Raymond Van Dyke: Merchant & Gould partner in DC

Raymond Van Dyke is a partner at Merchant & Gould’s Washington, D.C. office and focuses his practice in technology and intellectual property counseling, procurement, licensing, and litigation.

Ray has nearly 20 years experience representing technology companies in the intellectual property area, including strategic counseling, patent and trademark litigation, expert witnessing, and IP licensing portfolio management. He represents domestic and international companies in addition to universities in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical, chemical, software, financial services, telecommunications, Internet, voice over IP (VoIP), and digital industries.

Ray’s extensive technical background in both information-based and life sciences-focused technologies enables him to effectively counsel clients in emerging and converging disciplines, such as bioinformatics, cheminformatics, genomics, pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine, nanotechnology, proteomics, and computational analysis.

He represents clients in federal, state, and international intellectual property litigation, mediation, and dispute resolution in patent, trademark, unfair competition, copyright, antitrust, and trade secret cases. He also enforces and litigates intellectual property rights before the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. Customs, prepares clients for hearings before the Federal Trade Commission, and advocates intellectual property and regulatory positions before Senators and Representatives, domestic and foreign trade associations, and ambassadors.

Ray counsels clients in a variety of matters, including infringement, validity, freedom to operate, right to use, reissue, reexamination, appeals, artists’ rights counseling, and other patent and trademark opinion work.

His non-legal work in the software industry and during his graduate studies focused on a variety of cross-disciplinary software applications and techniques, including protein and molecular visualization, animation and modeling, computational optimization, graphics, stimulators, and virtual reality for pharmacological, biophysical, and biochemical research with real-time haptic interface with a robotic force-feedback arm (a nanomanipulator); modeling and analysis of steric forces in protein deformations; designing relational databases for complex proteins from X-ray crystallography data; designing enhancements to UNIX C-Shell; signal and image processing and pattern recognition; 3-D texturing; and SPICE modeling semiconductor chip architecture and performance.

Education

University of North Carolina

• J.D., 1990
• President, American Indian Law Student Association
• M.S., Computer Science, 1989
• B.S., Mathematics, summa cum laude, honors
• Minor in Classical Greek, 1985

Wilbur Wright College, Chicago, IL

• AA, with honors

Bar Admissions

District of Columbia
New York
New Jersey
Texas
Virginia (pending)
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
U.S. Supreme Court
USCA – Federal Circuit
USCA – 2d Circuit
USCA – 3rd Circuit
USCA – 4th Circuit
USCA – 5th Circuit
Southern District of New York
Eastern District of New York
District of New Jersey
Northern District of Texas
Eastern District of Texas
District of Columbia
U.S. Court of International Trade
U.S. Court of Federal Claims

Professional Affiliations

Ray is active in a variety of legal and technical organizations, and also teaches at two universities. Chair, Greater Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Licensing Executive Society Chair, Emerging Technology Committee, American Intellectual Property Law Association

Speeches and Publications

Ray is a regular speaker to legal, university, and professional audiences on various technology, intellectual property protection, and litigation issues, both nationally and internationally. His recent presentations analyze Supreme Court cases affecting intellectual property rights, proposed changes and reforms to the U.S. patent system, nanotechnology, software patenting, ethics, International Trade Commission litigation and procedures.

Jury tells Microsoft to fork over $200M

A Texas jury sided with Toronto’s i4i and their US Patent 5,787,499 and ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million for patent infringement involving its Microsoft Office products.

i4i, a collaborative authoring and document-management software company, filed the case in March 2007. Karen Heater, President “felt vindicated” with the decision.

iPhone Faces Suit Over its Role as E-Book Reader

It appears as if Apple has been named as a defendant in a recent suit filed by Monec Holding.  According to CNET News, Monec accuses Apple of “patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization, and tortuous interference for allegedly treading on its January 2002 patent.”  That patent is titled “Electronic device, preferably an electronic book.”

