…because Microsoft has filed for a patent on software that monitors employee work habits. But there’s a bright side to this Big Brother-esque software. From LiveScience: “[T]he Microsoft patent idea doesn’t automatically grant power to the boss or the HR department. It also envisions how workers might benefit from such monitoring software by getting feedback [...]

Broad Patent Could Have Large Impact on Groupon, Foursquare, & Future Developers This past week, Hothand, an Orange County firm, filed a lawsuit against Groupon and Yelp, alleging that these companies’ mobile shopping apps infringe its location technology. The patent abstract describes it as: “A subscription-based system for providing commerce information for one or more mobile [...]

Bookstore Barnes & Noble has asked the Department of Justice to investigate Microsoft’s patents related to tablets and smartphones, claiming that the software giant is stifling competition in the mobile device market by “raising rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices.”  The plea for an investigation comes [...]

A new ten-year pilot program that directs patent cases to a select group of judges within each participating federal district is finally underway in the Southern District of New York.  The bills establishing the program took a few years to make their way through Congress, and the Southern District was selected back in June to [...]

IPLJ’s Business Editor, Amit R. Parikh, co-authored an article with Charles R. Macedo, a partner at Amster Rothstein & Ebenstein, and Jessica Capasso, an associate at Amster Rothstein & Ebenstein.  This article addresses a Supreme Court opinion that decides employees’ rights to inventions under the Bayh-Doyle Act.  The article examines the opinion in detail and notes [...]

The European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, October 18, that stem cell research cannot be patented. This may have far-reaching effects on the future of stem cell research. Read more here and listen to an audio recording of the discussion here to learn more.

            Last month, President Obama signed into law the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, an overhaul of the U.S. patent system which is purported to be the most significant reform in decades.  The Act aims to create jobs and foster economic growth by speeding up the filing process and reducing filing fees for certain defined small [...]

With the Apple iPhone 5 on the brink of release in the next week or so, Apple seems to have run into a bit of trouble with Samsung.  After Apple filed a U.S. patent suit against Samsung in April of this year, Samsung counter-sued in nine other countries alleging that Apple is using some of [...]

President Obama today signed the America Invents Act, a law that he says will help to streamline the U.S. patent system.  The Act will allow inventors to attract investments more easily, will help to avoid costly patent litigation and, Obama says, ultimately, create jobs.

Google has purchased 1,023 IBM patents designed to counter what it considers to be a “hostile, organized campaign” against its Android operating system by companies such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp.