Friday, February 21, 2014
Assignment 4, Blog Post 2: Battle between St. Jude Medical and Volcano Corporation
St. Jude Medical and
Volcano Corporation have been fighting a legal battle over patents related to
pressure wire technology in cardiac care. The argument started when St. Jude Medical sued Volcano in the Delaware district court
for infringing five St. Jude patents on pressure guide wires, which are long,
thin, and flexible wires used by cardiologists to insert into a patient's blood
vessel during surgery, such as angioplasty. Angioplasty is basically a surgical
procedure used when a patient's blood vessel gets clogged with plaque. A
balloon is used to swish the plaque to the sides and a stent is placed to keep
the plaque from blocking the blood flow. The pressure wires use a microscopic
pressure-sensing chip that is used to measure fractional flow reserve, and thus
allowing a cardiologist to determine how severe the blockage in the artery is.
Then Volcano
counterclaimed and said that St. Jude had infringed four of its patents.
Volcano later dropped one of the four patents from the lawsuit. On October
19th, 2012 the jury decided that Volcano did not infringe two of St. Jude
Medical's patents and that the other two patents were invalid.
On October 25, 2012,
in response to Volcano's counter claims, a jury of eight ruled in favor of St.
Jude, saying that Volcano had not shown infringement of its patents.
After reading this
article (as well as the Nova article listed below), I want to look into what
factors made some of the patent infringement claims invalid I also want to
learn more about the process of making a counterclaim as well as reaching a cross licensing or royalty
agreement. It would also be good to look at the original patents and trying to
dissect them myself.
Assignment 4, Blog Post 1: Nova against Medical Device Giants
This week, I chose
to do a topic of my choice (with professor's approval, of course). The topic I
chose is patent wars in the medical device industry.
I read an article
titled, "Going Toe to Toe With Medical Device Giants". Abbott
Laboratories, Roche, and Medtronic claimed that Nova Biomedical (a company that
makes blood-testing equipment for diabetes) infringed on their patented
technology. Nova only had $165 million in revenue, so the company really
couldn't afford battling the case legally. However, interestingly, the CEO,
Francis Manganaro, decided to battle it anyways, noting "My partners and I
decided we would rather go down with the ship and lose the company than to give
in to people who behave like that". I definitely think it takes courage
and guts for a CEO to make a decision like that!
Nova's home glucose
meter is a cellphone-size device that digitally displays the blood glucose
level from a drop of blood. By late 2010, Nova had spent $31 million defending
itself. When all these large companies sued Nova, Nova had to take the burden to prove that
they were innocent. However, making that case can cost up to $10 million, and
much of that is factored in before a trial even begins. Because of this, many small companies don't try defending
themselves.
Manganaro launched
Nova with six partners in 1976. The company first made tabletop blood-testing
machines used in ICUs (intensive care units). Their hand-held blood glucose
reading device for home use came to market in 2003. At that time, it required
only 300 nanoliter of blood and took in five seconds to make a reading.
Handheld meters are an $8 billion market-- while the individual meters are sold
for 20 dollars, most of the money comes from selling replacement test strips on
which the drop of blood is placed.
In 1997, Chung Chang
Young and Handani Winarta improved the glucose meters using laser etching to
allow the device to use even smaller amounts of blood. Nova made a deal with BD (Becton Dickson) to
distribute the meter under its own name (BD Logic Meters) In Spring of 2003,
Therasense, a small company that made diabetes tests, claimed that the meter
infringed two of their patents. The situation got much worse for Nova when
Therasense was bought by Abbott for $1.2 billion. The case later expanded to
involve four Abbott patents. First, Manganaro tried to negotiate a cross
license or royalty arrangement. BD struggled to compete with Abbott and Roche
and thus decided to leave the glucose monitoring market. This left Nova to find
another distributor.
Also, when Manganaro
tried to reach a settlement with an Abbott executive, the executive basically
told Nova that he would let it all go if Nova left the glucose monitor business
and gave the technology to Abbott.
In 2007, Roche sued
Nova for infringing two of its patents, and while Roche says that "Nova's
size had nothing to do with this lawsuit", Manganaro believes that the
purpose of this law suit was to get rid of Nova.
Then, in February
2008, Medtronic sued Nova for theft of its trade secret: "the mechanism
Nova used to communicate with Medtronic's insulin pump"
The result is as
follows: In 2008, federal judges invalidated parts of two Abbott patents and
declared that Nova did not infringe the third patent. The fourth patent was
declared invalid. In September 2009, LA jury ruled that Nova had not stolen any
of Medtronic's trade secrets.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Assignment 3, Blog Post 2: Google Sold Motorola to Lenovo
So why did Google
sell Motorola to Lenovo? There are many different opinions about this. Here are
some: According to Sascha Segan, Google's mobile strategy is to get Android
onto as many phones as possible. Unlike Apple, BlackBerry, and Microsoft, most
of Google's revenue comes from advertising. This includes that on mobile
devices. Once Google bought Motorola, some of Google's major licensees started
developing or buying their own non-Google operating systems, because they were
concerned that Google would compete directly with them. Examples include Samsung with Tizen and LG
with WebOS. However, after selling Motorola, Google can be a neutral broker of
operating systems, and thus, make money. Futhermore, Google never made any
money from Motorola.
