Archives

As a business head, how do you handle the Freedom to Operate (FTO) study for a product that has multiple features? Do you feel the fear of missing out on possible threats while conducting the [...]

“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 [...]

Almost every day, multiple patent litigations suits are filed. The increasing frequency of these cases indicates companies are now more inclined to stop competition or get value over their [...]

Imagine – You have hit upon a really good idea, which has a ton of potential. You start working on it with the product development team and invest millions of dollars on the R&D. Because you [...]

100?, 200?, 400?, 600? – A new joinee recently asked me, what was the maximum number of patents I had analyzed within a day? I chuckled and replied – It is not the number that matters, but the [...]

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, [...]

Here at GreyB, we, the editorial team, have an intense love for stories. We try to keep the storytelling animal inside us always at work – be it for sharing relevant strategies with the help of [...]

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 publically 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 [...]

We received a freedom-to-operate search from John, a decade-old client of ours. We share a pleasant relationship where we could discuss our concerns and requirements straight away. John was [...]

If you’re looking to understand everything about prior art search, you’ve landed on the right page. By the time you’ll finish reading this guide, you’ll likely have built a solid understanding of [...]

In March 1983, Paul Graham, a UK-based inventor filed a patent application. His patent application had a hard time getting granted because of examiner’s daughter. Examiner’s daughter, are you [...]

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 [...]

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 – [...]

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 [...]

You’re looking for Patent Invalidation search or ways to invalidate a patent. You know there are more than a couple of ways to do it. Or maybe you don’t. Well, for starters, you need prior art to [...]

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 [...]

Intellectual property, especially patents, are one of the most important intangible assets of a business – especially the ones that sustain majorly by inventing and innovating. Given that [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The purpose of a patent validity search is to validate the enforceability of claims of a patent. If you a plaintiff, a patent validity search will help you know if your patent is going to survive [...]

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 [...]

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 every aspect of the patent in question (Called as Tier I). [...]

During the course of the past decade, We have worked with various IP counsels, and figured that their strategy towards freedom to operate search can be classified into two major categories – [...]

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 [...]

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 (or your company, for that matter) are working on developing a product. A result of a ton of brainstorming, a dozen or more presentations to senior management, and a couple of approvals [...]

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 [...]

Ask a bunch of patent counsel how do they feel about performing a Freedom to Operate study, and you may hear a collective groan from the whole group. No doubt – performing an FTO is a cumbersome [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Organizations, to turn their future for good rely on big decisions. However, more often it’s the small decisions that matter the most. Nearly 100,000 U.S. patients are killed every year by the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

You may attest to the fact that a lot has already been written and discussed on the importance of searching in non-patent literature when performing a prior art search. However, not much (almost [...]

I love patent search, not because I’ve expertise in the area or I find them easy to conduct, but because it helps me to make my contribution in making the patent world unambiguous. I get an [...]

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 [...]