Monec’s claims center around Apple’s reading applications for the iPhone, which make the phone an eBook reader.  Supposedly, this violates Monec’s patent filed for a lightweight electronic device with a touchscreen, that can display a page of a book at normal size.

Some have speculated that this lawsuit may have been started by Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone e-book reader software that is now in Apple’s App Store.  However, it seems as if Monec’s claims may be a bit too general for this lawsuit to ruled in the plantiff’s favor.

Intellectual Ventures, Telcordia Team Up

According to TMCnet.com, Intellectual Ventures and Telcordia Technologies have agreed to a partnership that will allow Intellectual Ventures to license and access over 500 telecommunications patents.  These patents will include Wavelength-Division Multiplexing, Synchonous Digital Hierarchy, Point to Multipoint via Optics, Synchronous optical NETworking, and Building Intelligence for traditional PSTN services.

Started in 2000, Intellectual Ventures’ goal has been to invest in patents.  Currently, they are involved in at least 30 different types of technologies, and they have filed for at least 1200 patents.  Intellectual Ventures’ core team consists of patent lawyers, technologists, physicists, geologists, and mathematicians.  Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Sony all allegedly contribute to its funding.

Although financial terms were not disclosed, the agreement adds significant and relevant patent numbers to Intellectual Ventures’ telecommunications field.  At the same time, Telcordia receives capital to fund its R&D lab.  Regarding the agreement, Nathan Myhrvold, the CEO of Intellectual Ventures, said the following:

We need new inventions to stimulate the economy and create new opportunities for growth.  Telcordia is taking  a leadership role here by extending the use and reach of its impressive patent portfolio, and Intellectual Ventures is positioned to supply the long-term capital to allow for this future growth and job creation.

USPTO Grants Patent to InsideSales.com

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted InsideSales.com a notice of approval on a recent patent application.  InsideSales.com is a provider of web-based phone dialer technologies, and as stated in a press release, the new patent includes unique and innovative telephony functions that can occur from a web page.

Most of the InsideSales.com technologies are designed for business-to-business companies.  They are best known for the PowerDialer which embeds phone dialer software into its technology.  The CEO of InsideSales.com, David Elkington, said:

This patent is the first approved and one of the most important of the many patents-pending in our portfolio. It allows us to assertively protect the core component of our PowerDialer technology which has become the leading dialer solution for companies trying to increase productivity in their inside sales and lead generation departments. The inside sales or remote selling space is an industry that is particularly relevant in light of our current economy. Buyers often prefer the time-savings of remote sales over face-to-face.

Inside Sales was recently ranked as the 2nd most effective method of lead generation in 2008 by BtoB Magazine.  Much of their web-based technology was developed at Northwestern University and MIT.

TiVo and EchoStar Return to Court

The drama continued between TiVo and Dish Network operator EchoStar on Tuesday, as the two met once again in a Texas court.  According to Reuters, TiVo argued that EchoStar should have to pay additional damages for infringing on its digital video recorder patent.

For those that aren’t familiar with the history between these two companies, the legal dispute dates all the way back to 2004.  TiVo initially charged EchoStar’s Dish network system of violating TiVo’s patent for “Time Warp” software.  This software, also known as DVR, allows users to record one TV program while watching another.  In 2006, a court ruled in TiVo’s favor and the company was awarded $104 million in damages.  The U.S. Supreme Court denied Dish’s appeal of the ruling.

After that decision, EchoStar continued to distribute its digital video recorders, and collect subscription fees for the DVRs.  EchoStar claimed that the software contained a “work-around” that avoided infringement on TiVo’s patent.  TiVo claims that this “work-around” still infringes on their patents, which brought both companies back to court earlier this week.

TiVo is not only seeking additional damages, they are also looking for an injunction which would force EchoStar to stop using the DVR technology with its customers.

Apple Faces New Lawsuit Regarding iPhone

With Apple recently receiving their massive multi-touch patent, many suspect that Apple will play the role as litigator in any upcoming patent lawsuit.  However, Scottish mobile technology firm, Picsel, recently filed a suit that has cast Apple as the role of defendant.  According to MocoNews, Picsel is claiming that the iPhone and iPod touch use a key element of Picsel’s “rapid redraw” mobile screen navigation technology.

