There were 6,535 new patents issued at the US Patent Office for the week of April 27, 2021, not counting the Design and Reissue patents. There were 3,113 patents issued to inventors in the United States broken out by state in the following:
Below is the breakdown for the top countries assignee new patents issued:
The table below are some of the top Assignees of the week.
The top ten longest time to patent grant for the week. Avery Dennison Corporation comes in number one with 5,045 days from filing to issuance. The patent is titled “Method of making an array of aberrated optical elements”.
The top ten shortest time to patent grant for the week was between 97 and 120 days. Well done to the teams!
Fifteen Autonomous vehicle related patents were issued this week. I thought the patent issued to Waymo was the most interesting and very well written.
A big week for blockchain patents granted with 23 new related patent grants. Advanced New Technologies continues to lead the way in their patent filings with nine new patent issuances.
14 new Electric Vehicle patents were issued this week with Hyundai being the winner with three new issuances.
Some recent patent news to report:
KOSS Corp ($KOSS) v Apple ($AAPL) had their Markman hearing held in the Western District of Texas on April 23, 2021, with HJ Albright ruling on the terms, which will be issued in a forthcoming Order. HJ Albright also set a jury trial date for April 18, 2022. I will continue to monitor this case and will likely take a trip to Waco next spring to attend the trial if it does not settle beforehand.
Acacia Research Group ($ACTG) had a settlement docket filing in their Unification Technologies portfolio with HP ($HPQ). The settlement should be included in the Q2 2021 revenue when they release Q2 earnings sometime in late July or early August 2021.
My friend Gaston Kroub wrote two excellent articles on Peloton’s ($PTON) intellectual property. “Patent Pedaling With Peloton (Part I): Downhill” and “Patent Pedaling With Peloton (Part II): Uphill”. I thought they were great reads and his Twitter account always shares important patent insight.
Interdigital ($IDCC) scored a handful of patent wins at the Patent Trial & Appeal Board knocking out five Lenovo Inter Partes Reviews at the Institution stage. Three Lenovo IPRs were instituted, which will be another year long process to determine if the patents are unpatentable or “patentable”.
These decisions will be important in any licensing discussions that might be ongoing with Lenovo and should de-risk some of the ongoing US part of their litigation. If I was an Interdigital strategist, my next move would be to sever or stay action on the three instituted patents so the remaining five proceed with no interruption. I would also be combing through the IDCC patent portfolio that stretches into the thousands to file another set of patent litigation in order to press their position after the IPR wins. A Markman Hearing was conducted on March 8, 2021 in the Delaware case with an Order to be issued shortly. A ten day jury trial is set for December 5, 2022 with HJ Stark. I will likely attend the jury trial.
On a different note I have been working on a handful of different patent related projects. If you are looking for information for market research, equity research, long/short reports pertaining to patent data, patent portfolios, and ongoing litigation, I am available for a reasonable price. I am not an attorney or patent attorney so I can’t give any legal advice. Send me a note at iphawk@outlook.com and we can work something out.
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.