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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday June 04 2015, @05:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the kill-all-the-lawyers dept.

Atlanta-based attorney Scott A. Horstemeyer has sued the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and "Staff Attorney and Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents" Daniel Nazer for libel over an April blog post that bashed patent litigant Eclipse IP LLC for US Patent No. 9,013,334, "Notification systems and methods that permit change of quantity for delivery and/or pickup of goods and/or services." The patent was filed by "prolific inventor" Scott Horstemeyer on March 5, 2014. EFF explains:

We think that all of Eclipse's patents deserve a stupid patent of the month award. But the '334 patent is especially deserving. This is because the Patent Office issued this patent after a federal court invalidated similar claims from other patents in the same family. On September 4, 2014, Judge Wu of the Central District of California issued an order invalidating claims from three of Eclipse's patents. The court explained that these patents claim abstract ideas like checking to see if a task has been completed. Judge Wu applied the Supreme Court's recent decision in Alice v CLS Bank and held the claims invalid under Section 101 of the Patent Act.

All of Eclipse's patents were both "invented" and prosecuted by a patent attorney named Scott Horstemeyer (who just so happens to have prosecuted Arrivalstar's patents too). Patent applicants and their attorneys have an ethical obligation to disclose any information material to patentability. Despite this, from what we can tell from the Patent Office's public access system PAIR, Horstemeyer did not disclose Judge Wu's decision to the examiner during the prosecution of the '334 patent, even though the decision invalidated claims in the patent family. While Horstemeyer has not made any genuine contribution to notification "technology," he has shown advanced skill at gaming the patent system.

EFF has managed to get "stupid" patents invalidated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, such as the one that was used to threaten podcasters. You can follow Horstemeyer's litigation against EFF here.


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  • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Thursday June 04 2015, @09:54PM

    by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Thursday June 04 2015, @09:54PM (#192279) Journal

    You are very welcome, sir (or ma'am)! We aim to please.

    --
    "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
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