Companies without IP insurance may be forced into litigation with larger competitors and patent trolls who have plentiful resources to litigate. Intellectual property IP insurance enables them to ensure that their most valuable asset is protected. Companies can demonstrate that they can fight to the end of an IP case on the merits, and not run the risk of going out of business or being forced to drain their working capital to pay legal fees to enforce or defend their IP rights.
IP insurance definitely levels the playing field and gives companies options. Louis, MO, recognizes the benefits of companies holding an IP insurance policy. The larger company knows that the smaller company is not paying for the litigation and can therefore withstand the battle to the end if necessary. This puts the smaller company in a very favorable position to negotiate a good settlement.
IPISC has developed products that use advanced strategies to become market leaders in the dynamic field of intellectual property insurance. Karrie Lewis, klewis patentinsurance. Steve M, Patents issued and lawsuits filed track nicely. I was sued for infringement in my first month of business by the market segment leader and as a one man company I was forced to fight them without a lawyer.
Like most bullies, they ran away at the first sight of their own blood. These turn out to be using a stright line division: HOWEVER the actual math needs to be a little different because each patent grant from the previous year must be added in a cumulative manner — for this small a subset the first maintenance fee is not a consideration — because that patent is alive and well and in the pool for generating lawsuits.
The appropriate and miniscule percentages are:. Or in even more stark terms, the change year over year is: Mea Culpa — disregard my stats analysis to an appropriate degree the year over year especially — and the maintenance fee effect does need to be factored in — I thought the data presented was from sequential years — it is not. However, the overarching points are still valid — 1 the increased lawsuits out there roughly track with the fact that are more patents out there. I simply cannot in good faith suggest that your experience is common or that it is at all a good idea to represent yourself in litigation.
I also have to wonder how much you lost when you factor in the opportunity costs. If you did prepare and file a reexamination, and you did represent yourself in litigation you would have had to spend enormous amounts of time figuring out what needed to be done, which would have taken you away from your business for a great many hours. You say you are a one many company sued by the market leader right after you opened your business. That sounds remarkably fishy. But still, as a one man show you were able to stare down the market leader and prevail in a true David and Goliath battle. All the while you had the time to educate yourself on the USPTO rules and regulations about reexamination and prepare an appropriate request, and you also had the time to represent yourself and prepare the required filings within the prescribed deadlines all while still running your one man business.
This seems quite implausible to me unless you were able to extract more than 24 hours out of a single day.
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Gene, Actually it really is no huge mystery. All I did is read all of the motions filed in a suits similar to mine and just change the names just like lawyers recycle motions and responses. I spend a ton of money on WestLaw and eyedrops, but it was worth it as I am the only pro se to have won an infringement suit.
You ask a very wierd question regarding what I lost by fighting, i. So you would have told me to grab my ankles and let them win by default then get a judgement that would have also included my IP?
Top-10 tips for fighting patent trolls.
That is no victory and very unAmerican in my opinion. Also, search the reexaman notices and follow the path to the final office action of rejecting the important claims in their patent. BTW, luck had very little to do with the results. One very commited man can and it has proven that a well paid large firm can be humbled by just one committed guy with a low limit credit card. So you spent a ton of money on Westlaw?
That does not leave much money left for Westlaw. Maybe a few hours of Westlaw time at best. The question about lost sales is not at all a weird one. The trouble is that for some reason you are telling a tale that is not true. If it were true you would know that you would have had to shut down your one man business and spend full time dealing with the patent infringement lawsuit against you. Also, it is simply not believable that a market dominant leader would sue a one man operation for patent infringement in their first month of business operation. Gene, What can I say to someone who refuses to check the facts before shooting his mouth off?
I did as good a job with my defense as you could have done. Your opinion does not overcome the facts but I am guessing that has never stopped you now or in the past. Veterinary Ventures filed a complaint on December 14, The complaint also states various other causes of action, including defamation, product disparagement, deceptive trade practice, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair competition.
