Interview With Chief Judge Paul R. Michel On US Patent Reform

From Intellectual Property Watch:

“IPW recently had the opportunity to interview Judge Michel on prospects for substantive patent reform in the US, the effect on future cases involving domestic and foreign patents, likely constitutional challenges, and the ‘non-problem’ of non-practicing entities.

Chief Judge Paul R. Michel (Ret.), of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saw hundreds of patent cases during his distinguished career and has a unique position from which to view and offer advice on efforts in the US Senate and House of Representatives to agree on changes to domestic patent law.”

Questions (selected) asked during the interview:

• Do you favor the House (HR 1249) and/ or Senate-passed (S 23) versions of the patent reform bill?
• How might the bill affect future court rulings or even existing ones?
• Does the bill favor big business over small inventors?
• Will the bill address the problem of non-practicing entities [so-called "patent trolls"]?
• more…

READ FULL INTERVIEW [web]

U.S. Supreme Court Decides Stanford v. Roche… Roche Wins

The ruling hinged at least in part on the language used in Mark Holidniy’s patent assignment agreement with Stanford.

From Bloomberg:

“The U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling that limits the patent rights of research universities, threw out Stanford University’s suit against a Roche Holding AG (ROG) unit over methods for testing the effectiveness of AIDS treatments.

Voting 7-2, the justices upheld a lower court’s conclusion that a scientist working at Stanford in Palo Alto, California, transferred his rights to the discoveries to a company whose line of business Roche later bought…”

Read Full Article [web]
Read the Ruling [web; pdf]
Additional backstory/analysis of the ruling [ipwatchdog; web]