Month: July 2014

The CLUB has a Women in Technology Event on July 24th in Palo Alto

The CLUB is having an event for Women in Technology, and the lawyers who love them.  This is the invitation, open to women in tech in Silicon Valley is as follows:

Join us Thursday July 24th at VMware in Palo Alto, along with our five panelists to discuss Women in Technology! Hear their stories of how they got into tech, opinions on where the industry is going and more!

Panelists:

Laurie Hane: Vice President & Deputy General Counsel
Deanna Slocum: Vice President, Ethics & Compliance
Maryam Zand: Senior Manager, Product management and marketing, AaaS for vCHS
Suchitha Chetia: Sr. Director, QE, Storage & Availability Product Engineering
Natasha Shevelyov: Program Manager, Security Strategist, Product Security Engineering

An annotated map of the VMware campus: palo-alto-campus-expansion-master-campus-map.pdf

Please come if you are interested.

Time: July 24, 2014 from 6pm to 8pm
Location: VMware in Palo Alto
Street: 3401 Hillview Ave
City/Town: Palo Alto
Event Type: tech, event
Organized By: Risa Beckwith and Laura Fechete

Actual location map:

Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 2.40.25 AM

No RSVP is necessary.  If you are interested, please come by.  I hope to see you there.

Post-Alice Decision on Patent Ineligible Processes

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Digitech Image Technologies Llc V. Electronics For Imaging Inc. decided that a patent directed to the generation and use of an “improved device profile” that describes spatial and color properties of a device within a digital image processing system was not patent eligible, as “abstract.”  The claims themselves were very broad.  The apparatus claim was short, and claimed:

1. A device profile for describing properties of a device in a digital image reproduction system to capture, transform or render an image, said device profile comprising:

first data for describing a device dependent transformation of color information content of the image to a device independent color space; and

second data for describing a device dependent transformation of spatial information content of the image in said device independent color space.

The court compared this claim to the signal claims of Nuijten, and simply stated that “the device profile claims of the ′415 patent do not require any physical embodiment, much less a non-transitory one. The device profile, as claimed, is a collection of intangible color and spatial information. We therefore hold that the device profile claims of the ′415 patent do not encompass eligible subject matter as required by section 101 and are therefore not patent eligible.” The method claims are similarly quickly dispatched.  The method claims too were quite broad, claiming:

10. A method of generating a device profile that describes properties of a device in a digital image reproduction system for capturing, transforming or rendering an image, said method comprising:

generating first data for describing a device dependent transformation of color information content of the image to a device independent color space through use of measured chromatic stimuli and device response characteristic functions;

generating second data for describing a device dependent transformation of spatial information content of the image in said device independent color space through use of spatial stimuli and device response characteristic functions; and

combining said first and second data into the device profile.

The court stated that “the above claim thus recites an ineligible abstract process of gathering and combining data that does not require input from a physical device. As discussed above, the two data sets and the resulting device profile are ineligible subject matter. Without additional limitations, a process that employs mathematical algorithms to manipulate existing information to generate additional information is not patent eligible.”

This, I think is key, going forward:  Without additional limitations, a process that employs mathematical algorithms to manipulate existing information to generate additional information is not patent eligible.

The court does provide a clue for how to write patent-eligible claims under this new regime.  It notes that “The claim generically recites a process of combining two data sets into a device profile; it does not claim the processor’s use of that profile in the capturing, transforming, or rendering of a digital image. The only mention of a “digital image reproduction system” lies in the claim’s preamble, and we have routinely held that a preamble does not limit claim scope if it “merely states the purpose or intended use of an invention.”

I, for one, am planning on affirmatively reciting the use of any data being claimed, and at least linking it to a specific element, like an output or a processor.

LinkedIn Labs: Your Network Mapping

I am an avid user of LinkedIn. Not only does it replace those business cards I used to lose all the time, but it is also a great way to find people. As part of my practice, I often have to track down inventors that used to work at one of my clients’ companies, but have long departed. LinkedIn has been amazingly useful for this. It is sometimes frustrating that certain features I really would like don’t exist. But I still do try to connect with everyone I have professional relationships with.

This leads to a very interesting LinkedIn network. The LinkedIn network is a project at LinkedIn Labs, and it shows you how the people you are connected are connected to each-other.

My map is rather weirdly disconnected.

Screen Shot 2014-06-20 at 11.45.35 PM

It looks like I have four almost completely independent sub-networks.  This isn’t entirely untrue.  The orange represents my colleagues at my former firm, and those strongly connected to them.  The blue are my old friends.  They are almost entirely unconnected as networks.  Oddly, the green are my clients, who tend not to be connected to either friends or former colleagues.  And the group that is most connected with the others is the purple, which is the women’s network that grew out of WiLPower and TheCLUB, both organizations that help professional women develop their careers.

I attend WilPower many years ago, and stayed connected to the group.  And, it appears, the group is also connected to my (mostly male) former colleagues and my friends circle as well.

What story does your LinkedIn network tell?