Who is the Emirates Manufacturing Corporation?

June 25, 2007 on 12:30 pm | In Independent Inventors | 14 Comments

Someone left a couple comments on this blog a few months ago with a question about the “Emirates Manufacturing Corporation.” Based upon search engine hits to those comments, I am suddenly receiving all sorts of inquiries and search hits regarding them.  Sounds like an excellent opportunity to ask my brilliant readers for input.

I have never heard of them before, so I’ll open the comments (below) so my readers can fill in the blanks. Thanks in advance.

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CAFC Affirms Discipline of Patent Attorney Working for Invention Promoter

June 21, 2007 on 10:36 pm | In Caselaw, Independent Inventors, Lawsuits, USPTO | Comments Off

The CAFC released an opinion today affirming the discipline of an invention promotion company’s patent attorney (Bender v. Dudas, __ F.3d __ (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2007)(Linn, J.)). A very interesting read.

For those wanting the quick summary:

S. Michael Bender (“Bender”) appeals from a final decision by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that granted summary judgment upholding a disciplinary action taken by the director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “PTO” or “agency”) to exclude Bender from practicing before the PTO. Bender v. Dudas, No. 04-CV-1301 (D.D.C. Jan. 13, 2006) (“SJ Order”). Because the PTO’s findings were supported by substantial evidence, and because the disciplinary action was not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law, we affirm.

The background of this case reads like a novel but represents the true story of hopes dashed, fees wasted, and dreams lost by hundreds of individual inventors caught up in the world of self-interested promoters who promise the world and deliver very little.

In seeking to protect the public from unscrupulous invention promoters, the PTO has aggressively sought to monitor and enforce its disciplinary rules against those registered practitioners who act in concert and participation with these promoters in the prosecution of patent applications before the PTO. This case is about one such practitioner who became complicit in the activities of an invention promoter involving over 1,000 unsuspecting inventors. These unsuspecting inventors first sought help from American Inventors Corporation (“AIC”), an invention promoter…

[Working for AIC, patent attorney Leon] Gilden employed draftsmen to add decorative ornamentation or surface indicia to the drawings of the inventions even though such embellishment was not invented by the named inventor…The alleged purpose of this scheme was to make it easier to obtain a patent and to avoid a refund of the inventors’ fee under AIC’s money-back guarantee. Gilden’s alleged involvement in the embellishment scheme prompted the PTO to initiate disciplinary action against him in the early 1990s…Ultimately, Gilden entered into a settlement agreement with the PTO and received a five-month suspension.

In 1993, AIC contracted with Bender, a registered patent attorney, to continue the prosecution of over 1,000 design applications that had formerly been handled by Gilden (the “Gilden applications”). The contract provided Bender with up to $15,000 bi-weekly as compensation for both attorney’s fees and prosecution costs.

Eventually, Bender himself was charged with “violations of PTO rules governing attorney conduct.”

…the administrative law judge found that Bender had violated numerous PTO rules on attorney conduct [neglected an entrusted legal matter in violation of 37 C.F.R. §10.77(c); accepted employment where professional judgment may be affected in violation of 37 C.F.R. § 10.62(a) and accepted compensation from a person other than a client without a full disclosure to the client in violation of 37 C.F.R. § 10.68(a)(1); and engaged in conduct that was prejudicial to the administration of justice in violation of 37 C.F.R. § 10.23(b)(5)] and that exclusion from practice was warranted.

The CAFC, backing the USPTO decision on discipline, concluded by noting that:

Although Bender may have only had the best intentions in mind in assuming prosecution of the Gilden applications, the best of intentions cannot absolve Bender’s complicity with AIC in a scheme fraught with deception and adversely affecting a large number of unsuspecting inventors. As an experienced patent practitioner, Bender had to have appreciated that the wholesale practice of filing design applications with unauthorized design embellishments in hundreds of applications was not in the inventors’ interests but instead was driven by AIC’s money-back guarantee. He should have known that the kind of letter he sent to his newly acquired clients fell far short of the explanation needed to address the distressed circumstances in which his clients were placed by his new employer, AIC. His letter, even though well written and perhaps sufficient as an engagement letter of a client in the first instance, only perpetuated the harm done to the Gilden applicants by treating what had previously transpired as nothing out of the ordinary when the circumstances of this entire matter—and Bender’s conflicting interests in particular—were quite extraordinary. Bender’s failure to appreciate that fact supports the PTO’s determination that any sanction less than exclusion would not provide the necessary deterrent effect. Because we cannot conclude that the sanction of exclusion is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law, we have no reason to disturb the PTO’s sanction of exclusion from practice.

A pdf of the case can be found here: Bender v. Dudas.

