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GEN-ERIC Patent News
Tuesday, November 18, 2003

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HEADLINES (patents issued a few hours ago..)
The Dude, Where's My Car Patent of the Day goes to
Two Independent Inventors from Germany for a
Method and device for finding a parked vehicle

The Pay to Play Patent of the Day goes to
BBNT Solutions LLC of Massachusetts for
Systems and methods for reducing the occurrence of annoying voice calls
    Index
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NEWS
Jury awards SPX $62 million in Microsoft case
http://news.com.com/2100-1014-5108297.html
Diversified manufacturer SPX said a jury awarded its Imagexpo unit $62.3 million in damages and found that Microsoft had infringed on a patent for conferencing software. Additional issues remain for the court to rule on that could ultimately impact the amount of the award, and any final ruling and court award is subject to appeal, SPX said Friday about the case, which it filed in October 2002.
    Index
Delco Remy files patent infringement lawsuit
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7290588.htm
Delco Remy International has filed a lawsuit accusing three companies that make auto parts for the aftermarket of violating its patents. The suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis alleges the companies copied the Anderson-based manufacturer's automotive starter and alternator designs. Named in the lawsuit were Unipoint Electric Manufacturing Ltd. of Taiwan; NSA Corp. of Sterling, Va.; and Unit Parts Corp. of Oklahoma City. The lawsuit also seeks to stop about 30 smaller distributors and manufacturer from selling alleged knockoff products.
    Index
Biotech wins battle for junk justice
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027047154.html
Investors piled into Genetic Technologies yesterday after the biotech company announced that two US groups it was suing for patent infringement had settled out of court. The win leaves only one outstanding lawsuit over Genetic Technologies' claim to have patent control over methods for researching non-coded, or "junk", DNA. The Melbourne-based Genetic Technologies has consistently warned it would sue any company, research institution or university that infringed its patent over the so-called junk DNA. In the past, scientists concentrated on a tiny 1.5 per cent slice of the human genome, dismissing the remaining 98.5 per cent DNA system as useless. But since early sequences of the human genome were released in 2000, scientists around the world realised the non-coded sections of DNA played a role in switching particular genes on and off and so were crucial in finding cures for gene-related diseases.
    Index
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PATENTS OF THE DAY

6,650,999

Method and device for finding a parked vehicle

Abstract: The invention discloses a device and an apparatus with the assistance of which a driver can locate his parked vehicle of unknown location. The information concerning the instantaneous location of the vehicle gained by a navigation system located in the vehicle is transferred, prior to or at completion of parking, to a mobile terminal which can be carried along by the driver when leaving his vehicle and stored therein. When needed, the driver can recall the information concerning the parked location from the memory of the mobile terminal for display on a monitor in a recognizable manner. Instead of direct storage in the mobile terminal, the information concerning the parked location can also be stored in a remote intermediate memory to which the terminal has access.

Index

6,650,742

Systems and methods for reducing the occurrence of annoying voice calls

Abstract: A system penalizes callers for annoying voice calls. The system identifies a caller associated with a call to a called party in response to invocation of a feature activation code by the called party. The system records the occurrence of the feature activation code invocation and notifies a billing entity of the identity of the caller and the invocation of the feature activation code so that the billing entity can charge the caller for the call to the called party.