So now you are accusing me of shooting my mouth off without checking facts? Then you say you spent a ton of money on Westlaw. It is not shooting my mouth off to observe that you are making statements that are wholly inconsistent. I do find it interesting that you get called by me for making incompatible statements and then you attack me. I did not attack you personally, yet you attack me.
The Single Channel Patent
That is a sign of weakness and the last resource for those who are losing a debate. I have checked your filing, and that opposition to the preliminary injunction cited a great many cases. You seem to have a thorough and complete understanding of the law, procedural requirements and write exceptionally well for a pro se. It almost looks like those things were ghost written for you.
So who is the person that signed all of your certificates of service? How much time did you spend representing yourself? Go ahead and attack me for pointing out the obvious. It is naive for anyone to believe that they should represent themselves. There is a well known saying about those who represent themselves having a fool for a client, and I am not going to allow you to pretend that it is a viable option to represent yourself in a patent infringement action. You can all draw your own conclusions about whether his refusal to answer questions or acknowledge the inconsistency of his statements suggests he was not being truthful, exaggerating or telling the complete truth.
When patent trolls regularly collect triple the amount of damages awarded to practicing entities in patent litigation, it is certainly no surprise that more trolls are springing up and becoming ever more aggressive. They have everything to gain and relatively little to lose. I fear that the only way to minimize the threat that PAEs pose to small businesses is by eliminating their incentives to assert patents — i.
The problem is not the patent system or the patent trolls. Gurney showed photographs of, and described, the physical aspects of the set top box and the remote control. It described the operation including setting it up and displayed screenshots of three screens. The advertisement, but not the article, disclosed the operation of the programme feature notes and the Single Channel Roundup.
The defendants submitted that the Single Channel patent was obvious over the Gurney article when read with the advertisement. They said that it would have been obvious to the skilled man to add a grid display and to link to a single channel display by highlighting a programme in the grid. It dealt with perceived problems arising out of the very large number of channels that would appear on an EPG which sought to list all programmes available to a subscriber.
By selecting electronically, on a controller to view just the favourites, the non-favourites were filtered out of the view, and the list was more manageable. The claimant applied to amend the Favorites patent to add two extra claims. The defendant alleged that the Favorites patent was invalid as seeking to patent excluded matter on the same grounds as those relating to the Single Channel patent. The defendant alleged that the Favorites patent lacked novelty over Gurney and SuperGuide.
It said the display was the equivalent of a cell showing channel number and a program service name for a particular channel, though the actual form of display was not demonstrated. The claimant argued that the requirement that the display represented channels available for viewing meant all channels which could be received at the system level whether or not the viewer had actually subscribed to them and did not include any channels which could not be received.
The background to this dispute was the possibility that an EPG distribution system would distribute information about television programmes which a user could not physically receive. Such would be the case where, for example, a user with a smaller satellite dish would not be able to pick up all channels whereas a user with a larger satellite dish would get them all. Providing a filter would mean that the EPG system would present a list of only those channels which could be received. It provided for the recording of programmes on to a digital medium, together with EPG information about that programme which was stored on the same medium.
The user was then enabled to use that recorded EPG information to select the programme in question if he wished to do so for re-recording the programme on to a second storage medium. Inventiveness was not claimed for the process of secondary recording itself. What was said to be new was selecting the programmes for secondary recording by means of the EPG information stored with them, so that that information controlled the secondary recording process in terms of the identification of the programme material to be re-recorded. During prosecution, the patentee successfully applied to amend the claims.
By a clerical error the old unamended claims went into the patent as granted. The patentee applied to amend the patent so as to substitute the intended claims. The defendants did not oppose the amendment save on the ground that the intended claims were invalid. There was little dispute that the skilled addressee would be a team including those with a degree in electrical or electronic engineering, and would include those with software writing experience and knowledge of MPEG-2 systems systems for video broadcasting , and relevant hardware and software relating to digital TV broadcasting.
By EPGs were well known in digital TV systems and the skilled team would have been familiar with them, even though digital TV itself had not yet arrived in the UK. There was a dispute as to whether it was common general knowledge that EPGs were or could be used to programme TV recordings.
