RANDomness

Much of the talk in the patent community over the past few days has been about the Federal Circuit’s en banc CLS Bank “decision” — over at IPWatchdog, Gene Quinn has a couple of interesting posts on the case. He wonders if IBM’s Watson computer is still patent-eligible, and also if some of the Federal Circuit judges ignored Supreme Court precedent in their CLS Bank analyses.
The Supreme Court yesterday handed Monsanto a big win, holding that the patent exhaustion doctrine did not permit a farmer to reproduce its patented “Roundup-Ready” soybean seeds without a license. However, the Court issued a relatively narrow opinion, and refused to extend its holding to all self-replicating patented technologies. (via SCOTUSBlog)
Patent Progress has a new lead blogger — CCIA Patent Counsel Matt Levy. In a post last week, Matt entered into an online debate that has recently ensnared Techdirt’s Mike Masnick and Patently-O’s Dennis Crouch — Does a recent study show that patents don’t actually incentive or lead to innovation?
In an interesting column in Forbes, Richard S. Hill, the Chairman and Interim CEO of Tessera Technologies, urges the company’s stockholders to reject a board takeover bid by hedge fund Starboard Value LP that he claims would result in a business model change for the company. Mr. Hill pleads “Don’t Turn My Company Into A Patent Troll!“

Essential Patent Blog