation from 2008 concerning Eisai's antiulcer drug known as AcipHex (rabeprazole). This drug garners over $1-billion in annual worldwide sales. The infringer alleged that the patented compound was obvious because any skilled person would have known to prune a particular chemical side chain from a structurally similar known compound and yielded the patented drug in question. The court, however, determined that this modification was not a "predictable solution", because that side group was credited in an earlier publication with bestowing certain desirable traits. Consequently, the advantages of trimming/pruning the side chain were not predictable and the patent not obvious.  

I could not find much information on the case, but found it to be very interesting nonetheless. I continue to talk about another pharmaceutical case in my next blogpost!

Week 8: Airbnb's IP

In this blogpost, I am going to discuss the patent portfolio of Airbnb.

(a) How many patents (issued and/or pending, US and/or foreign) do we have in our IP portfolio at this time?
At this time, we have 8 patents in our portfolio. They can be found here.

(b) Identify three of our main competitors in the market.  How is their IP position compared to ours? What are the risks of our competitors having a better IP position that ours?
Our main competitors in the market are-
1) Homeaway - None
2) FlipKey- 2 Patents
3) 9flats - None

Since the business models of most of the peer-to-peer rental services are very similar, if we have a better IP position than our competitors, we are more secure from being sued for infringing on their patents. This is because if we have a better portfolio, we have covered our bases better than them. If our competitors have a better IP position then that may be able to sue us and in the situation that they win, we may lose market share.

(c) What can we do to bolster our IP portfolio - what are some sources of patents that we can go to, and what are the types of transactions that we can engage in to bring those patents in? 
To bolster our IP portfolio, we could start identifying our unique features and begin patenting them. We could even buy patents of certain technologies developed by other companies that are not doing as well and integrate it into our technology to strengthen our IP portfolio.

Week 8: Uber's IPs

In this post, I am going to discuss the IP portfolio of Uber Technologies.

(a) How many patents (issued and/or pending, US and/or foreign) do we have in our IP portfolio at this time?

As Efrat and Lynn pointed out in the article, Unicorns do not enough patents, but Uber has significantly increased its US patent portfolio in recent months, in part from acquisitions, as well as organic patenting efforts. Uber currently owns 34 US patents, with 29 utility patents and 6 design patents. Here is a graphical representation of Uber's IP portfolio:

(b) Identify three of our main competitors in the market.  How is their IP position compared to ours? What are the risks of our competitors having a better IP position that ours?

I am going to look at Uber's competition worldwide and not just in the US:

1) Lyft (USA): 2 patents 

2) Ola Cabs (India)

3)  Didi Kuaidi (China)- Also in Top 5 of Fortune's Unicorn list

 I could not find information on Ola and Didi since they are internationally owned companies. To better understand the patent situation of Ola cabs, I made a call to my hometown in India- I found out that they own 0 patents. This is interesting because Ola Cabs has 20 times the marketshare of Uber (4%) in India.  

Since most of the ridesharing companies have similar service model, there is high likelihood of having very similar features and even technologies. If a competitor has a better IP position than ours, there is high likelihood that we could be infringing on its patents and could end up in a patent litigation case. With this, we will not only take a hit on our finances but also on public relations. 

However, in the service industries that are highly localized, it might be more difficult for companies like Uber to sue companies like Ola in India. 

(c) What can we do to bolster our IP portfolio - what are some sources of patents that we can go to, and what are the types of transactions that we can engage in to bring those patents in? 

To bolster our IP portfolio, we could research some defunct ride-sharing companies that hold patents and buy from them. Some examples are RideCell and RelayRide. We could absorb these defunct companies in their entirety as well. 

There has been a lingering patent owned by GM that seems to be a threat to Uber. Uber should look into the patent, and if it is infringing on the patent, it should try to license it from GM. If Uber has the financial capabilities, it may even want to buy the patent off. GM has recently made a deal with Lyft on self-driving cars, so Lyft may be exempt from a patent litigation, which poses serious threat to Uber. GM bought these patents from Sidecar, an early competitor of Uber and Lyft.

Week 7: Nintendo vs UltimatePointer Claim Analysis

Last week, I discussed a case between Nintendo and UltimatePointer and this week, I am going to give a more in-depth analysis of one of the claims in the patent owned by UltimatePointer.

Quick Summary of the case: A patent troll company called UltimatePointer, LLC claimed that Nintendo’s motion-controlled Wii hardware infringed on its patents. However, on March 1, 2016, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals found that Nintendo’s Wii console does not infringe patents asserted by UltimatePointer. The patent that I am going to discuss is as follows-

Patent Number 8,049,729: Provides a method for controlling movement of a computer display cursor based on a point-of-aim of a pointing device within an interaction region includes projecting an image of a computer display to create the interaction region. 

