{"id":1378,"date":"2017-01-25T15:12:12","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T20:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1378"},"modified":"2017-02-01T10:44:05","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T15:44:05","slug":"its-a-good-idea-to-actually-own-the-patents-you-sue-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1378","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s a Good Idea to Actually Own the Patents you Sue on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0<em>National Oilwell Varco, L.P. v. Omron Oilfield and\u00a0Marine, Inc.<\/em>, [2015-1406] (January 25, 2017), in a non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of claim for infringement of U.S.\u00a0Patent No. 5,474,142\u00a0because of problems with the chain of title which deprived NOV of standing.<\/p>\n<p>Bobbie Bowden, the named inventor on the \u2019142 Patent assigned the patent to Wildcat Services, L.P., on October 9, 2001. \u00a0Wildcat Services, L.P. assigned the \u2019142\u00a0Patent to MD\/Totco, a Division of Varco, L.P.,1 on June<br \/>\n30, 2004. \u00a0NOV claimed it purchased the \u2019142 Patent from\u00a0Varco, L.P., pursuant to an Asset Contribution Agreement\u00a0dated January 1, 2006.<\/p>\n<p>NOV initially refused to produce\u00a0the ACA, instead producing only a \u201cAssistant Secretary\u2019s Certificate,\u201d which\u00a0assigned only \u201cphysical assets.\u201d After being forced to produce the ACA, Omron renewed its motion to dismiss for lack of standing. \u00a0The district court agreed that\u00a0that the\u00a0NOV could not prove ownership of the \u2019142 Patent as of\u00a0the filing date of this case, and dismissed the case, with\u00a0prejudice, for lack of standing.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court, noting that the ACA contains no reference to patents\u00a0except within Exhibit A, which had a column labeled \u201cPatents \u2013 Patents.\u201d \u00a0The Federal Circuit said that the district court correctly interpreted the ACA to\u00a0find that its plain meaning did not include transferring\u00a0the \u2019142 Patent from Varco, L.P. to NOV because the\u00a0Exhibit A spreadsheet shows a \u201c0\u201d where the patents row\u00a0intersects with the MD\/Totco column. \u00a0The Federal Circuit concluded that\u00a0a plain<br \/>\nreading of the ACA reveals that it did not transfer the\u00a0\u2019142 Patent from MD\/Totco to NOV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0National Oilwell Varco, L.P. v. Omron Oilfield and\u00a0Marine, Inc., [2015-1406] (January 25, 2017), in a non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of claim for infringement of U.S.\u00a0Patent No. 5,474,142\u00a0because of problems with the chain of title which deprived &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1378\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ownership","category-standing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}