I have a guest post today over at TechFlash about Apple’s recent rejection of my iPhone programmer’s calculator app, Calc 0×0. In rejecting my app submission, Apple’s review team objected to my use of a generic keyword (“bitwise”) to describe a prominent feature of the app (bitwise operations). According to Apple, I cannot use this term [...]
Author Archives: Chad Kirby
USPTO says some random dudes invented podcasting
On July 28, 2009, the USPTO issued patent number 7,568,213, the so-called “podcasting patent.”
Nit Picking for $2M
This is not strictly patent related, except that it highlights the importance of careful drafting. As illustrated by this cautionary tale, imprecise language can occasionally come back with a vengeance to bite you and/or your client.
The Globe and Mail reports on “the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada,” in which one ambiguously drafted clause costs Rogers Communications over $2M in a contract dispute. (Actually, the culprit is not exactly the punctuation per se, but rather a poorly drafted sentence.)
Bilski’s “blank slate” is bad news for Every Penny Counts
Over at the 271 Patent Blog, Peter Zura summarizes Every Penny Counts, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp., 2-07-cv-00042 (M.D. Fla. May 27, 2009, Order) (Magnuson, J.). In this case, the district court holds that, under Bilski, the claimed system is not patentable subject matter under § 101.
In Every Penny Counts, the district court uses Bilski as Judge Newman predicted in her Bilski dissent: “each trial court… will have a blank slate on which to uphold or invalidate claims based on whether there are sufficient ‘meaningful limits’” imposed on the claim by the use of a particular machine.
Posted in Patent Prosecution, Recent Cases Tagged Bilski, federal court, means-plus-function, patent Leave a comment
New limits on divisional applications from European Patent Office
This week, over protests from European patent practitioners, the EPO decided to add new limitations on when a divisional application may be filed, beginning next April. Of late, the EPO has become increasingly hostile towards what it regards as “abusive” filing of divisionals—practices such as repeatedly re-filing a divisional patent applications to avoid the effects of a rejection, or filing a divisional before an allowed application issues to pursue broader claims than were allowed.