[tabi] Fw: Update on Freedom scientific and GWmicro law suit

  • From: "Easy Talk" <easytalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <tabi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:00:07 -0400

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Easy Talk 
To: fcb-l@xxxxxxx 
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 5:58 AM
Subject: Update on Freedom scientific and GWmicro law suit


Go GW

Lawsuit Leads to Reconsideration of Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has re-examined a patent held by the maker 
of
a screen reader for blind computer users in connection with an infringement 
lawsuit
filed against a competing company. Reliable sources hailed the move as a 
significant
victory for the defendant.
The
Document Placemarker patent
, held by
Freedom Scientific, Inc.
, covers a specialized screen reading capability that allows a blind person to 
save
their position on a Web page and return to the same place at a later time. The 
company's
Job Access With Speech (JAWS) screen reading software incorporates this feature.
In a July 15, 2008
complaint
 filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Florida, Tampa 
Division,
the self-proclaimed "world's leading manufacturer of assistive technology 
products
for those who are vision impaired" accused GW Micro, the maker of the competing 
Window-Eyes
screen reader, of deliberate patent infringement, claiming their placemarker 
technology
is the same as that described in the patent. According to court documents, 
Freedom
Scientific is seeking an injunction requiring GW Micro to stop including the 
placemarker
feature in their product, asks for significant unspecified financial 
compensation
for the infringement and requests recovery of legal fees.
"I believe that this technology shouldn't have been patented to begin with," 
said
Doug Geoffray, Vice President of Development with
GW Micro, Inc
. "It obviously was around way before what they've done. We have stated that our
version, Window-Eyes 3.1 back in 1999, had previous position capability."
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed. In a re-examination of Freedom 
Scientific's
patent, at the request of GW Micro's attorneys, the office rejected all claims 
to
the invention.
"A person shall be entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or 
described
in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on 
sale
in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent 
in
the United States," stated a published document describing the re-examination as
the basis for the patent's rejection on the grounds that the technology had 
already
been invented.
The document also cited two existing patents and the availability of IBM's Home 
Page
Reader, a product employing place marker technology prior to the Freedom 
Scientific
patent, in its reasoning behind the decision.
"We take that as a positive sign," Geoffray said.
"It's a victory," said Dennis Karjala, Jack E. Brown Professor of Law, Faculty 
Fellow,
Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology at Arizona State University's
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
. "There's no question that, if the re-examination decision is upheld, that's 
the
end of it. There is no patent."
He said Freedom Scientific may still have some cards to play in this case.
"The patent owner in a re-examination proceeding may appeal," Karjala said. "It 
goes
to an appeals board within the Patent Office and then they can later seek 
judicial
review. This thing could go on for awhile."
According to the re-examination document, the Patent Office must receive a 
response
from Freedom Scientific by Oct. 28 if it wishes to appeal the decision.
Karjala said the legal trend points to a probable GW Micro victory.
"Because the Supreme Court has been reviewing so many of their cases with an 
obvious
eye to overturning them, the Patent Office is pretty sensitive now that they're 
being
accused of being too patent friendly," said Karjala. "My guess is once you got a
ruling by the examiner that the patent is invalid, I'd say the chances are 
pretty
good it will be upheld by the board in the Patent Office. If it's upheld by the 
board,
the chances that a court would overturn it in this atmosphere are pretty slim."
Freedom Scientific representatives declined to comment, citing the ongoing 
litigation.
Notes:
The examiner cited
Patent 6085161
 describing the invention of a system for assigning and playing specific sounds 
when
a Web page changes or the user encounters a specific Web page element such as a 
header
or list. All of the claims in Freedom Scientific's patent were rejected based on
the positioning techniques described in this "sonification" system.
The examiner also cited
Patent 7058887
 describing a means of determining the position on a Web page according to 
user-defined
settings, including the page's domain. This IBM patent was referenced in the 
re-examination
as clarification for the rejection of the sixth claim.
The examiner also referred to the
IBM Home Page Reader Version 2.5 Manual
.
Ex Parte Re-examination, Control Number 90/010,473, Central Re-examination Unit,
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Visit the
Patent Application Information Retrieval
 Web site and enter the specified control number to obtain this document. The 
Patent
Office provides this document only in scanned image PDF, which is inaccessible 
to
blind readers. An
accessible copy
 of this document has been made available using Kurzweil K1000 Version 11.03 
optical
character recognition software.
An accessible copy of Freedom Scientific's complaint was made available in the 
July
24, 2008
article
 about the lawsuit.
Posted by Darrell at
11:22 AM
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