The judge held on the evidence that the ability to programme a VCR to record via an EPG was common general knowledge as was the introduction of digital storage to set-top boxes, and the transfer of stored content from one device to another by copying — for example, from one VCR to another. The defendants submitted that the Transfer patent sought to protect excluded subject matter as the alleged invention was a computer program as such or was the presentation of information or a method of performing a mental act deciding what to transfer.
The claimants said that the contribution of the patent was a better electronic guide, being better in the sense that the guide itself had a function dedicated to the process of transfer. Variety was an entertainment industry newspaper. Two paragraphs later, the article stated: Should users wish to save programs permanently they can be recorded from the replay TV device to a VCR. The defendants argued, and the judge found, that the italicised sentence meant what it said- that it was possible to record from the device to a VCR.
The article did not give any indication, either explicit or implicit, of how the initiation of the recording process was controlled. Variety disclosed most of the integers of Claims 1 and 6; it disclosed an EPG which involved displaying in a display screen at least one programme listing related to at least one programme, it enabled a user to select a programme entry, which was then recorded, and it disclosed a display of at least one recorded programme in the EPG summarising the bulk of the relevant integers.
What it did not disclose was the selection process for the programme to be secondarily recorded. The main idea behind the invention in Toshiba was to facilitate recording of programmes. This information was then used to control the recorder, with the actual programme content recorded on a separate area of the disc. During recording the metadata associated with the given programme remained associated with it, and in due course it provided a way of finding and playing back the desired recording.
This appeared to take place via an EPG which read the metadata and allowed programme selection for recording and for playback. The defendants accepted that, if the Transfer patent was valid, its product infringed all claims, except claims 5 and The claimants accepted that claim 5 was not infringed. Claim 14 was merely a system claim corresponding to claim 5 and so it followed that it too would not be infringed. That was an abstract concept. It did not in terms describe some physical activity or effect. There was a different display on the screen, but that was not enough to amount to a technical effect which made a difference.
That display was still part of the computer program and was not an external effect the claimant had not relied on any internal effect. Many computers running a program were likely to have a display output, and if that were enough to be a technical effect then every program in such a computer would be likely to fall outside the exclusion, which was unlikely to have been the intention of the draftsman of the Act.
One had to look to see what the effect actually was and it was not technical. Claims 2, 4 and 5 were also excluded for the same reasons. There was no difference in substance between the two and nothing turned on the fact that one used the plural and the other the singular form of the word. The statutory exclusion was not confined to the actual content. The contrast was between the content or its mere delivery, on the one hand, and that material plus some additional technical aspect of its delivery, on the other. That approach was consistent with the law on computer programs.
The single channel element of the Single Channel patent did not achieve this. One started with the provision of TV programme information in a grid which was plainly the presentation of information. The raw information was the detailing of the programmes which had somehow to be conveyed to the user. In the patent it started in the form of a grid. That was presentation of that information.
Then, as a result of cursor movement and marking, the information was presented in a different format — a list. That end result was, equally, a presentation of information. All that had happened was that information was presented in a different way and perhaps in a different quantity. The starting point and the end point were plainly presentation of information.
The middle factor was the movement of a cursor, the marking of the chosen programme which unstated in the claims caused the display to change. That was accurately described as part of the selection mechanism. No-one had suggested that it involved a new technical step and, indeed, selecting material on screen and clicking on it so as to cause a change in its appearance on screen was part of the common general knowledge by Alternatively, it was excluded as being a mixture of computer programs and a presentation of information.
Its main function was to inform about pressure-sensitive touch pads and the references to EPGs although not by name were by way of illustration of the sort of thing that could be done. The fact that the document was in general terms did not necessarily mean that it could not make a sufficient disclosure for the purposes of anticipation, but the skilled team would approach the document on the basis of what it was, and would bear in mind that what was being provided was an illustration of the sort of things that could be achieved with the physical device and not necessarily a full description of those illustrations.
Uncertainties and missing logical links would be treated accordingly. The document was not saying: Clear directions were required for anticipation and those clear directions were absent. The document did not even purport to give them. The patent was not even describing alternatives one of which anticipated. It was describing in a generalised way, some of the things that could be done, without seeking to disclose alternatives at all.