Claim 1: 

CLAIM COMPONENT	ANALYSIS
An apparatus for controlling a feature on a computer generated image, the apparatus comprising:	The method requires a physical equipment to control an aspect on a computer generated image (for example, a video game), which means that if the image is not computer generated (for example, drawn with a chalk on board) then the claim doesn’t hold
A handheld device including**	Thus, if the device is to be “held”, so if it’s a wristband or an anklet, then this does not hold.
an image sensor, said image sensor generating data related to the distance between a first point and a second point, the first point having a predetermined relation to the computer generated image and the second point having a predetermined relation to a handheld enclosure; and	This handheld device must have an image sensor that helps determine the distance between the first point (from computer generated image) and second point (from the handheld device)**
a processor coupled to said handheld device to receive said generated data related to the distance between a first point and a second point and programmed to use the distance between the first point and the second point to control the feature on the image.	The handheld device is a machine with an image sensor AND a processer, which is used to receive the aforementioned generated data, and it is through this distance that the device is programmed to control the aforementioned feature on the image (for example, movement of hand on video game).

**Although there were several bases for the district court’s decision, the primary basis was that the Wii remote was not a “handheld device,” as the term had been construed by the Texas court. The Washington court began by noting that, under the Texas court’s construction, the claims required a “‘direct,’ as opposed to an ‘indirect,’ pointing device,” id., which the court characterized as “a product that places the cursor on the screen at the physical point of aim,” id. at *2. The Washington court concluded that UltimatePointer had not put forth sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment because the Wii remote was an indirect pointing device, not a direct one. Id. at *1–2. Specifically, the Washington court determined that although the Wii system can give the impression that the cursor is placed as a result of the user’s aim, “in reality it is the remote’s interaction with the Wii sensor bar, not the screen, that is relevant to the placement of the cursor.” Id. at *2.

Week 7: IBM vs Groupon Claim Analysis

Hi everyone! Last week I talked about a case between IBM and Groupon, and briefly addressed one of the patents and claim in-suit. This week, I am going to delve a little deep into one of the claims.

Quick summary of the case: IBM sued Groupon last week claiming that Groupon had been infringing on 3 of its patents. According to IBM Groupon had built its entire business model around these patents and was asking that the court halt further infringement and pay damages.
I am going to further discuss one of the patent claims by breaking it down-

Patent 76,31,346: Method and system for a runtime user account creation operation within a single-sign-on process in a federated computing environment.
For example, it helps allow users to sign into Groupon using their Facebook account.

Claim 1 

CLAIM COMPONENT	ANALYSIS
A method for managing user authentication within a distributed data processing system, wherein a first system and a second system interact within a federated computing environment and support single-sign-on operations in order to provide access to protected resources, at least one of the first system and the second system comprising a processor,	So this method pertains to interaction between two systems to enable user authentication, which means that if there are more than or less than two this claim would not hold. Also, it is to support a "single sign-on" process to provide access to protected resources, which means that if the access to the resource is unprotected/unrestricted then the defendant may argue that this claim is invalid. Groupon can argue that its resources are not "protected" because we can still view the deals even if we haven't signed in.
receiving from the first system at the second system an identifier associated with the user;	This means there has be a common link between the two systems, for example an email/ user account.
the method comprising; triggering a single-sign-on operation on behalf of the user in order to obtain access to a protected resource that is hosted by the second system, wherein the second system requires a user account for the user to complete the single-sign-on operation prior to providing access to the protected resource;	In addition, the second system (the one from which we are going to facilitate the single sign-on process) needs to have the user's account to complete this process. This means that if the second system in question does not have a database of users (for example, 4chan), this claim does not apply.
and creating a user account for the user at the second system based at least in part on the received identifier associated with the user after triggering the single-sign-on operation but before generating at the second system a response for accessing the protected resource, wherein the created user account supports single-sign-on operations between the first system and the second system on behalf of the user.	This means that the second system will provide some information (even if partial) that is enough to create a user account on the first system using this single sign-on process. For example, Groupon requires the user's mailing address, during checkout but does not require it for access to deals in the area. So, logging in with Gmail will provide information like Name, Gender, Age, etc. which is enough to create an account with Groupon.

I am not well-versed with this technology, but this claim's obviousness is apparent and I can see why IBM believes that Groupon has infringed on this patent.