The antitrust case is the first to question patent abuse in Europe, according to the commission, which emphasized that the lawsuit did not question the need for drug patents.
Although lawyers say the case raises few basic legal questions, patent attorney Dennis Crouch of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff in Chicago says it should send a powerful signal to academics.
The patent in question, U.S. Patent Number 7,796,116, is titled "Electronic equipment for handheld vision based absolute pointing system".
The patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752 for a "Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer" is meant to make computer chips more power-efficient.
In that case, Apple is appealing because it believes the patent in question — a patent (the '654) that Motorola originally received in the 1990s around pager technology — is invalid.
Alongside the question whether patents encourage innovation, controversy has remained over the desirability of a patent system in areas like the genetic modification of food, medicine and elsewhere (see van Dooren 2007 2009).
The patent application in question (a patent number hasn't been assigned yet) is titled "A Method and System for Communication, Advertising, Searching, Sharing and Dynamically Providing a Journal Feed".
There is the question of patents, for sure — 17,000 already in existence and applications for a further 7,500.
Review with students Frequently Asked Questions about patents, including the value of a patent and what is patentable, from Stellar Business Online at //www.stellar.org/global/e-elof3.html.