The claims described the actual manoeuvring. IBM had set out the different manners of presentation, or identified them by genus. The difference between the patent and IBM was that the former was clearer in its identification of a grid and it clearly set out a method of navigation which had not been spelled out in IBM. It was one of only three standard forms of programme timetable information presentation. Each was an obvious alternative to the others.
The skilled team would have considered each. The key difference between claim 1 of the patent and IBM was how to navigate to a single channel display. The possibilities were obvious to the skilled team. There was a range of choices, and each of them were equally obvious as possibilities. They would all have worked to achieve their navigational ends - it would not have been necessary to try them to find that out, since they all involved what would have been standard programming to the skilled team.
What might not have been obvious, and which might have had to have been tried out, would be which one the consumer would have preferred, but that was ultimately not part of the claim. The difference between that and the patent was the jumping-off point and the extent to which the listing was still visible. The choices of jumping-off points were all obvious to the skilled team and no difficulty on the programming presented itself. Claim 3 was obvious over IBM. It did not plainly say that there was a single system with both a grid and a single channel display.
Kono was directed to the control of processes and did not focus on the disclosure of the Single Channel patent. The skilled addressee would not have approached it as dealing directly with a problem in his own area of concern. EPGs figured in Kono as a tool. The content was dealt with incidentally in one paragraph plus a reference to notes. The skilled addressee would not have looked at that paragraph and the table as teaching him anything other than the possible formats for an EPG, which he would have been aware of anyway.
For him to start working from that paragraph in that context to putting a grid and a single channel display in the same system and then to switch from the former to the latter by highlighting a programme would have required inventiveness. It was true that Kono did refer to the possibility of a switch operating by highlighting a programme in a grid, but its context would not have led to the skilled addressee's finding it obvious to turn that to account in his own field and for his own purposes.
Kono was a piece of prior art which, in relation to claims 1 and 2, would not have interested the skilled addressee much at all. All that Kono really taught the skilled addressee was that programme notes could be stored as part of the metadata which EPG data comprised, and which field it could be stored in. In teaching that it probably did not teach him anything he did not know already.
It said nothing about the presentation of that information, and the skilled addressee would not have been likely to have taken this piece of prior art as being any sort of useful starting point for anything when it came to that point. It would not even have prompted him to think about it, let alone led him them to an obvious conclusion. Obviously they would not give an advertisement the same sort of detailed attention that they would an expert paper which seemed to be directly in point.
The advertisement in the Gurney article was an advertisement with some visual detail which would not be merely glanced at and dismissed. The article itself said that it did not cover all the features and the skilled team would at least have looked at the advertisement to see if any other features were described there. The evidence was that people wanted grids, which were an established format in paper guides and there was nothing technically difficult or unknown about programming for a grid guide.
If a grid were included, then it was obvious to navigate to a single channel display from the grid and to do so by opening it from a marked title. The two ways of doing this — highlighting the programme or highlighting the channel — were both obvious. Any choice in the final system would have been made by reference to perceived consumer preference, not by any technical matters. It also demonstrated linking between a programme identification in the single time display to two other displays, one of which was the programme note display.
Since a grid was an obvious alternative or additional implementation, it would have been equally obvious to have it springing from the marked programme in the grid. The evidence was that these were two equally viable alternatives. Claim 3 was obvious over Gurney.
- The Emotional Construction of Morals.
- Pale Tides.
- Travel Vlog.
If valid, those claims would have been infringed. It was probably not a programme note in ordinary parlance and was certainly not a programme note within the meaning of the patent. It contained no additional information to that contained in the grid and contained none of the type of information which the patent indicated a programme note should contain. This line on the Virgin display did not infringe claim 3. No material part of the programme listing and the programme note for the highlighted programme were visible at the same time.