The suit alleges Apple of making, selling, and distributing phones that infringe on Picsel’s patent.  Picsel claims that the devices use the rendering technology which prevents long delays while zooming and panning through web pages and documents.  Picsel claims to have invested millions in the technology, which includes implementing it in more than 250 million devices.

Although Apple has not commented, they did issue this filing last November after admitting they were involved in 20 legal cases:

Because of technological changes in the computer, digital music player and mobile communications industries, current extensive patent coverage, and the rapid rate of issuance of new patents, it is possible certain components of the Company’s products and business methods may unknowingly infringe existing patents or intellectual property rights of others.

By issuing such a statement, does Apple seem a bit hypocritical if they litigate against other companies?  Also, doesn’t such a statement indirectly support those against software patents?

Google Sync Launched Through Patent License with Microsoft

On December 18, 2008, Microsoft announced that the iPhone, S60, BlackBerry, Sony Ericsson, and Windows Mobile phone were all included in a patent licensing agreement with Microsoft.  Yesterday, Google joined that list by launching their initial beta for a contact synchronization service.  According to Betanews, the service will enable individuals to share information for up to five mobile calendars and three email addresses between devices.

The licensing agreement represents a change for Microsoft, as the company has been increasing the availability of its technology to competitors.  One protocol that is being opened up is Exchange ActiveSync, which Microsoft’s own Exchange Server 2007 uses to maintain contact info, email distribution, and point of presence between networked PCs and mobile devices.

Furthermore, the patent license is crucial to Google because under Microsoft’s current policy, the use of an application program interface (API) to communicate with a system using one of your own protocols does not require a patent.  Yet, a company does need a patent if it serves up the protocol under its own brand name, which is done with Google Sync.

Is Microsoft increasing the availability of its technology to avoid being classified as unfair or noncompetitive?  While only those at Microsoft know the answer, other technology companies are definitely happy with this change in company policy.

Microsoft and Brother Agree to Deal

Microsoft has announced that it has agreed to a patent-sharing deal with Brother.  According to Vnunet.com, the printer firm will be given access to patents used in designing multi-function office devices and embedded software.  The patent will cover Microsoft Office integration and embedded Linux systems.

David Kaefer, Microsoft’s general manager of intellectual property and licensing, said the following:

Our partners and customers continue to demand greater collaboration as they run increasingly diverse IT environments using technology and solutions that rely on both proprietary and open source code.  This “mixed source” world calls for sensible business arrangements between IT leaders to enable the use of software resulting from various development and business models.

Financial terms of the deal were not released, but Microsoft said that it would be receiving compensation from Brother.  This deal mirrors other diverse patent licensing agreements that Microsoft has recently secured.  Other famous and similar Microsoft deals include those with Kyocera, Nikon and Novell.

Avistar Issued Patent for Text and Video IM

Avistar Communications Corporation has announced that they have received a new patent, relating to instant message systems supporting both text IM and video IM over the internet.  The patent, issued this past Tuesday, involves logging in from an arbitrary communication device and providing popular IM buddy list features, Avistar stated in a press release.

Since September 2008, the company has received 14 patents, which have added patent coverage to technologies involving text IM, VoIP and desktop video conferencing.  Although Avistar currently holds 97 patents, these recent patents add to important aspects of real-time communications including wireless, mobile devices, buddy list directories, VoIP, video, and communications servers.

Simon Moss, the CEO of Avistar, stated, “Avistar’s commitment to research and development means that our customers continue to get the latest technology, allowing us to set the pace for the industry.  We believe our patent portfolio represents the world’s most comprehensive and deepest IP holdings in this rapidly growing commercial area.”

Avistar provides business-class technology, and currently serves companies such as IBM, Sony, LifeSize Communications and Polycom Inc.

Next Page »