Microsoft Corp., (MSFT) Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and L.L. Bean Inc. are just some of the companies that have flooded the Supreme Court with advice as it prepares for Monday’s arguments over one of the biggest questions involving intellectual property: When can a business method be patented?

There has been a surge in companies receiving patents for ways of doing business, from Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) one-click checkout to Priceline.com Inc.’s (PCLN) reverse auctions, since a 1998 court decision expanded the scope of processes that could be patented.

The Supreme Court must now determine whether such swaths of modern business activity deserve patent protections, thereby opening the door to infringement lawsuits, or belong in the public domain, depriving their inventors of monopoly profits.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Tessera Technologies (TSRA) shares have fallen nearly in half in late trading after the company announced that the Administrative Law Judge overseeing its patent infringement case before the International Trade Commission asserting violation of its wireless patents by a group of semiconductor companies had found no infringement.

The company said that the Initial Determination of the judge upheld the validity of the patents, but found no infringement. Tessera had asserted infringement against the ATI Technologies unit of Advanced Micro Devices, Fresscale Semiconductor, Motorola, Qualcomm, Spansion and STMicroelectronics.

Tessera said it is “disappointed” in the ruling and will review the decision before determining its next steps.

Read the rest of this post

The U.S. atomic bomb was such a secret, scientists and engineers sometimes talked in code. It was the Manhattan Project, not “The Atomic Bomb Project.” Plutonium was referred to as “copper,” and the bomb itself as “the gadget.” But at the same time, scientists and engineers were furiously filing secret patent applications that described many of the parts in exquisite detail. Those patents sat not behind the fences at Los Alamos, but in a vault at the U.S. Patent Office.

Read the rest of this post