English
Making Your Reexamination News, Risky Business?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Case Study
On January 29, 2010 the USPTO ordered ex parte reexamination of claims 1-6 and 13-18 of C2 Communication Technologies’ U.S. Patent 6,243,373 (90/010,716) at the request of the EFF. On the same day, USPTO ordered a second ex parte reexamination (90/009,637) of claims 1-24 of the ‘373 patent at the request of PaeTec Holdings Corp.[1]
The ‘373 patent is directed to a method and apparatus for implementing a computer network/internet telephone system (VoIP). The patent has been the subject of litigation since 2006, when C2 filed patent infringement suits against AT&T, Inc. (AT&T), Verizon Communications, Inc. (Verizon), BellSouth Corp., Sprint Nextel Corp. (Sprint) and other telecommunications companies. In 2008, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint agreed to take licenses under the patent to settle their litigation. Qwest Communications International, Inc., Global Crossing, Ltd. and Level 3 Communications, Inc. in September 2008, also agreed to settlements and license agreements.
The factual background of this reexamination, concurrent litigation, and multiple reexamination requests, is quite common. As such, I was especially shocked to see this fairly common occurrence Read the rest of this entry »
