Schrems II – Invalidation of the US-EU Privacy Shield

Sean — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:08:23 +0000

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost five years since the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) decided Schrems I, invalidating the safe harbor provisions for transfer of personal data of European nationals to the United States. The safe harbor provisions were a set of data privacy principles US companies would agree …

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Garmin’s Ransomeware Hack

Sean — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:05:24 +0000

I’m a runner and Garmin user. My current watch is a ForeRunner 645M. I love their devices and services. I first noticed that Garmin was having technical issues when a run wouldn’t sync with the app on my phone and their Garmin Connect website. I soon saw a number of tweets about the outage. After …

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Do We Need More Legislation to Curb the Patent Trolls?

Sean — Wed, 07 May 2014 21:04:50 +0000

There is a strong push for additional patent reforms in Congress. Much of this has to do with the perceived problem of patent “trolls.” I’ve written before that patent litigation hasn’t exactly exploded over the years, though there may be a current uptick in complaints filed by NPEs. Despite the uptick, two recent evolutions in …

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A Myriad of Issues in Gene Patents

Sean — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 01:44:51 +0000

This June the Supreme Court issued it’s opinion in Myriad. In a Solomonish move, the Court split the baby of biotech. Here, all nine members of the Court chose to cleave at a point between isolated DNA being ineligible subject matter on the one hand, and complimentary DNA (cDNA) being eligible on the other. Without …

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Bowman v. Monsanto: Planting of Patented Seeds to Make a Second Generation of Seeds Infringes RoundUp Ready Patents

Sean — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:58:14 +0000

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided Bowman v. Monsanto and held that a farmer who purchases patented seeds from a grain elevator and then plants those seeds and harvests the crop, infringes the patent. Previous cases had held farmers liable for holding over a portion of their crop for planting the next year, but those …

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Moving to Kutak Rock

Sean — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:47:35 +0000

I’ve been terrible about writing for this blog for the last month. A major part of that is the fact that I have changed jobs. On April 1, I started at Kutak Rock LLP, a general practice firm in Omaha. In some ways, Kutak is a more traditional law firm than my previous employer which …

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Facebook Sued for Patent Infringement – Will Their Lawyers be Sued for Malpractice Next?

Sean — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:58:11 +0000

Facebook has been sued by Rembrandt Social Medial, LP for patent infringement. Rembrandt Social Media doesn’t run a social media site, but was created by Rembrandt IP Management, LLC, with the family of the deceased inventor of the patents and the inventor’s company Aduna. According to the complaint Rembrant works “to help inventors and patent …

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Using iOS 6’s VIP Feature to get In-To-Empty Without Getting Bogged Down

Sean — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:24:00 +0000

I’ve written before about using Getting Things Done, and my Weekly Review. Like a lot of people, I have trouble leaving my email alone. A lot of us seem to feel that emails must be at least read, if not responded to, on a real-time basis. This habit can destroy our productivity, and what’s worse …

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Means Plus Function Claims – Literally Equivalent

Sean — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:26:12 +0000

Dennis Crouch at Patently-O posted an interesting article about the drop in the percentage of patent applications that have claims utilizing means plus function language. Means plus function claims are based on 35 U.S.C § 112(f) which states: Element in Claim for a Combination.— An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed …

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GTD Weekly Reviews: A Trick to Keep Myself Up-to-Date

Sean — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:06:28 +0000

People who work with me know I am a big fan of David Allen’s Getthing Things Done system. It’s a great way to manage all your “stuff” and in particular your work. It’s an intuitive and powerful system that uses contexts for helping you know quickly what tasks you can best spend your time on. …

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