Teleflex Article

by on December 11, 2006 · 4 comments

I’ve got a new article up at The American about the Teleflex case:

It’s a familiar story: productive companies are forced to spend millions of dollars in court to defend themselves against trumped up claims. Most of these frivolous lawsuits fail, but the successful ones net eye-popping payoffs, attracting more ambitious lawyers in pursuit of ever-larger jackpots. Of course, that describes the campaigns in recent years against the manufacturers of vaccines and breast implants. But it also describes the more recent flood of frivolous patent lawsuits that have plagued the technology industry. Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of KSR v. Teleflex. The case presents the court with an opportunity to put a damper on abuse of the patent system, reducing a serious drag on one of our nation’s most productive industries.

One of the parallels between the tort reform and patent reform issues that I didn’t have space to discuss is the role of forum shopping. Just as certain southern states are known for administering “jackpot justice,” East Texas has become infamous as the go-to location for patent trolls.

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

Read more articles by Tim Lee.

  • http://booksdofurnisharoom.blogspot.com X. Trapnel

    Nice work!

  • http://booksdofurnisharoom.blogspot.com X. Trapnel

    Nice work!

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel Le

    Nice article.

    Tim’s statement that the Federal Circuit has effectively emasculating the obviousness rule can be expanded on. While the Circuit has retained a standard that many claim is consistently applied, it deprives examiners and courts of the ability to consider whether a patent is actually obvious even in the most basic sense of the term.

    Tim, what do you mean by this:

    NTP never alleged that RIM’s BlackBerry technology was in any way derived from the designs disclosed in NTP’s patents. Rather, NTP claimed that the mere fact that BlackBerrys have the combination of features described in NTP’s patentsÃ?¢â?‰?essentially, the ability to retrieve email via a wireless connectionÃ?¢â?‰?was enough to trigger liability.

    First, “derivation” seems more appropriate to copyright than patents when talking about infringement. Patent holders never (as far as I know) claim an infringing product is derived. If there was an independent invention defense in patent law, then I could see how a patent holder would claim that another product is deriative. Second, NTP’s claim was sound as RIM’s product matched the specs laid out in its patents; the issue of those patents’ obviousness, scope and validity is another question. Thus, to say that NTP “merely” accused RIM of infringing its patents is not quite right.

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel Le

    Nice article.

    Tim’s statement that the Federal Circuit has effectively emasculating the obviousness rule can be expanded on. While the Circuit has retained a standard that many claim is consistently applied, it deprives examiners and courts of the ability to consider whether a patent is actually obvious even in the most basic sense of the term.

    Tim, what do you mean by this:

    NTP never alleged that RIM’s BlackBerry technology was in any way derived from the designs disclosed in NTP’s patents. Rather, NTP claimed that the mere fact that BlackBerrys have the combination of features described in NTP’s patentsÃ?¢â?‰?essentially, the ability to retrieve email via a wireless connectionÃ?¢â?‰?was enough to trigger liability.


    First, “derivation” seems more appropriate to copyright than patents when talking about infringement. Patent holders never (as far as I know) claim an infringing product is derived. If there was an independent invention defense in patent law, then I could see how a patent holder would claim that another product is deriative. Second, NTP’s claim was sound as RIM’s product matched the specs laid out in its patents; the issue of those patents’ obviousness, scope and validity is another question. Thus, to say that NTP “merely” accused RIM of infringing its patents is not quite right.

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