Anything with logins and two-factor codes?

A great deal of it, on both sides, in the district courts and at the patent office.

Out of band authentication, which appears in two of these, is the idea behind the code sent to your phone: the second factor travels over a different channel than the one you are logging in on. Patents in this area tend to turn on how a claim describes that channel, which is exactly the kind of wording a prosecution record settles years before anyone sues.

  • Twilio v. TeleSign Patent Trial and Appeal Board. U.S. Patent 7,945,034. Obviousness assertions against a fraud detection process based on a user's telephone number were rejected by the Board.
  • TeleSign v. Twilio Central District of California. U.S. Patents 7,945,034; 8,462,920; 8,687,038; 9,300,792. Three inter partes reviews defended.
  • StrikeForce v. PhoneFactor and StrikeForce v. Microsoft District of Delaware. U.S. Patents 7,870,599; 8,484,698; 8,713,701. Out of band authentication.
  • SimpleAir v. Microsoft Eastern District of Texas. U.S. Patents 7,035,914; 6,021,433.

What about encryption and security?

Cryptography, encoding and digital security have been a steady part of the work.

Cases in this area often involve patents written long before the products accused of infringing them existed, which puts a lot of weight on what the words meant at the time they were filed.

  • Princeton Digital v. Microsoft District of Delaware. U.S. Patent 4,813,056.
  • Tallgrass v. Microsoft Eastern District of Texas. Addison Fischer Patents 5,346,972; 6,141,423; 6,216,229.
  • Pantaurus v. Microsoft Eastern District of Texas. U.S. Patent 6,272,533.

Communications, email, imaging?

Four matters across three federal districts.

  • Comcast v. Sprint Eastern District of Pennsylvania. U.S. Patent 5,991,271.
  • InNova v. Cinemark Eastern District of Texas. U.S. Patent 6,018,761.
  • E-contact v. Microsoft Eastern District of Texas. U.S. Patent 5,347,579.
  • Skyline v. Microsoft Eastern District of Virginia. U.S. Patent 7,551,172.

Is any of it outside software?

Two chemical matters, one of which went on to the Federal Circuit.

Chemistry patents are argued to the same judges and the same juries as software patents, and they are no easier to explain. If anything the burden is heavier, because a jury cannot picture a treatment chemistry the way it can picture a login screen.

  • Buckman v. Solenis Western District of Tennessee. U.S. Patents 8,841,469; 8,962,059. Argued at the Federal Circuit, and that argument is in the court's public recordings.
  • Buckman v. Nalco Northern District of Illinois. U.S. Patents 7,949,432; 8,012,758; 7,981,679.

Does he do trademark work too?

A fashion company defended against a cancellation proceeding, and an opposition pursued for a non-profit.

Those are the two shapes a fight at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board usually takes. A cancellation asks the office to take away a registration that already exists. An opposition tries to stop one from being granted in the first place. Neither is about money directly, and both can decide whether a brand keeps its name.

What does a list like this actually tell me?

Less than the technology headings do, which is why they are the headings.

A case caption tells you who sued whom and where. It does not tell you what was hard about the matter, what the record made possible, or what it cost to get where it ended. The useful signal in a list like this is the range of technologies, because that is the part that has to be understood before anything else can be argued.

These are matters the firm reports publicly. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and nothing here is a prediction about any other case.

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