loquitur

Refresher:  There are two parallel systems involved with patent validity.

One is the patent office itself who issued the patents and wants to nullify them
saying they were overbroad and anticipated by network standards committee
documents (RFCs) fleshing out end-to-end encryption.  The PTAB authority
has domain-level experts.

The other system is the courts, who use different standards, and non-expert lay juries
including the ones attached to the infamous Eastern District of Texas who are easily
swayed by lawyers in the adversarial system.

The Supreme Court has commented that it's strange to have two systems, but
Congress designed it this way and only the legislative branch can try to straighten the
messy system out with new law.   So, it's a turf war.

Meanwhile the security standards were implemented by different companies (including
Cisco, Apple, and Microsoft) in different ways.  These companies rolled out actual
products, but VirnetX peddled the overbroad patent claims saying they were "first".

Dr. Short may have had some nifty implementation wrinkle, but VirnetX wants folks to
believe they invented end-to-end encryption, when what they do is basically implement
DNS lookups to secure domains ending in .scom.   This is not stuff that appears as
novel in textbooks on network security, just a workman-like engineering effort
subject to multiple re-invention.

To add to the insult, VirnetX thinks their one improvement idea is worth multiple
hundreds of millions, or a significant percentage of sales.   The iPhone utilizes literally
thousands of hacks -- Apple and the rest of the industry would pay this amount only
for complete bundles of thousands of patents from established cellphone technology
companies like Qualcomm and ye olde Motorola.   So the issue of proper "apportionment" is
in flux.   Adding to all that is the Supreme Court decision in Alice v. CLS Bank,
which since 2014 has provided a dim view of software patents in general.

Since VirnetX conned some patent clerk to accept broad language in their issuance
which may even be upheld by appeals courts, they may yet win on a technicality,
but it won't be because they invented *the* way to turn an iMessage from the color green
(unsecure SMS) to the color blue (a bit more secure, until backup-to-iCloud at least).

Actual (partially redacted) warrant docs, replete with Cohen's iPhone, iPad, and iCloud references here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.499666/gov.uscourts.nysd.499666.43.1.pdf

daven said:

I've held Apple stock for eighteen years now. One of these years I should go to a stockholder meeting. It just isn't high on my list.

For some, it's the only chance to check out some of the modern campus architecture.  For folks in the SF Bay Area,
it's not inconvenient to attend, other than signing up on the web (now down to a 5 minute window!).

In the old days it was a chance to meet with the likes of billionaire Larry Ellison (my late mother didn't care about
that part, but chatted with him about his fascination with World War 2 era military aircraft) or hobnob with
Dr. Art Levinson of Genentech.   Pre-billionaire days (and Al Gore) there weren't metal detectors.

BTW I was sitting right next to the fellow who grumbled publicly about the $1M donation to SPLC.  My partner
and I couldn't believe there were folks who actually thought they could be seen as a hate group.  The whole
discussion by audience members was bizarre, until realizing that the multiple "both-sides" commenters possibly
including climate deniers could have been plants.   Ah, shareholders meeting gadflies.

To the contrary, the most recent CAFC decision only affected the Texas court case, not PTAB rulings,
per the article from Law 360 cited in the parent:

"The appeals court dealt only with the Texas case, upholding the lower court's decision in a one-line affirmance, although it put off ruling on whether to affirm Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions invalidating the patents."

This turf war between the CAFC and PTAB is by no means over.  

As a reminder, there are two parallel systems for judging patent issues, each with different standards
(the PTO itself using technical experts vs. lay juries in Texas).   Unfortunately it is
that way because of Congressional law, where gaps allowing for such ambiguity
have been commented upon by the Supreme Court as being "strange", but
allowable until addressed by Congress.

GeorgeBMac said:

One can only wonder why an administration so opposed to any and all regulation would oppose a vertical integration such as this that has historically seldom been opposed?

There's more to this story than we, the public, know.

See
 https://www.axios.com/democrats-adam-schiff-donald-trump-cnn-jeff-bezos-ed8c162f-5a07-4aba-9bc7-a970754958f6.html
and
https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/11/house-democrats-to-investigate-trump-actions-against-amazon-att/