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“You don’t know the value of the best until you’ve experienced the worst”, I blurted out loud as I went through the journal of a paralegal, amazed at how his life took a turn for the best. While [...]

Have you ever heard of – hiding in plain sight? How often does one skip the details because they look pretty obvious? But, a more important question, why am I asking these questions? I [...]

“A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” -Duke Ellington For my team, this case was a chance to brainstorm the best strategies to monetize patents when there is no infringement. How did [...]

For a researcher, prior-art searching means following a set of patterns and ending with a bang-on result. Finding a bang-on result for every case is not easy. From the beginning of my career as a [...]

I’ve seen docketing systems missing lots of basic checks that can be programmed in a day. For instance, I’ve experienced IDS filing systems that do not check if cited references are in sync with [...]

If you have ever received a software patent for invalidation that has claims like a “computer command” that comprise –  1) DOM index value,  2) DOM property name, and  3) DOM property value [...]

While on a hunt for a killer prior art, even after putting in all your blood and sweat, it is not certain that you will hit right on it. One of the many reasons could be that the industry or, the [...]

“… Intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience”, Einstein said. Ideas are just a mash-up of already existing information. And what if I tell you with that logic, [...]

Have you ever faced a situation where you are trying to invalidate a formulation patent and end up not having even a single prior art disclosing the exact same proportions of ingredients? Despite [...]

As a searcher, each of us has an array of tactics and strategies at our disposal. Implementing the right tactic at the right resource could open doors to the prior art which you thought might not [...]

Imagine this – You have a patent to invalidate. What are the possible search avenues you will explore to ensure a comprehensive search such that no prior art is missed? If you’re a [...]

In the practical world, circumstances are not always in our favor. Sometimes, indeed, we don’t have suitable weapons to fight the battle. On the contrary, the opponent’s counterattack is so [...]

Patent filing in the semiconductor industry has exploded in recent years as new technologies like the internet of things, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have rapidly expanded in [...]

Imagine this – You are a leading biopharmaceutical player whose R&D team has developed a novel product. Before launching the product, you want to make sure your product is not infringing on [...]

As a litigator, you love killer prior art, don’t you? A perfect Tier-I reference(s) would make life so easy and court proceedings bliss. But what if killer prior art does not exist?  The next [...]

If you have been searching for a comprehensive guide on how to conduct a patent search, I would like to congratulate you because your search has just ended. This is your one-stop solution where [...]

Imagine this – A leading smartphone player comes to you with a litigation-grade search project for a smartphone-related patent. If the fact that this patent was in litigation does not sound [...]

There are a hundred different ways to perform a patent search – You can perform it on a commercial or a free patent database. You might choose a conventional way or go totally out of the league – [...]

“Gamers are the most passionate people in the world and it’s painful when you make them unhappy”. Jack Tretton, President, and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (2013) We have to agree [...]

Have you ever been lost in the ocean of cited references in a patent invalidation search?   Citation analysis, although a powerful strategy, is often limited to the second or third generation of [...]

Has this ever happened to you during a litigation grade search that you found prior art in complaint documents? Yes, those very documents which in a previous infringement lawsuit was used to [...]

Finding prior art for a patent that has a mathematical expression or a complex equation in its claim is hard. If you have worked on such cases before, you would know it is not like another [...]

As a litigator, you love killer prior art,  don’t you? But sometimes you have to make do with 103-type if you are in the US. The sound of 103-type just made you sigh, didn’t it? It is justified [...]

Have you ever faced a situation where you had to find killer prior art in a limited time frame? Let me tell you what happened when we faced a similar challenge recently.  In this case client [...]

How do you tell apart an abstract idea from another? More importantly, in this post-Alice era, how do you identify patent abstract ideas which determine the subject matter eligibility for claims? [...]

Patent attorneys are often in a zero-sum game when it comes to litigation. Wins are attributed to how strong the prior art is with the attorney. My job is to find this prior art. Most patent [...]

Has this ever happened to you – You are conducting a prior-art search and something keeps on jabbing at the back of your head, questioning whether you have explored everything?  Well, it happens [...]

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”  ― Jorge Luis Borges I’ve heard this quote many times, yet hadn’t felt it until now. Recently, I was analyzing the stats of the [...]

“My client wants a fresh search on a patent about LED substrates” emailed an attorney – our repeat client – on a Friday. “Of course, we can help you as this is relatable technology”, [...]

