U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Ninety-Five NeoMedia Patent Claims.
Neomedia, you may remember, owns a large patent portfolio in the field of connecting to internet content using the mobile phone (amongst others). I have taken a dim view of their patents and the impact to the use of QR codes, particularly outside of Japan. See this post which generated some interesting discussion in the comments.
The Electronic Frontier put together a patent busting initiative which overturned the decision in July. See report on their site. (Thanks to Dean Collins for alerting me to this news.)
Other machinations at NeoMedia
An avid follower of this sector, the Pondering Primate noted:
On October 15, 2007, the day before the Patent Office ordered the re-examination, the Chairman and member of NeoMedia's Board resignation became effective.
I noticed that NeoMedia appointed Iain McCready as CEO in May (see announcement). Ian was one of the early folks at Mobiqua in the Scotland who were doing nicely in the mobile ticketing field with their own 2D bar code solution for an excellent niche vertical (nice one!).
Then I noticed that Ian has got off to a flying start by raising $8.7million for NeoMedia (see annoucement) last week. Clearly, someone has a lot of confidence in the new approach - I am told that NeoMedia have been fractious organization in the past.
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NeoMedia's Patent Review Moves To Next Phase
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080725/0419248.html
""This is a standard patent process and we simply have to let it run its course. We have successfully defended this type of allegation in the past; it's the challenge NeoMedia faces for being an innovator. Our focus is on enabling interoperability and a viable ecosystem of players needed to support a vibrant and growing mobile barcode scanning business," states Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia."
Based on prior successful patent defenses, NeoMedia is optimistic that the single patent in question will be confirmed and the re-examination effort will have served to verify the strength of the patent.
This initial action is non-final and will be subject to a review process. The '048 patent is presumed to be valid, intact and enforceable during the re-examination process.
NeoMedia has a strong and valuable patent portfolio in the arena of connecting barcodes to content over networks that has been successfully defended in the past. This re-examination was limited to only one of NeoMedia's many patents, and none of its other patents are affected by the re-examination.
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