It had worked on the data and filtered it but that did not amount to a technical contribution. It did not make the computer a better computer nor had it done anything to make the computer do anything other than to sort some data, and that was not sufficient. Nor did it have a relevant effect on the world external to the computer. It altered a screen display, but again that could not be a relevant technical effect, because otherwise every computer program which reported its output on a screen would escape the exclusion. Since a very high proportion of programmes could do that, it could not have been the intention of the draftsman that that should take a programme outside the exclusion, so that was not enough.
The effect on the user could hardly be described as a technical effect. The patent described a computer taking some information, getting some input from the user, and then giving the user the information he wanted. There was nothing which could meaningfully be described as a technical effect. There was merely a more gratified viewer of the screen. The proposed amendments suffered from the same vice. The question became whether it was obvious to use the EPG to identify the programme for onward recording and to use it via an additional on-screen control to initiate the recording from the set-top box.
The skilled addressee would not have taken it as describing a new technical feature in the part of the article relied on. The critical sentence did not clearly describe a separate recording facility. Had Variety been describing a separate function it would have been obvious to have had a separate control on the screen to have governed it but it did not, in fact, describe a separate function but merely confirmed an ability. The invention was not obvious over Variety. Toshiba also described that this was done by selecting a programme displayed in an EPG. The selection integer of claim 1 of the Transfer patent was anticipated by Toshiba.
Claim 1 was anticipated by Toshiba as was the amended claim. That was enough to prevent it being just a computer program as such and to render it patentable material. It was true that it did not produce an effect outside the system itself, but it was still an effect. It involved the presentation of information, but there was, again, a separate independent effect which was outside that concept. It was unarguable that the invention was the performance of a mental act. A machine has to do something that the brain could not.
Once a human had decided what to do and pressed the button, the machine operated in the physical world and produced a result that a mental act could not achieve short of telekinesis, which was not claimed as part of the invention. There are three patents in suit. They are vested variously in the claimants, who are a holding company and two of its subsidiaries. They are companies whose business involves, or includes, the provision of electronic programming material whose nature I shall describe in due course.
The defendants are companies in the Virgin group whose business involves the broadcasting of television programmes and the collection of subscriptions from subscribers to those broadcasting services. At the heart of these three patents is the concept of an EPG — an electronic programming guide.
In the past 30 years or so the number of television broadcasting stations including cable and satellite stations has increased enormously in many countries and in particular in the US. Each broadcaster wishes the consumer to know what programmes are being or are to be broadcast. Until the advent of electronic means of broadcasting this information was disseminated principally in paper form, of which the best known English publication was and is the Radio Times.
The listing information took various forms. It could be lists of programmes with supporting information about those programmes listed by broadcasting channel, and by time within each channel, in the form of an elaborate chronological list. That form will be familiar to anyone who has used the Radio Times or the independent television equivalent, the TV Times. It could be a listing by start times, with each programme starting at a given time appearing by that start time, and then by channel within the start time.
Or it could be by way of a grid, with start times on one axis and the channel on the other, with each cell representing the particular programme being broadcast in the cell and bearing the name of that programme. In that last form the cells would be of irregular length, because not all TV shows are of the same duration. The left and right hand borders of the cell represent the start and finish times when read against the time axis. Sometimes one sees both formats in one publication — I was shown US guides which had both a grid which enables more of an overview and start time listings which allows for a little more detail for each programme.
Written listings also contain some notes about the programmes in question, sometimes by the actual listing, and sometimes separately on the page. The increase in the number of channels means that the size of the listings has increased, making their survey, and choice from them, more difficult. One answer to this problem is to provide lists electronically to the subscriber of the TV service so that it can be viewed on the screen.
The information can be transmitted by various means, but now the most common is over the air by one or more service providers. By calling up the relevant list, and looking up the relevant day, time and channel, the viewer can see what programme is being broadcast at the relevant time. Background information about that programme type, cast list and so on can also be broadcast and accessed. The guides thus produced are called EPGs — electronic programme guides.
For the purposes of this action I can distinguish between two sorts of EPGs — those which merely provide information to the consumer, and those which go further and provide that information and at the same time use software and hardware links to control the television, typically switching to the relevant programme directly from the EPG screen. Two of the patents in suit represent the former category information only ; the third has elements of the second information plus switching as well.
