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Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test
- blakesterz 7y agoThere is an [UPDATED] on this now: "Update: Facing an avalanche of bad publicity, Labrador announced on Tuesday that it would grant royalty-free licenses to companies developing COVID-19 tests. The company also claims it didn't know that BioFire was working on a coronavirus test when it filed its lawsuit last week. The company seems to be going forward with the lawsuit."
- _bxg1 7y ago"We were only trying to be a regular patent troll, we swear!"
- jacquesm 7y agoRoyalty free? Well, pardon my French, but fuck them. They are not in a position to license anything, that would be admitting they had a case to begin with.
- dctoedt 7y ago> that would be admitting they had a case to begin with. And that is precisely what these people are after by making the offer — if others in the industry are willing to take licenses under a patent, then the patent owner can brandish that fact as indirect evidence of the patent's supposed validity. That kind of evidence wouldn't be dispositive by any means. At trial, though, litigation counsel will put in any evidence they can — especially "proxy" evidence that can readily be understood by non-technical people such as judges and jurors. (A classic example of such proxy evidence is, "They lied!") (Patent attorney here, although I don't do that kind of work anymore.)
- jacquesm 7y agoYep. Hence my rant. These jerks should be made an example out of.
- dirtydroog 7y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but if a patent holder doesn't defend their patent isn't it possible for them to lose it?
- wombatpm 7y agoYou are wrong. TRADEMARKS have to be defended or you lose them. Patent lawsuits can be targeted
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoYou also are wrong. Trademarks can be lost by non-payment of the renewal fees, or by genericisation. Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks. Neither in USA nor EU AFAIAA. This is not legal advice; it is my personal opinion and makes no representation about any associate or employee that I might be linked with.
- dctoedt 7y ago> Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks. Not quite. Thermos, escalator, and cellophane became generic terms, free for anyone to use, because everyone started using them and the trademark owners didn't try to stop them. [0] That's why Xerox famously advertised that we should say that we made a Xerox copy of a document, not that we xeroxed it. (Aspirin also became generic, and thus free for anyone to use, in the U.S., but that's because the trademark was seized from its German owner, Bayer AG, as part of reparations after World War I. [1] Aspirin is still a trademark of Bayer in most of the rest of the world.) [0] https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspirinTabletsAvoidingtheGenericideHeadacheintheUnitedStates.aspx https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspiri... [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-...
- dctoedt 7y ago> if a patent holder doesn't defend [sic] their patent isn't it possible for them to lose it? A patent owner would "lose" a patent only if someone were to successfully challenge the patent's validity or enforceability, either in court or in a USPTO proceeding. If the patent owner were to fail to defend against the challenge, then yeah, the court or USPTO might invalidate the patent. Now to be sure, if a patent owner were to wait too long to assert a patent against an infringer, that could complicate the patent owner's efforts to get royalties or an injunction (a stop-use order) later on against that infringer, and possibly against other infringers. And any infringer might try to use the patent owner's delay as proxy evidence that the patent owner didn't really believe that the patent was valid. But failure to assert a patent, in and of itself, will normally have no bearing on a patent's validity or life.
- baud147258 7y ago> Well, pardon my French, but qu'ils aillent se faire foutre! FTFY.
- RobRivera 7y agoI feel like that's their play. To legitimize their IP for potential resale, valid use of the patent can only serve to increase their value, ignoring the bad publicity.
- zentiggr 7y agoAnyone working on anything that Labrador claims is covered should ignore them, and if necessary, tell the courts to go f themselves too if by some bizarre mischance the suit gets any traction at all. If Labrador is a public company, I've got a stockholder recommendation - sell. If not, time to buy nothing from them that isn't medically necessary, and that for only as long as specific items are critical, then zip. Cut them off and let these jackasses starve.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoOne thing that I hope will come out of this coronavirus event, even if just for a short while, is that people no longer at large accept that this anti-social behavior is just "doing business". And I realize the article was updated to give a "royalty free license", which is complete and total bullshit because BioFire shouldn't need a license for Theranos' bullshit patents that never worked anyway. We need to start naming and shaming for this kind of trolling, anti-social behavior. And not just the company name, I'm talking about the principals and lawyers who filed this, who are nothing but a net-negative to society.
- bcheung 7y agoI think there is a lot to be said about social trust and reputation when it comes to brands/companies/individuals. We are seeing that it actually does work and that companies respond when they are called out on bad behavior. Maybe not always, but enough to make a difference. This makes me believe that society has more control than it thinks and that we don't need as much heavy handed government controls that can have unintended consequences and strip us of our freedoms.
