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In response to: Medtronic awarded $51m in patent infringement case against BrainLAB AG

BrainLAB Wins Patent Infringement Case – Jury Verdict Overturned

On Friday, February 27, 2006, the US District Court in Denver, Colorado, dismissed the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Medtronic against BrainLAB in 1998. The Court ruled that, as a matter of law, BrainLAB’s image-guided surgery/radiotherapy products do not infringe any of the patents in suit, determining that the evidence does not support a finding of infringement.

In September 2005, a Denver jury had reached a verdict finding that BrainLAB infringed four patents held or licensed by Medtronic, and determined that a reasonable royalty on BrainLAB product sales in the United States amounted to $51 million. The Court’s ruling set aside that jury verdict and precludes the injunction Medtronic had been seeking.

“We are pleased to see that the Court has confirmed the uniqueness of our image-guided technology and that our technology does not infringe Medtronic’s patents,” said Stefan Vilsmeier, BrainLAB founder and CEO. “We look forward to continued success in our surgical navigation business and to supplying our partners with our advanced technology.”

Buzz Coastin [Visitor] · http://brainlab.com 02/27/06 @ 11:47

In response to: IMPAX Announces Alza's Lawsuit Related to Generic Version Of Concerta

Is there a date that the generic will be on the market?

Robin [Visitor] 12/28/05 @ 13:50

In response to: Anti-counterfeiting innovator's heirs look to cash in

What a crock of BS.
Wicker's patent was thrown out in 1995 because it was too obvious and not inventive enough. Security document artist's have relied on producing designs that consist of fine lines at high frequencies since the dawning of paper currency and the judge rendered the patent null because of that.
That Wicker claimed it as his invention was, in the very least, opportunistic. Every bank note ever produced has incorporated these techniques as a deterrent to counterfeiting and fraud.
The advent of scanners and copiers didn't cause the designer to develop these techniques, they already existed!By claiming moire affects and anomolies in scans and photocopies was nothing more than an observation of the obvious. Neither the techniques to create the artwork nor the technolgy to copy it originated with Wicker so why should he claim ownership of and for the result of their fateful intersection/interaction.
Furthermore, Wicker emulated established security design techniques that were the domain of specialised designers within the security print industry for many years before his patent filing and claimed them as his own.
Finally, DSS security feature "Blockout" is an infringement of an existing patent by Xerox. They also sell security features that are patented by Omron, De La Rue and Jura Trade, to name a few, as their own.
So, it's no surprise that Wicker lost his case against the US Treasury/Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The patent infringement suit against the European Central Bank will end no differently.
In the meantime speculators will be riding DSS stocks in hopes of a big payoff that will surely not materialize.
A cheap marketing ploy? Perhaps that is the only reason that the lawsuit was filed.

money talks [Visitor] 12/22/05 @ 20:18

In response to: O2Micro files LCD TV patent suit against Sony and Rohm

FYI: The US Patent mentioned here (US5453863) was used by Kent to cause the bankruptcy of ADS. Now, the EPO unanimously decided that its disclosure is insufficient to teach the invention – and that is after Kent's entire senior technical staff appeared to personally try to convince & explain to the EPO otherwise.

Cheers,

Abe

Abe Bhattacharys [Visitor] 12/22/05 @ 04:11

In response to: Microsoft sued over Excel data-linking technology

Let's get this straight. *SOMEONE ELSE* gets a patent covering the concept of one of Microsoft's programs reading files written by another program of Microsoft's???

I am a linux user, and wouldn't mind seeing Microsoft drop down to maybe 25% market share. But this software patent garbage is totally insane, berserk, idiotic, and stupid. What we're seeing here has nothing what-so-ever to do with real invention. It's all about shyster lawyers throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. Software patents must die, or else North America will become a technological backwater.

While we're at it, Microsoft isn't exactly innocent. After a lot of work by a lot of people, developing the XML standard, Microsoft has patented the concept of doing what XML was designed to do, i.e. store various forms of data.

Walter Dnes [Visitor] · http://tech_sec.blog.ca 06/07/05 @ 19:03

In response to: The All By Myself Patent of the Day goes to Independent Inventors from Louisiana for a Solo-operable seesaw

seems to be anticipated by the solo- seesaws you can buy in any toy shop ........

jansen [Visitor] 03/30/05 @ 02:12

In response to: Hitachi Files Patent Infringement Complaint against GS Magicstor Companies

Is there some way to print out the lh and rh column info ? There used to be a
"printerfriendly version ". As it is now, I can print out the central column with the 'hard' info, but not the sides.
Please advise. Thank you.
Walter Unterberg
Reg. Patent Agent

Walter Unterberg [Visitor] 01/07/05 @ 01:04