It involves the broadcast of EPG information and its essential inventive step involves the formats in which that information is displayed. It first displays programme listings in grid form, showing a number of programmes for a number of channels for various periods of time in the manner referred to above. That of itself is said to be new so far as EPGs were concerned, though it is not said to be inventive for the purposes of the patent.
It is possible to move a cursor so as to highlight a particular cell and therefore a particular programme , and if that cell is selected the display switches to single channel mode. So the focus has been shifted from a survey of various channels to just the one. Thus this patent switches from larger scale grid to single channel; hence the name given to it for the purposes of this action. There is one further alleged inventive feature of this patent. By selecting electronically, on a controller to view just the favourites, the non-favourites are filtered out of the view, and the list is more manageable.
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The first two patents date from , and in this action were called the patents. It provides for the recording of programmes on to a digital medium, together with EPG information about that programme which is stored on the same medium. The user is then enabled to use that recorded EPG information to select the programme in question if he wishes to do so for re-recording the programme on to a second storage medium. Inventiveness is not claimed for the process of secondary recording itself.
What is said to be new is selecting the programmes for secondary recording by means of the EPG information stored with them, so that that information controls the secondary recording process in terms of the identification of the programme material to be re-recorded. This action takes a familiar form. The claim is an infringement action brought against Virgin.
Virgin provides its subscribers with a set-top box which enables them to receive and record its programmes. It broadcasts programme information and the box displays it on the television as an EPG. A feature of the EPG is that it enables the viewer to switch from a grid display to a single channel display in a manner which is said to infringe. It also enables the user to display programme information in a manner which is said to infringe the other element of the Single Channel patent. Favourite channels are said to be arrived at in a manner which is said to infringe the Favourite Channels patent, and it has a mechanism for secondary recording which is said to infringe the transfer patent.
Virgin disputes the infringement and claims variously that the patents should be revoked as covering non-patentable subject matter, wanting novelty and as being obvious over certain prior art. When I come to deal with them, I shall deal first with the two aspects of the Single Channel patent, then turn to the Favourites patent, and finally deal with the transfer patent. That organisation is a private, not-for-profit organisation in the US which works with government agencies in the fields of systems engineering, advanced technology, research and development.
His degree was in mathematics, but his work since then has taken him into fields which are, or are centred around, artificial intelligence. One of his expertises is in the interface between humans and technological machines. He was called to give evidence in relation to the two patents. He was never involved in the TV industry as such, and could not speak from personal knowledge acquired at the time as to common general knowledge at the dates relevant to these patents and His view of common general knowledge, and other related issues in relation to this matter, therefore had to be constructed from other information.
Unfortunately, other than looking back historically to see the factual development of technology over the years before and after those priority dates, he did not read himself into the industry. That means that I must take his views in relation to those periods with some caution on matters other than those arising directly out of his principal expertise, namely interfaces. In addition, there was another aspect of his evidence which demonstrates a need for caution. In relation to some pieces of prior art he demonstrated a tendency to a form of what I might call pedantry. On more than one occasion he insisted on an approach to construing a document which struck me as clearly unrealistic, and I was left with the strong suspicion that he was sometimes unwilling to accept a proposition emanating from the other side for no reason other than that it emanated from the other side.
On others he sometimes adopted the stance of looking at prior art with a view to finding difficulties rather than reading it as the skilled team would. This was particularly apparent in some of his reading of the piece of art which we have called Gurney. That is not to say he did that all the time — sometimes he was prepared to accept adverse points when put to him — but I did detect a reluctance to do so as a quality of some of his evidence. I regret to say that I do not think that I received the fully independent assessment of the technical material which the rules require.
In particular, and without doubting his great expertise, I do not think he was as good a witness as Dr Ciciora, his counterpart for the defendants. This gentleman was called by Gemstar to give expert evidence in relation to the Transfer patent. He is an electrical engineer with practical experience in the technicalities of digital set-top boxes and among other things recording of TV programmes on to digital media.
