Category Archives: Technology

PIT = Sil Valley East?

Posted on February 11, 2011 by | Comments Off on PIT = Sil Valley East?

Posted by Henry M. Sneath, a principal, shareholder and IP Group Chair at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

A new report paints Pittsburgh in glowing colors for the availability of high-tech jobs. The Pittsburgh Business Times  (Citing a Dice.com study) reports that Pittsburgh saw an increase of 45% in technology jobs over the past year, and that many tech jobs are still to be filled. The top three areas for tech jobs remain Washington DC, New York/New Jersey and Silicon Valley. Seattle, Detroit and Pittsburgh saw some very high growth in 2010 and are moving up on the ladder of total tech jobs. You’ve gotta give the ‘burgh credit for leveling the rusted steel mills, building high-tech centers and incubators on the vacated slabs, and making the most from the tech transfer operations at Pitt, CMU and Duquesne Universities. The Times suggests that the job board at the Pittsburgh Technology Council is brimming with tech jobs. I had business visitors in from out of town today and as usual, the remarks were aimed at how wonderful this city looks.  This tech growth is a big factor in the feel of the city. As my teenage son says, “it’s all good.”*

*OK – I confess – like most of what a teenagers says, that probably isn’t all true. However, a lot in the Pittsburgh tech community is “all good”.

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Supplementary Guidelines Issued By USPTO In Attempt To Improve Overall Quality Of Patents

Posted on February 10, 2011 by | Comments Off on Supplementary Guidelines Issued By USPTO In Attempt To Improve Overall Quality Of Patents

 by: Joseph R. Carnicella, intellectual property associate with Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. 

Press Release, 11-11 from the USPTO informs its readers that supplementary guidelines relating to Section 112 of the Patent Act have been issued in an attempt to improve the overall quality of patents.  Specifically, the purpose of the supplementary guidelines is to make sure that applicants and examiners strive to better define the scope of patent rights under 35 U.S.C. § 112.  The general public will benefit tremendously from these guidelines because applicants must now claim the invention in such a specific manner that the public will be on notice of exactly what is being claimed and protected by the patent.  These guidelines are designed to supplement the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) and serve to assist examiners in determining whether claims comply with 35 U.S.C. § 112.  Click here to review the supplementary guidelines, which were publised in the Federal Register on February 9, 2011.

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Posted in Patents, Technology

Pittsburgh Technology Start-Up Funding

Posted on February 3, 2011 by | Comments Off on Pittsburgh Technology Start-Up Funding

Posted by Henry M. Sneath, a principal, shareholder and IP Group Chair at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Pittsburgh technology community continues to grow and prosper. Old steel mill slabs are now covered with high-tech facilities and incubators. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania pumped some new money into the Pittsburgh economy with 3 funding awards approved and administered by the Ben Franklin Technology Partners http://benfranklin.org/ (BFTP), a long time Pennsylvania authority which places state funding money with deserving partners. Through a competitive process, the following Pittsburgh based awards were approved by BFPT:

  • $100,000 for Idea Foundry for a technology development grant to help entrepreneurs in information technology or related engineering field create a business. With this funding, the nonprofit organization, which offers market analysis, product management, management team development and other services, is expected to spin out five new companies.
  • $450,000 for the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center for a university research commercialization grant aimed at developing an industry and university network for building the state’s energy sector.
  • $600,000 for the University of Pittsburgh for a university research commercialization grant for an electric power and energy research project aimed at items such as power electronics, renewable energy and smart grid technology.
  • Read more: Pennsylvania hands out $4M in tech commercialization grants | Pittsburgh Business Times

Thanks to the Pittsburgh Business Times for reporting on these awards.

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Time for a Checkup?—IP Audits

Posted on January 27, 2011 by | Comments Off on Time for a Checkup?—IP Audits

by: Robert Wagner, an intellectual property lawyer at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C.

With the dawn of the new year, it is time to consider getting your annual checkups. IP assets often form the core assets of a company—enabling the company to provide its goods and services and to prevent others from encroaching on its valuable property. Regardless of the size of your company, maintaining the health of these assets should be a key priority, so a company’s IP portfolio should undergo a routine review to make sure the assets are in top shape and no issues have arisen.

Among the many things that can be done in an IP checkup (or audit) is to determine which assets are currently being used. Are their underutilized assets that should be utilized? Or, can these assets be sold or licensed to someone else? An IP audit can verify that you have the proper title or license to the IP assets you do use and that all maintenance fees have been paid to maintain the enforceability of these assets. An IP audit can not only assess the assets you have, it can serve as preventative medicine to help ward off lawsuits. With the recent plague of false patent marking cases that have been filed throughout the country, verifying that the goods you provide are properly marked and any expired patent numbers have been removed can help avoid needless and expensive litigation.

An IP audit provides the mechanism to obtain a current snapshot of the status of a company’s IP assets. Like any other kind of checkup, an IP audit can range from a broad, general review and inventory of the assets to a detailed analysis of some or all of the assets. Often, the audit begins with the broad review to identify potential problems and then prioritizes which problems to focus on.

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Posted in Copyrights, False Marking, Patents, Technology, Trade Secret, Trademarks

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Scary Decisis?

