Pfizer sued Teva Pharamaceuticals for infringing on two fo their patents on the ingredients used in the medicine Celebrex. The court ruled in favor of Pfizer saying that the generic medicine that Teva Pharmaceuticals was going to release used two of the ingredients that Pfizer has patented. Pfizer was suing for a third patent infringement on the use in the treatment of immflamation, but that was ruled invalid, and didn't get tested. After this hearing, it means that Teva Pharamceuticals cannot release their generic medicine of Celebrex until May of 2014.
This relates back to class because it's a company suing over ingredients they have patented, and other companies trying to use them, and take away their business.VTran Media Technologies is suing Midcontinent Communications for allegedly using their patented technology in their video-on-demand service. A representative says that Midcontient is looking into this because it's an important part of their service to their customers. VTran Medica Technologies is also suing several other companies for using the same patented video-on-demand service, including ComCast, the biggest cable company in the United States. A lawyer for VTran says that they have a patent on a very early significant part that is used in building these video-on-demand machines.
This relates back to class because it's a company suing another company for using their patented technology in basically the same product, and taking away customers with this. Maybe if VTran wins all of the cases, ComCast will be replaced with VTran, since video-on-demand is a now a big part of cable customer's usage.
A patent has been reinstated to cover one of the three patents given to researchers in Wisconsin dealing with stem cells. In 1998, the first stem cell was isolated and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was granted 3 patents covering it. However, many scientists complained that the patents wouldn't allow them to further research the stem cells, and they accused the researcher that patented it of it being to "obvious" on how to isolate embryotic stem cells. Because of this, the patents were revoked. However, now the US Patent and Trademark Office reinstated one of the patents "in a form that covers only ESCs isolated from pre-implantation human embryos, not other cells with a similar ability to give rise to many of the body's tissues." The end of the article says that the groups that tried the other patents, are going to appeal this decision as well.
This relates back to class because it shows how confusing and stifling patents on certain things can get. Scientific research is based on other people's works, then working off of them. However, with these kinds of patents it makes it virtually impossible.