He is steeped in the technical side of TV receiving. He graduated in , and has been in that field ever since. He produced two reports which themselves managed to be confusing. His attempt to explain matters at the beginning of his evidence in chief took even Mr Birss by surprise, and created even more confusion. Unravelling all this took some lengthy questioning. I think that this demonstrates that sometimes his thinking in relation to this case was somewhat tortuous and not always quite clear on the central points with which he was concerned, and in particular the crucial paragraph in Toshiba para.
His evidence therefore requires more attention and head-scratching than one would have wished to have been the case. That was particularly so in his approach to ascertaining what Toshiba taught. Dr Ciciora was called by Virgin to give evidence on the two patents. He graduated in with an engineering degree and since then has been involved in the home electronics industry, including and particularly heavy involvement in cable TV, principally on the hardware as opposed to the software side.
Unlike Dr Maybury, he was involved in areas to which those patents are relevant at their respective priority dates. Mr Birss accepted that on the whole Dr Ciciora gave his evidence fairly and was seeking to help the court. I agree with that. I thought he was an impressive witness, though as will be apparent I do not accept every bit of evidence he gives. However, Mr Birss also accused him on three occasions of assuming the role of advocate for his client. I did not get that impression.
The instances relied on by Mr Birss did not, in my view, bear that construction. This gentleman was called by Virgin to give evidence in relation to the Transfer patent. Unfortunately during the course of the trial he suffered a cycling accident in which he broke some bones and was plainly badly hurt. He had not started his evidence at that point, and it had to be postponed. When he came to give his evidence he was obviously still in pain, and I understand he was on medication. It was obvious to me that to some extent his medical condition affected his ability to give evidence.
He would start the day brightly enough, but soon tired. He needed breaks, and before the end of the first day it was apparent to me that he was too tired and uncomfortable to go on, so I rose early. All this, from time to time, affected how he gave his evidence. I do not think he was always as full or robust as, and was often more subdued than, he would otherwise have been. I bear that in mind in assessing his answers. He was and is an electronic engineer, and has worked in a variety of fields. Since he has been involved in television, and in particular in set-top box and digital TV technology.
I think that the specific point relied on was unfair. It was not his intention to produce these documents as founding an opinion which he then formed. They were relied on as supporting an opinion which he had already formed. I thought that on the whole he was a good and helpful witness. He was called by Virgin to give evidence of its disclosure. I was invited by Mr Birss to treat his evidence with care, not because he was activated by malice or other unworthy motive in giving his evidence, but because of what Mr Birss described as the manner in which it was produced.
He had some detailed historical evidence to give. He supported it with some historical documents. Mr Birss did not make any application for disclosure of them. I thought that Mr Hallenbeck was a very good witness. True it is he was having to remember detailed facts from over 20 years ago, but he had some provable facts to assist him in relation to dates and on the important points he was unshaken. I do not think that he was making anything up — apart from anything else, he had no motive to do so none was put to him — and his evidence had none of the quality of false recollection.
He provided the translation of the Toshiba prior art that was relied on at the hearing before me. When questions arose as to its effect, he provided a witness statement about certain very limited aspects. He was cross-examined by Mr Campbell in order to try to extract further material as to its true translation. Nothing in this case turns on the quality of his evidence. He is plainly a very skilled interpreter. This patent bears the number EP B1 and has a priority date of 10 September Like the Favorites patent, it is a divisional patent, and the specification reflects this in that it covers a lot of ground not directly germane to the claims.
The two most important claims are Claims 1 and 3.
The filing of charges doesn’t always mean that you’ll have to duke it out at trial.
Claim 4 is a system claim based on Claim 1. I do not need to set out this or the other claim, which is also a system claim based on the earlier claims. Further development of the system and process has produced considerable change in the user interface as originally proposed. In particular, unlike most computer menus, a grid TV guide is an array of irregular cells, where the cell size can vary from a fraction of an hour to many hours — extending well beyond the current screen.
A gentler cursor motion is said to be needed. Such grids are also typically provided in combination with a more detailed printed schedule that contains a synopsis of each program, whether the programme is a repeat, rating for movies, and other information. When using a television set as a display for a schedule system, the size and resolution of the television display limits the amount of text that can be displayed with the grid. Improved techniques are required for conveying the most amount of information to the user in an easily understood manner within the limitations of the television display.
