by Dennis Crouch
I posted yesterday about changes in W.D.Tex. distribution of patent cases under the lead “Waco may be Heating Up Again this Winter.” I noted a new order from Judge Garcia that seemed to implicitly distribute Waco patent cases back to Judge Alan Albright. I also noted initial statistics for December 2022 showing the vast majority of Waco cases being assigned to Judge Albright. The only exception so-far in December is a pair of related cases assigned to Judge Yeakel.
This post pulls-back a bit. I dug into the data a bit further, with the following results:
- 18 cases filed in the Waco Division of W.D.Tex.
- 13 of these have been assigned to Judge Albright. BUT, all 13 are directly related to a case either currently before Judge Albright or one that was dismissed within the past year.
- 2 of the cases were assigned to Judge Yeakel; and 3 of the cases are unassigned. None of these appear related to a case currently before Judge Albright.
What all this means: (1) there is still some amount of distribution ongoing; and (2) we don’t know what is really happening from any official position. The key takeaway then is that we’ll need to wait and see what actions new Chief Judge Moses takes.
In case numbers overall, For December 2022 WDTex remains the most popular district but is closely followed by NDIll and NDCal.
One interesting case to watch is Apple Inc. v. AliveCor, Inc., Docket No. 5:22-cv-07608 (N.D. Cal. Dec 02, 2022). AliveCor appears to be winning its case in the ITC showing that the the Apple Watch is infringing. Now, Apple has sued AliveCor, alleging that the startup’s wearable heart monitors infringe Apple patents. [APPLE ALIVECOR complaint].
A new order posted clarifying this.
Thanks!
Apple’s description of its patent at issue:
“”The claims are directed to specific and concrete methods of operating a healthcare-management system, including limitations on how data is communicated—only between “approved sources” and “approved destinations”—and novel ways to view wellness data that were unavailable before the ’898 patent. For example, the claims describe “display[ing] a detailed view of a sub-category of wellness data,” where that detailed view includes “a graph representation of the sub-category of wellness data that includes aggregated values of the sub-category of wellness data.””
When the best example you can come up with for your narrative is aggregating data (from “approved sources”) and displaying it in a graph… ouch. And of course aggregating data into a graph representation was not possible before (checks priority date) 2015. And this is Apple, who of course loves to show off its moral stance against patent ‘trolls’.
Wouldn’t be the first (nor the most egregious) instance of “double-talk.”
When was the last time someone acknowledged your existence here? Present company excepted. Not a rhetorical question.
Well, if indeed you are aiming for a non-rhetorical question, and given how much you adore my every post, you should be aware that I am engaged in several dialogues right now.
You just are not very good at this, my friend with the shifting historical pseudonyms.
How do you spell hypocrisy?
That’s easy!
A-P-P-L-E
Were this patent owned by an individual inventor or small innovative company, they wouldn’t stand a chance of passing 101.
While the odds of them being 101-trashed . . . because they’re Apple’s . . . well . . . we all know what’s likely to happen.
[T]his is Apple, who of course loves to show off its moral stance against patent ‘trolls’.
Right. This is just a practical outworking of Bill Gates’ prediction back in 1991 that software companies would mostly acquire patents not as a means of securing exclusivity for their own inventions, but rather as part of a mutually-assured-destruction (MAD) pact to keep everyone in the industry from suing everyone else. AliveCor has launched the first strike, so Apple has to launch a retaliation in order for the logic of the MAD pact to continue to function.
“ concrete methods of operating a healthcare-management system”
Rock hard, baby. The best concrete. This is going to sell out quickly, I believe, so buy now.
That was the NC CO. where blow up lived.
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