- fnord123 7y agoI am not a lawyer, but I wonder if laws against hoarding physical goods like hand sanitizer during an emergency also apply to so called intellectual property.
- pmiller2 7y agoDoes it? I don’t know. Should it? In the case of a global pandemic, it should, IMO. That includes making any vaccines or treatments widely available at or near cost, possibly with government subsidies. Things change when tens or hundreds of millions of lives are on the line. Edit: I don’t know exactly where the line of IP as a public good lies, but with this many lives at stake, we’re certainly well into that kind of territory.
- pooper 7y ago> Does it? I don’t know. Should it? In the case of a global pandemic, it should not, IMO. That includes making any vaccines or treatments widely available at or near cost, possibly with government subsidies. Things change when tens or hundreds of millions of lives are on the line. >> Does it? I don’t know. Should it? In the case of a global pandemic, it should not, IMO. Did you include a not when you meant to not include it?
- TheFiend7 7y agoUnbelievable. This was the patent they were able to get. It comes with graphs describing an "architecture" of their "unique" medical device. Patent #8,283,155 "Specifically, the present invention provides portable medical devices that allow real-time detection of analytes from a biological fluid." and is described as by the article "This patent describes a generic architecture for a machine that automates testing for the presence of substances in bodily fluids. In the system described by the patent, an operator inserts a "test device" (which contains both the bodily fluid to be tested and the reactants required to perform the test) into a "reader device." The reader device then triggers the necessary chemical reactions to perform the test and reports the results. Theranos' patent isn't limited to any specific bodily fluid, reactants, or testing protocol."
- lwheelock 7y agoPerfectly reasonable if granted in the 1950s.
- rlpb 7y agoI don't agree. A 1950s science fiction author might well have written about such a device. I don't see why this unspecific level of wishful thinking should qualify for protection.
- CamperBob2 7y agoOnly the claims matter. That's not the claim section... has anyone read it?
- TheFiend7 7y agoSee below.
- balfirevic 7y agoSo, are the claims very general and therefore encompass all kinds of functioning and non-functioning medical devices? Or do they very specifically describe Theranos' non-functioning tech? It doesn't seem like they can be both.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pergadad 7y agoThis kind of people add nothing to the world. Can only hope they and all other patent trolls catch covid.
- neaden 7y agoI don't see any reason that a firm like Theranos shouldn't have had all of it's patents struck down as void once it was obvious it was a scam. What incentive do we have as a society to allow con artists to patent things and inhibit real research?
- drstewart 7y agoJust because Theranos as a company was a scam doesn't mean literally all their patents are invalid?
- minitoar 7y agoThe point of patents is to protect IP for a while. If the company was fraudulent, who are we protecting? Whoever now owns the IP, it’s as if they purchased stolen goods.
- sorokod 7y agoCan you point out one that is?
- mnm1 7y agoIt was either a scam or it had valid, valuable patents (logically maybe not legally). You can't it have both ways. If the patent is valid, then it wasn't a scam. That means it developed something of value for all that investor money and they should be happy with it. The patent is clearly in the realm of what was promised. Of course, legally, who knows? There's nothing logical about our legal system, especially our patent system.
- zentiggr 7y agoRegardless of the status of the patents, what they actually carried out was massive fraud. Misrepresentation of actual results and sliding the reports of internal progress until they couldn't withstand the total failure and physical impossibility of what they were doing is a straight up scam. Even if the overly broad, ridiculous patent was somehow 'invented', what Holmes and crew did was reprehensible all by itself.
- agiri 7y agoOnly in America
- justicezyx 7y agoI cannot fathom the stupidity behind this...
- Ididntdothis 7y agoBeing a remorseless psychopath works in business.
- drocer88 7y agoArticle I, Section 8, clause 8 : “The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….” Can't Congress , on an emergency basis, simply define "limited Times" to a very short duration for critical therapies.
- zentiggr 7y agoCongress could reform the USPTO in any way they wanted, IF they wanted to. Let's convince them.
- achow 7y ago> This patent describes a generic architecture for a machine that automates testing for the presence of substances in bodily fluids. In the system described by the patent, an operator inserts a "test device" (which contains both the bodily fluid to be tested and the reactants required to perform the test) into a "reader device." The reader device then triggers the necessary chemical reactions to perform the test and reports the results. Theranos' patent isn't limited to any specific bodily fluid, reactants, or testing protocol. !