When a large number of channels are available for viewing, there is also a need to order the display of information most conveniently for the user. Various aspects of the present invention are defined in the independent claims. Some preferred features are defined in the dependent claims. The patent then turns to a detailed description of the invention.
Many of the initial paragraphs deal with solving what is said to be the problem of the cursor display, something which is outside the scope of the claims. With limited text capacity on TV displays, it is preferable to display as many lines of TV listings as feasible. To handle program notes, which are text intensive, on-demand overlays 52 are used. Program notes overlay 52 may include any or all of the following information: The program note 52 overlays and hides 3 or 4 listings of a guide.
To minimise concealment of the guide, an auto-roving note is used. The program note will overlay either the top half or the bottom half of the screen, as necessary to avoid masking the title of the selected listing. If the cursor 32 is in the upper half of the screen, the note will appear in the bottom half, and vice versa. If the cursor 32 is moved to the lower half of the screen, the note will automatically position itself in the upper half of the screen.
This is the teaching which underpins Claim 3 in the patent — the programme notes feature. I kid you not. The gall of these parasites. Next comes the questioning in court. You basically have to always tell the truth, the whole truth, and so help you god, and answer all questions clearly and accurately. Remember that any inaccuracies or confusion on your part will be used against you. Crucially, before every response to a specific question you can always add information, which hopefully will be interpreted in your favor. This is a very tricky stage.
If you go for noninfringement, the terms you use need to be defined narrowly. If you go for invalidity — widely. In any case, all your hard work covered in the tips above should indicate to you how to best define terms — so they work in your favor when used in court. Claim construction can be done on your own, or together with a group of respondents. As you can see, Lodsys defended its interpretations of terms, the group of respondents did the same for theirs, while we had interpretations of our own.
The era of courts sympathizing with trolls for reasons only known to themselves has passed. So help the court deliver a fair verdict. Just be ready for the trolls doing everything to complicate this task. This allows you to keep your composure and your wits about you; to use your intellect and reason, and not let emotion take hold. All correspondence, phone calls, Skypes, e-mails, everything, everything, EVERYthing that relates to the case needs to be formally recorded copies, logs, audio recordings, screenshots, videos… and archived.
The troll will keep trying to knock you off balance and continue to shower you with requests for such things. Note from experience 7: In our defense against Lodsys we were suddenly asked to present screenshots of Skype correspondence with an expert who was speaking in court on our behalf. It was clear that Lodsys just wanted to exclude our arguments from the case. However, both the availability of the screenshots and our openness demonstrated the seriousness of our intentions and the thoroughness of our preparations.
Shout it from the rooftops, on the telly, on the net, in the papers, in magazines… and tell it all — all the facts about patent troll court cases. Give interviews, put out press releases, tweet, do Facebook and even Instagram; write an anti-troll rap and get it on YouTube. Do this yourself and also together with other respondents. And of course it also helps demoralize the trolls. But this goes for the trolls too. At this stage we need to once again return to tip No.
Then you start carefully reading the new incoming correspondence from the troll. It will of course start attempting to give your collective brains a good washing, state its admiration of your persistence, and drop a hint or 10 that an amicable out-of-court settlement for a modest amount might be the best solution for all. You need to fight to the end! You need to stand up to a bully.
You have to remember that a troll really hates it when a case gets to court key: Note from experience 8: Hints at an amicable settlement may start to appear long before court. And the nearer the court case, the smaller the appetite of the troll. So there you have it folks — the low-down on laugh-a-minute legal wrangling with patent trolls. Just ask in the comments or send us a message to our dedicated anti-troll email address!
As promised, herewith the newly refurbished China sub-list of my Top Most Beautiful — Must-See — Places on the Planet… But why does China — a single country — have its very own section of the List, like no other geographical area has? All rather straightforward really: Yes, the Chinese can be… colorful with their translations of foreign languages in signage, menus, whatever. And we love it! Privet boys and girls!