Oracle & Alcatel-Lucent Settle Litigation

The patent infringement lawsuit surrounding Oracle and Alcatel-Lucent has now come to an end.  As reported by the Daily Herald, Oracle had sued Alcatel-Lucent in May, claiming that their OmniTouch My Messaging system infringed on Oracle patents.  Although terms of the agreement are confidential, one can safely assume that the agreement pleased both parties, as Alcatel-Lucent had countered the suit by claiming that Oracle’s patents were invalid.

The dispute started in December 2007, when Alcatel-Lucent wrote a letter claiming that Oracle’s Data Mining, E-mail Center, Data Guard and other products infringed on their patents.  Since then, 13 patents have come into question, five of which belong to Oracle, and seven to Alcatel-Lucent.  The last patent is the property of Siebel System Inc., which was acquired by Oracle in 2005.

The case was ordered closed on March 26, by a California district judge.  While Oracle was not available for comment, Alcatel-Lucent stated that they were “glad to put this matter behind us.”

IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record

IBM has announced that it earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, becoming the first ever company to earn more than 4,000 U.S. patents in a single year.  According to CNNMoney, the total number of 2008 patents granted to IBM exceeds the combined issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture, and Google.

This is the 16th straight year that IBM has led in U.S. patents issuances.  Yet, while announcing their number of patents, IBM also announced that they plan on increasing the number of technical inventions they publish annually by 50%.  IBM plans on publishing these inventions instead of seeking patent protection.  This decision will make their inventions freely available to others, but IBM will still continue to seek patents and protect its intellectual property.  Officials at IBM believe that their planned increase in publishing inventions will increase the build of a new, smarter infrastructure.  IBM looks to help realize this goal by pledging not to assert certain patent rights in order to increase innovation.

IBM researchers will also join a project aimed at developing a Patent Quality Index to address the issue of low-quality patents.  The goal is to improve the patent system by establishing empirical, objective metrics that can be used to determine the clarity of claims as well as the quality of prior art cited. 

“Improving patent quality must become an essential priority and we believe the application of advanced data analytics can help create an empirical measure for what has previously been a subjective evaluation,” said Dr. Rick Lawrence, manager of Predictive Modeling for IBM Research.