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoAs officers of the court these lawyers have taken an oath to act in good faith when advancing claims: Morgan Chu Alan J. Heinrich Keith A. Orso S. Adina Stohl Dennis J. Courtney Brian M. Weissenberg Chaplin J. Carmichael It would be nice if the California bar considered their actions in this matter.
- bertil 7y agoI’m generally surprised at how rarely a lawyer’s Bar punishes their members for acting in a way that is immoral. Acting against your peers or breaking confidentiality gets you out rapidly; having personal problems, say drugs, does to — and I’m not challenging that. But defending things that really should not seems to fail to trigger any reaction. I guess that bad people need lawyers more but I’m curious if there is a line or a reasoning that would help there.
- naasking 7y ago> I’m generally surprised at how rarely a lawyer’s Bar punishes their members for acting in a way that is immoral. Who decides what's immoral? Not too long ago, interracial dating was also considered "immoral" by plenty of people. Plenty of injustice was perpetrated by pushing moral agendas. I frankly think it's crazy to be so ready to lynch others for working within robust systems that evolved over centuries because these systems sometimes violate their personal sensibilities. These systems have their own (evolving) standards of ethics, and unless you understand them and the reason they exist, don't be so quick to cast aspersions.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago>I frankly think it's crazy to be so ready to lynch others for working within robust systems // And I think it's crazy to excuse people for abject immorality simply because they can lawyer their way around legal claims. Moral consensus might get us bad decisions: I'd be interested to know how many lawyers private life would be deleteriously effected if the bar upheld a standard that accorded with the overwhelming moral tide of society at the time. Sure the tide moves, but the deleterious effect of that tide beyond the deleterious effect of the laws those people make would seem to be naturally curtailed. In short if the overwhelming majority found something to be immoral then it would seem a reasonable standard to apply now. Of course in the fullness of time we might reject those moral standards, but equally we might reject legislation - or conversely begrudge not having been more stringent in our moral arbitration of the deleterious actions of rogue elements in society. In short your argument is impotent, and swings both ways in its impotency. The main problem is defining what is abjectly immoral, what amounts to an overwhelming majority, etc.. If we pushed a high moral standard at each lawyer's bar, and excluded those who actually had some moral probity (false negatives for taking actions "highly contrary to public morality") then would it be too much cost if we then removed for more people whose actions were shocking to public moral mores?
- narrator 7y agoMost lawsuits filed by vexatious litigants about absurd and ridiculous things can be thrown out of court before ever getting anywhere because the judge can plainly see they are ridiculous. One of the annoying things about patent law is because it is so technical, it requires experts to determine if what the plaintiff is saying is ridiculous on its face as the judge may be clueless about the technical aspects of the case.
- refurb 7y agoSince I work in the biopharma industry, I've had a lot of people ask "This company is making [vaccine, test, treatment] for Coronavirus. They'll probably make a lot of money, right?". My answer is "probably not". This is too big a public health issue. Any company that slows down the process in the name of business is going to find themselves in a PR storm and likely government action will make them give up any control they might have.
- altcognito 7y agoThey would only get the most positive press they've ever had in their history. Health care companies seem allergic to goodwill.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI work in medical devices which is similar and I think they will make a lot of money. They probably can’t push it as far as they tend to do with some cancer drugs but they certainly won’t suffer.
- refurb 7y agoMaybe I should rephrase. It's not like they'll lose money, but they'll make much less than one would expect for such an important product!
- sjg007 7y agoWell the Federal courts are suspended so the suit is currently meaningless. If the test works and saves lives, sour grapes.
- coliveira 7y agoSo, let's see: a failed company that never produced anything useful now feel that it has the "intelectual" property rights to force other people stop doing something that will save millions of lives? Only looking at the criminal aspect of such a proposition, I imagine that any normal judge in the world would throw this request away, disgusted.
- andrewseanryan 7y agoThat patent is absurd. This system is broken.
- Causality1 7y agoSo, is there a Guinness record for "largest lynch mob"? These idiots seem to be trying to break it.
- elorm 7y agoI've got to give it to them. You have to be a special brand of riffraff to use such an "opportune" moment to settle monetary grievances. Doesn't the Legal system in the US(Especially the Bar) have any punitive measures for unethical lawyers?
- Shorel 7y agoIs there a way to jail them for criminal conduct? This is way beyond only immoral.
- mariushn 7y agoOur country's state of emergency declaration says government can take ownership of anything it wants (eg hotels to use as hospitals, factories to make disinfectant). Why doesn't the same apply to patents and drugs?