CALIOPOLIS

This is my second interview with a law professor who teaches patent law. Professor Vince Chiapetta teaches at Willamette University College of Law and has been involved in patent litigation in the past.

The first podcast was with Professor Mary LaFrance of UNLV Boyd School of Law.

Vince was kind enough to entertain my questions and enlighten in me in many aspects of patents, patent law and patent litigation. He clarified many issue for me in regards to the BlackBoard v. Desire2Learn litigation.

I had the benefit of speaking with Vince the day after my return from EDUCAUSE in Dallas where one of the sessions I attended was the BlackBoard Town Hall which others have blogged about here (Chronicle article) and here (Al Essa’s blog). This session left me with more questions than answers and these were fresh in my mind during my talk with Vince.

We talked about many legal issues and so I will come back to this post later and add some links to legal definitions or other articles to help us non-lawyers follow the bouncing ball.

UPDATE: I ran the audio file through Gigabox’s excellent free tool Levelator to make it more listen-able (my voice boomed while Vince sounded distant) to good effect. The link is to the new version.

Click to listen to the podcast or right-click to download – Chiapetta2.mp3

As usual, none of the information in this podcast should be construed as legal advice.

UPDATE:

We covered a lot of technical territory in this podcast. Here are some links that relate to some of the topics covered…

• KSR v. Teleflex – a current patent case going before the Supreme Court soon. This is a link to a blog that talks about the case.
• The term I was searching for about 10 minutes into the podcast was "Skilled Artisan" and here is a link to the USPTO website that helped me. Use your browser (Ctrl-F) to search for "skilled artisan".
• Definition of Mens Rea from LII’s Wex.
• More about the Sherman Act from Wex
• Walker Process Supreme Court case that ties together inequitable conduct and antitrust (link to Findlaw)
• Here’s an article on "inequitable conduct" in patent litigation. I have not read this yet.
• Here’s an article about the US District Court in Texas often referred to as the "Rocket Docket" for patent cases.
• Cost of patent litigration from Wikipedia…"…A typical patent infringement case in the US costs 1 – 3 milliondollars in legal fees for each side. This is despite the fact that 99%of all patent infringement cases are settled. Legal fees inpharmaceutical cases can run 30 million dollars or more due to the factthat billions of dollars may be at stake…."
• Wikipedia article on software patents
• Article on "Markman Hearings" with this quote… "…While the form, timing and scope of "Markman"hearings vary from district to district and from judge to judge, theoutcome is often dispositive of the entire case. This occurs becausethe interpretation of a patent claim, or "claim construction", is thecentral issue in most patent litigation. Whether the litigation focuseson patent infringement or validity, the core issue is often whetherthere is a narrow or broad interpretation of the patent claim…."