“I don’t know what else I can tell you, it seems nothing good exists,” said the attorney on a conference call. This conversation took place during one of the interim connects in the project [...]

When it comes to prior art searches, among the huge list of resources and strategies explored and employed during the search, searchers generally tend to give a low priority to already cited [...]

In our years of performing invalidation searches, there were often occasions when we found inspiration for prior art from the environment around us. There are way too many to link each of them, [...]

An attorney fighting a litigation suit is not unlike a soldier on a battlefield. The soldier equipped with sniper or high-tech weapons could give a deadly blow to the enemy, however, that’s not [...]

In the US, while presenting a piece of non-patent literature (NPL) as a valid prior art, the litigators have to overcome challenges of proving that the NPL was publicly accessible and that the [...]

Old times were simple.  There was a plaintiff, who tried to sue a company, and then the company asked us to find some good prior art. We logged in to simple patent databases, many of which were [...]

In 2016, a major Chinese smartphone manufacturer came to us with a problem. The company was being sued by a competitor, also based in China, for patent infringement, and they would soon have to [...]

In 2017, we were approached by an attorney representing a large manufacturer of digital and analog computer chips that we’ll call Chip and Dale Corp. The company had recently been contacted by [...]

Have you ever been in a situation where your IPR got instituted, but the PTO declared the challenged claim as valid? If a challenged claim(s) is declared valid by the USPTO in IPR, and later a [...]

Many a time, even after multiple rounds of searches – in house, from the client’s side, and using vendors – leads to no results. One reason it happens because the winning prior art is [...]

Patent infringement has become a lot common in the past couple of decades. With increased interconnectivity among technologies and the existence of thousands of patents covering them, it has [...]

How difficult is it to find a solution to a problem you know nothing about? Difficult? Very difficult? Preposterous, you say? No, we are not being ludicrous. Though less often, there are [...]

Have you come across a situation when the search vendor you hired returned with a report concluding “no reference found”? There could be multiple reasons that your vendor returns with such a [...]

The patent set was already exhausted. Searching on standards for hours started feeling like inside of a spiral that keeps tightening as you go down. In between, some references emerged undeniable [...]

Not all prior art searches are run equally. Some are complex, some are easy, and some test your temperament by pushing you to the dark abyss of self-doubt where you question your abilities and [...]

Breach of contract, unfair competition, and willful patent infringement – The very terms predominant in the complaint filed by wireless manufacturer Zomm against the Cupertino based tech giant. [...]

After a long and hard day at work, I like to come home to a steaming cup of coffee, with toasted marshmallows on top, chocolate chip cookies on the side and some entertainment source to get my [...]

“Not today!” – I groaned as I woke up and saw the clock beside my bedside. It was 8:15 AM already and I had only 45 minutes to get to the office. I couldn’t afford to get late as I had a client [...]

Drones fascinate me. They are wonderful tools of entertainment and transportation and has so much potential, which, if fully explored can change the way mankind transports. Technology companies [...]

I was leaning in my chair while watching those bees through the steam of my coffee. They were four in number, flying from one plant to another, from one flower to next, collecting the sugary [...]

Prior art can be found in a lot of places. Some conventional, others unimaginable yet a valid source of prior art – the unconventional one. As analysts, we are tuned to exhaust the conventional [...]

NuCurrent has been very active in providing wireless charging solutions since 2009, which were commercialized in 2012, while Samsung introduced a wireless charging kit as an add-on to the Galaxy [...]

Understanding the objective of the client goes a long way in customer satisfaction and retention. At GreyB, we are huge believers in fulfilling the objective of the client – rather than [...]

Invalidating patents is hard. Invalidating a standard-essential patent (SEPs) is even harder. SEPs claim technical solutions that are part of industry standards. Needless to say, they are much [...]

We find prior art in a lot of unconventional places. Sitcoms, Pop culture magazines, FCC ID databases, Internet archives – Well, almost every place where you would least think of finding prior [...]

You would have handled cases where you gave the same search to multiple firms and only a handful returned with the art that you were looking for. Why is it that some search firms find the right [...]

I’m a self-confessed fan of sitcoms and movies. A binge-watcher by nature, I often spend weekends endlessly staring at my laptop screen, with munchies on my side, so that I don’t have to hit [...]

Click to read this article in Chinese 🇨🇳 What exactly is the objective of an invalidation search? That’s an easy question. Of course, it is to find a result – one that discloses [...]