Posted on January 26, 2011 by | 1 comment

Posted by Henry M. Sneath, a principal and shareholder at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Here’s a scary decision by a California Appellate Court reported on Wired.com http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/email-attorney-client-privilege/.  An employee who sues her employer for discrimination, and who communicates with her lawyer using her employer’s e-mail system, waives the attorney client privilege by using the company’s e-mail system to seek or receive legal advice from her lawyer.  In other words, if you sue your employer, you may not use that employer’s e-mail server to communicate with your lawyer, or those communications are not privileged. This is an important issue not only to litigants, but to lawyers, who routinely send litigation related e-mails to clients at workplace e-mail addresses. Lawyers must now, perhaps, ask clients a series of questions regarding the process of e-mail communications so that a privileged system of communication can be established. Wired.com quotes the court as holding that “The e-mails sent via company computer under the circumstances of this case were akin to consulting her lawyer in her employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard.”  The key to the decision involves the explicit warnings given to plaintiff and her fellow employees about the use of company e-mail. The court’s holding cited the following rationale for its decision to vitiate the privilege: “This is so because Holmes used a computer of defendant company to send the e-mails even though (1) she had been told of the company’s policy that its computers were to be used only for company business and that employees were prohibited from using them to send or receive personal e-mail, (2) she had been warned that the company would monitor its computers for compliance with this company policy and thus might “inspect all files and messages . . . at any time,” and (3) she had been explicitly advised that employees using company computers to create or maintain personal information or messages “have no right of privacy with respect to that information or message.” See the Courts Published Opinion: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/C059133.PDF

Whether the California decision will be followed elsewhere, or copied in other state or federal courts remains to be seen. We at PitIPtechblog will continue to monitor this decision and its fallout.

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Posted in Attorney-Client Privilege, e-Discovery, Technology

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New Trademark Infringement Action Filed in Western District of Pennsylvania

Posted on January 20, 2011 by | Comments Off on New Trademark Infringement Action Filed in Western District of Pennsylvania

by: Joseph R. Carnicella, an intellectual property associate at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C., jcarnicella@psmn.com

Plaintiff Taza Systems, LLC filed suit against Defendants Taza 21 Co., LLC, et al. in the Western District of Pennsylvania on January 19, 2011.  Plaintiff alleges that it owns various federally-registered service marks, all of which include the term “TAZA,” and has used these marks to identify its restaurant and bar services continuously since 2005.  Plaintiff alleges that Defendants have been on notice of these marks, yet have used the name “TAZA” to identify and advertise their restaurant services without permission from Plaintiff.   Plaintiff has asserted claims of trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition and cyberpiracy.  Defendants have not filed a response to the Complaint.

We will continue to monitor and update the status of this case.

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Federal Courts to Move to PDF/A for CM/ECF Filings

Posted on December 2, 2010 by | 1 comment

by: Robert Wagner, intellectual property attorney at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C.

Federal court practitioner are now well-familiar with the CM/ECF, which allows parties to file documents in a PDF format on-line rather than hand-filing them with the Clerk of Court. In an effort to improve its archiving and preservation of its records and to address concerns over new features that have been incorporated into the PDF format, federal courts will require filers to submit documents in the PDF/A format. The courts have not all set a timeline for implementing these changes, but the Western District of Pennsylvania will require all uploads to be in this format after January 1, 2012.

PDF/A is an International Standards Organization (ISO) approved version of the popular Adobe PDF format designed for archival purposes. It is a self-contained file, which means that it does not rely on external media players or hyperlinks outside of the documents. In addition, it embeds all of the fonts used in the document inside the file, so the recipient need not have any of the fonts installed on his or her computer. It also prevents security measures of any kind (such as passwords).  It appears that the federal courts will be using the minimal PDF/A-1b “flavor” of PDF/A, rather than the full PDF/A-1a “flavor,” which is more exacting.

As the PDF format has evolved, it has incorporated some new features that raised concerns, such as the ability to monitor when a document is read and the ability to incorporate active software inside the file. In theory, by moving to the PDF/A format, electronically-filed documents will be more accessible in the future and less dependent on technologies or features that may become unsupported.

Federal courts currently will accept PDF/A files, but do not yet require them. As practitioners are preparing for the transition to only PDF/A files, they should be aware of a number of changes that will result from this shift:

  1. Because all of the fonts will be embedded into the file, file sizes will be larger. In addition, some specialized fonts will not allow programs to embed them in the PDF/A file or require an additional license to do so. Use of these fonts will be problematic and may have to be avoided.
  2. Hyperlinking to webpages, judicial decisions, and other hypermedia is not possible because the file must be self-contained. Content rich briefs and exhibits will be more difficult to create, and, in particular, one will have to be careful in creating exhibits that contain these items (such as copies of webpages or electronically-downloaded caselaw). While some courts may allow exceptions to this limitation, one should not count on regularly being able to obtain these.
  3. Passwords and other security features are not permitted. The purpose of switching to PDF/A is to make the files as accessible as possible for as long as possible. Passwords and other security measures interfere with that goal.
  4. PDF/A requires the presence of certain meta-data to verify conformance with the standard. For firms with systems that automatically strip meta-data, care will have to be taken so as not to render PDF/A files non-conforming in the process.

For further information, you can see:

  • Federal Court announcement of the change
  • Adobe Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog posts on this topic 1, 2, 3, 4
  • ISO 19005-1:2005 FAQ describing the standard (downloads FAQ)
  • PDF/A compliance organization FAQ

Update: See this later post for additional information on the PDF/A transition.

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