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Most Popular Posts on this Blog

June 20, 2007 on 3:02 pm | In Weblogs | Comments Off

I recently installed a WordPress plug-in for The Invent Blog that allows me to create a list of my “most popular blog posts.”

The results are very interesting.   Beyond recent posts (which you would expect to be “popular”), the following posts appear to be very popular (ala Google, Yahoo, etc.):

It will be interesting to see, months from now with more data, what the “most popular” posts are.

Powered by ScribeFire.

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EFS Filing Errors…the top ten

June 20, 2007 on 2:32 pm | In USPTO | 2 Comments

Bill Heinze has a post listing the most common e-filing mistakes according to the USPTO, namely:

  1. Not including all documents in the filing as would be done in paper.
  2. Not calling the Electronic Business Center when there is a question or when encountering a problem which leads to later filing dates and late fees/surcharges.
  3. Not indicating Customer Number as correspondence address in their attached documents such as the Transmittal letter, ADS, Oath/Declaration.
  4. Filing a continuation/continuation-in-part/divisional as follow-on submissions to priority application. You should file these as a new application.
  5. Changing the original font rather than embedding the font to fix a “non-embedded fonts” error message. You should: Use ABXPDF writer, Print to Image in Adobe Professional 7.0, Utilize the Adobe .JobOptions with Adobe Professional 8.0, Or contact the Electronic Business Center.
  6. Not choosing all fees that apply to the filing on the “Calculate fees” screen.
  7. Indicating the total amount of claims resulting in overcharging — You should indicate the amount of claims in excess of 20 total claims and 3 independent claims.
  8. Not indexing Amendment parts correctly — The cover sheet/transmittal letter should NOT be indexed using the Amendment type document descriptions (i.e. Amendment after Non-Final, Preliminary Amendment). The annotated application part should NOT be indexed using the document description “Applicant Arguments/Remarks Made in Amendment.” Only the formal “clean copy” of the application part should be indexed using the application part document descriptions (i.e. specification, claims, drawings).
  9. Not indexing RCE submissions correctly — This should be indexed under “Request for Continued Examination” instead of “Amendment Submitted/Entered with Filing of CPA/RCE.”
  10. Not including Provisional cover sheet with Provisional application filing. An ADS or Provisional cover sheet is required for provisional application filings and should be indexed under “General Transmittal - Transmittal of New Application” instead of “Miscellaneous. Incoming letter.”

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Test Marketing Your Invention…Using Google AdWords?

June 19, 2007 on 8:23 pm | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Eric Waltmire says it is the way to go.  Interesting concept…I’d love to hear real life examples of inventors that used the technique.

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Article: Marketability

June 17, 2007 on 6:55 am | In Independent Inventors | Comments Off

Testing the Marketability Of Your Product Idea [By KELLY SPORS, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal]

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New Patent Attorney Job on LegalMojo

June 11, 2007 on 9:30 am | In IP-Jobs | Comments Off
Trade in your suit for a pair of jeans, and get ready for the ride of your life! Mountain Bike, Motorcycle or other Action Sports-related enthusiasts viewed very favorably.

Details: http://www.legalmojo.com/archives/2007/06/patent_attorney_fox_racing_shox.php

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PTI Follow Up

June 10, 2007 on 10:31 pm | In Independent Inventors | Comments Off

In follow up to some of my earlier posts on Patent and Trademark Institute of America (PTI), I stumbled on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) news release (dated back in March) called FTC Charges Invention Promotion Swindlers with Contempt.

The sidebar includes a link to Federal Trade Commission, Plaintiff, v. International Product Design, Inc.; the Innovation Center, Inc.; National Idea Center, Inc.; New Products of America, Inc.; Azure Communications, Inc dba London Communications, Inc.; International Licensing Corporation, Inc.; Robert N. Waxman; Peter Doran; Darrell Mormando; Julian Gumpel; and Greg Wilson, Defendants. Which itself contains links to:

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Inventor Books

June 8, 2007 on 8:55 am | In Independent Inventors | Comments Off

Thanks for those of you who left comments regarding your favorite books for inventors on my earlier post (The Invent Blog Community on Books Independent Inventors Should Read). I’ve created a static page on this blog to host those suggestions and others here: http://inventblog.com/books-for-inventors.  Keep the suggestions flowing…

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Last Call…Boise Idea Market

June 7, 2007 on 12:09 pm | In Seminars, The-Practice-of-Law, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Comments Off

Updating my earlier post, Matt Homann will be in Boise putting on a CLE “Think REAL Big: Ten Innovative Strategies for Building a Better Firm” and running a “Boise Idea Market” TOMORROW.

There is still room to attend the Idea Market…invite yourself here if you want to come.

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