So now, the question
arises why Lenovo bought Motorola. Several reasons for this. First of all,
Lenovo is the top three smartphone maker, according to data from Gartner (Nov.
14, 2013). United States has one of the world's largest smartphone markets (which
does not come as a surprise). However, Lenovo's marketshare in the United
States is extremely small-- nearly zero. Lenovo's main business is in personal
computers, but unfortunately, its PC sales aren't growing. According to the
article I read, Segan's opinion was that, "if Lenovo is going to be a
technology leader in the late 2010s, it needs to be a mobile tech leader.
[Thus], assembling a global smartphone business is key."(Seegan 2014).
Furthermore, Lenovo has experience integrating and managing technologies based
in the United States. For example, Lenovo bought ThinkPad from IBM and made it
successful. According to the article, getting into the U.S. market is heavily
dependent on the relationships with U.S. carriers, ad Motorola's has developed
some really good relationships, such as
the Droid deal with Verizon Wireless. Since this transaction occurred pretty
recently, we will see how Lenovo fares!
Assignment 3, Blog Post 1: The Time when Google Bought Motorola....
This week's
assignment is to discuss why Google bought Motorola and then sold it soon
after. This blog post will focus on the former (why Google bought Motorola),
while the next blog post will focus on the latter.
Google announced the
acquisition of Motorola Mobility on August 15 for $40 per share. So the
question that naturally arises is why
did Google decide to buy Motorola? Google bought Motorola for the patents,
because Motorola had a huge patent library that could be used defensively.
Google also announced that together, both companies "will accelerate
innovation and choice in mobile computing" and that "Motorola
Mobilitiy's full commitment to the Android operating system means there is a
natural fit" between the two companies [2]. They also mentioned that they
plan to run Motorola as a separately operated business, so that each party
focuses on what they do best. In January 2011, Motorola Mobility (the former
Mobile Devices division of Motorola, Inc.) split from Motorola, Inc. Motorola Mobility holds at least 24,000
patents and pending patent applications worldwide, and approximately 5,000
patents and 1,500 pending patents in the United States. The article I read of
patentlyo.com was published in August of 2011 by Dennis Crouch, a Law Professor
at the University of Missouri School of Law.
Sources:
Friday, February 7, 2014
Assignment 2, Blog Post 2
I read
this article published on November 1st, 2013, titled "Patent Wars: Tech
giants sue Samsung and Google".
Rockstar Consortium is a group of tech giants (Apple, Microsoft,
Blackberry, Ericsson, and Sony). Rockstar recently spend 4.5 billion dollars
buying Nortel patents. Nortel was a telecommunications and data networking
equipment manufacturer. My first
reaction was "that is a LOT of money"-- we are talking billions (not
millions). It was also interesting to learn that, in the third quarter of 2013,
Android devices accounted for 81.3% of smartphone shipments, while Apple iOS
was 13.4% and the Windows phone was 4.1% (statistics from a research firm called
Strategy Analytics). I had thought that the Apple iOS would make up a greater
percentage, but I realized that these statistics are solely for shipment in a
span of four months.
I also
read about how Nokia (whose mobile devices division is now bought by Microsoft)
won a patent victory over HTC. The HTC One smartphone was banned from import
into the UK. (Interesting, because I own an HTC One!) Also, in October of 2013,
Samsung promised to cease taking rivals to court for alleged patent
infringements for a period of five years. There is a $18,3 billion dollar fine
if they breach European anti-trust laws. Again, the severity of the fine (the
huge sum of money!) amazes me. Samsung and Apple are in the courts of more than
ten countries across Europe.
The
articles I have been reading have made me more interested to look into whether
or not there are avenues for cross licensing, so that people can share the
technology and products turn out better overall.
Assignment 2, Blog Post 1
Hi all!
I actually do not have too much background knowledge about the mobile patent
wars, but I am excited to learn more about them! I think what makes them so
interesting is that we are so familiar with the technology, since everyone owns
a cellphone.
Patents
are useful because they give the inventor recognition for discovering something
that has never been discovered before. Thus, they should be used as a tool to
help move invention forward by motivating people to work faster so that they
can apply for the patent first.
However, from the conversation in class and the articles I
have been reading, the mobile patent wars are actually hurting innovation.
Professor Lavian mentioned in class that Apple and Samsung are involved in 22
different lawsuits in different courts. To stall the process and to prevent
other companies from implementing new inventions in their products, companies
will hire lawyers to sue on literally anything. I read this one article, which
was published in October of 2012 (link: http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/mobile-patent-wars-hurting-innovation-experts-say-205074). A technology lawyer, Marvin Ammori, reached out to
Congress to stop patents for software and business methods.
This reminds me of a certain scenario that I encountered on
a popular T.V. show called Shark Tank. On the show, entrepreneurs are given the
opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors. One entrepreneur was
pitching a product, and he mentioned that he had a patent on holes/ tubes in
clothing where you can insert wires and other gadgets (such as from earphones/
mp3 players, etc). [It may be similar to this one: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20130019377]
I believe he mentioned that he had a
patent on this broad category, and one of the investors exclaimed that because
there are so many patents on very simple ideas, it is difficult for other
entrepreneurs to make sufficient progress.
I also
read about the America Invents Act, a patent reform bill that was passed in
September of 2011. This act basically switched the system from a "first to
invent" to "first to file". I look forward to learning more
about how this law affected other patents on mobile devices.
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