Prior art search is a big part of the work we do. When we started, we were convinced that prior art searches should never be run with a set framework where only the following few defined steps [...]

On May 22nd of 2017, the Supreme court of the US issued its landmark ruling on TC Heartland LLC V Kraft Foods, the decision being credited to have changed the law on venue for patent cases. Few [...]

Visual Memory sued NVIDIA for infringing its US5953740 patent. NVIDIA in a response filed a motion under Rule 12(b)(6) which was granted by the district court. The district court scrutinized [...]

Invalidation searches are not a cakewalk. That’s why a lot of time many prior art search service providers or your in-house team fail to return with a result you needed. Weak results or no [...]

You will agree when I say it’s not always the hard work that leads you to success. Experience plays its sweet role by equipping you with abilities to make decisions that optimize and [...]

“Searching prior art is not a process, it is an art.” In my 6 years of experience, I have been a part of ~250 patent invalidation processes. If it has taught me anything, it is that there are [...]

US9320716– An apparent sword in the arsenal of Cosmo Technologies -a subsidiary of COSMO Pharmaceuticals- has been on the battlefield a lot, lately. This weapon of choice, both individually [...]

Of late, we have been performing a lot of invalidation searches on patents of 4G LTE. And I noticed a weird pattern – call it insight if you would like to – that I didn’t discover earlier while [...]

I am very fond of Nokia and its products. Mostly because I feel they have made a huge contribution in developing various 3GPP standards. So when I found out that Blackberry was suing Nokia [...]

Race of finding better prior art that can influence an IPR or patent litigation is the need of the hour. Such searches have become increasingly important in recent times, given the huge increase [...]

On December 1, 2016, Visual Effect LLC filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA Corporation for infringing two of its patents US8864304 and US9167235– for which it demanded a trial by jury. Filed in [...]

Do you know that nearly one-third of the patents involved in litigation were found to be invalid? Well, if you feel this number is high then you will find it difficult to accept our belief – We [...]

Seems like Christmas came early for Samsung! Last week, a landmark ruling in given on one of the most popular patent battles between Samsung-Apple on writ of certiorari to the United States Court [...]

Have you ever had a case where you had to perform an invalidation search and you need a prior art for a claim at the heart of which has a mathematical expression? Needless to say, you wouldn’t [...]

Patent thickets, broad patents, and patents covering vague and combinatorial claims have exponentially increased in number over the past few decades. Cloaking under the name of patent strategy, [...]

With the passage of time, technological terms have evolved drastically. Earlier phones were called radiotelephones, later as mobile stations and now we use term user equipment. Did you also [...]

Do you also believe that a patent protects your invention? Well, Sorry for bursting the bubble but it’s a myth. 90% of patents are valueless and couldn’t be defended.  A patent only gives [...]

Whenever one gets into a problem, the right thing to do is to identify and apply the best solution. However, one can’t decide if a solution is best unless it is compared with other available [...]

After traveling together on a long road for 43 years, on 19 Feb 2013, the 25 member states signed a deal to end the regime of the “bundled patent” system by setting up a Unitary Patent Court in [...]

In today’s consumer-centric world, satisfying a clients’ needs is the primary goal of any company. When it comes to prior art searches, there is only one thing that can satisfy a client: a [...]

Every day, as we take a step at making our life more digital, we facilitate digitization of our knowledge. Hundreds of documents, on a regular basis, are getting scanned, listed, indexed and made [...]

Are all prior art searches equal? No. Some only apply to the United States. Some will also include foreign patents. And others will include searching for non-patent literature. As the focus of [...]

Time and again, the prior art searches we conduct teach us new lessons. These lessons not only help us add new rules to our little black book of prior art searching but also point us to the true [...]

How do I find a hidden prior art? – Doesn’t this question bug everyone when we conduct an invalidation search? While some of us try new strategies to excavate one, others explore patent [...]

OBJECTIVE The patent under study was related to a cigarette filter having gas adsorbing material and certain specific composition requirements. Our objective was to invalidate the patent [...]

We received a request from a client to invalidate a patent that is related to the concept of a random access procedure. More specifically, the patent was talking about a specific equation. [...]

OBJECTIVE The patent that we received from the client was related to Wireless communication and covered the process for handling lower priority communication traffic. STORY This time, we thought [...]

OBJECTIVE:  We had to invalidate a patent related to an audio player that had one important feature. Also, the client wanted to make his position stronger in the Inter Partes Review. STORY: This [...]