p2pnet.net News:- The Federal Circuit in Washington DC should rule that ambiguous patent claims must be invalidated and claim terms should be, "interpreted as narrowly as possible by the courts to protect the public," say three interest organizations.
With this in mind, Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Public Knowledge have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the US Court of Appeals.
"Aggressive patent holders are using vague patent language to cause havoc in the software and Internet fields," said
Jason Schultz, EFF staff attorney and organizer of EFF’s Patent Busting Project.
"We’re asking the court to reign in these claims by limiting their scope to only those things clearly laid out in the patent itself.
"Placing clear limits on patents will provide much-needed protection for the public domain and create a fertile environment for technological growth," said Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge.
In a recent example, Acacia Research sent over 4,000 patent demand letters to universities and colleges across the US, claiming its "vaguely-worded patents cover all known methods of streaming pre-recorded educational lectures over the Internet. Were the appeals court to rule that such vague patent claims are invalid or must be interpreted narrowly, the threatened universities and colleges could defend or dismiss these lawsuits with far greater ease."
The brief was filed for Consumers Union, EFF, and Public Knowledge by students and faculty of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic of the Washington Colleg of Law, American University, in a case called Phillips v. AWH Corporation, following a request from the appeals court for industry and public opinions on several issues of current patent law.
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See:-
Patent Busting Project – ‘Streaming video’ patent attacks, p2pnet, August 9, 2004
