Then can you please rebut the article? Where does it go wrong? Why are the criticisms it presents incorrect?

Just saying “it sucks” doesn’t really tell us anything.

First, M-Cam’s paper contains a number of misstatements of the law, indicating that they lack the “expertise” to analyze any patents. Second, M-Cam’s paper lacks depth and detail; all it has is a lot of high-level generalities about what is claimed, and it makes editorialized judgments thereon. In short, M-Cam’s paper is juvenile and gives the appearance that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Allow me to quote M-Cam’s paper to show why:

“For those who don’t know, continuations can essentially be a USPTO time machine, because they allow a patent holder to ?officially? invent things in the past. This is particularly helpful in patent infringement litigation because it allows the holder to assert past damages for later issued claims.”

Wrong. First, a patent can only claim what is disclosed in the specification, and continuation practice does not allow a patentee to change the content of the specification for any later-filed applications. (Note: a “continuation-in-part” does allow one to add subject matter to the specification, but any claims directed to such added subject matter do not get the benefit of an earlier filing date.)

Second, a patentee cannot assert past damages that occur earlier than the date of an infringed patent was issued. Saying that one can assert “past damages for later issued claims” is, at best, a complete misstatement of the law, and at worst, utterly dishonest.

“While we could look at any of these patents in detail, let?s take a look at one of the newest, the ?662 patent, since we can all hope this was meant for the USPTO. Titled ?De‐duplication of data in a data processing system,? one look at the USPTO website tells us this patent ? in its attempts to ?de‐duplicate? data ? was rejected four times, including an impressive two final rejections. If the Grinch were stealing trophies on his Christmas runs, this patent would be luring him with the equivalent of a Heisman ?a ?Pham? perhaps (after the ?662 examiner, Khanh B. Pham) ? because receiving more than one final rejection and still being issued is a most outstanding feat.”

Where is this detail that M-Cam speaks of? We see that the ‘662 Patent received a lot of rejections, but we have no idea what is in those rejections. Are they good rejections or bad ones? Did the examiner cite relevant prior art in each one? How far did the applicant have to narrow their claims to get over those rejections? Did the applicant’s final version of its claims get narrow enough to really get around the prior art?

M-Cam does not explain. All it does is wave its hands and say “Look at those rejections!” and suddenly we’re supposed to believe that the ‘662 Patent was improperly issued. Why was it improperly issued, M-Cam? Tell us why!

“The U.S. 7,945,539 patent ? issued just 5 sequentially numbered patents before the US 7,945,544 mind you (another impressive feat for Mr. Pham, since he was the examiner of both of these patents as well) ? has an even more awe‐inspiring amount of precedent innovation. It’s not often that a patent reaches 10,000 counts of precedent innovation on its own. 20 of these 10,593 patents ? or less than 1% of the total ? can be found in Appendix A, and a graphical display of the entities holding these patents can be found to the right. Note that any of these patents could be used to call into question the validity of the claims in the ‘539, and most likely some claims from the other patents in suit as well.”

Really? How can “any of these patents … be used to call into question the validity of the claims in the ‘539” Patent? Show us! Give us a discussion, perhaps even with a claim chart, showing where each element of, say, Claim 1 of the ‘539 Patent is disclosed in “any of these patents”. That’s what a real patent analyst would do, right?

So why don’t we see one inkling of this this from M-Cam? Where’s the analysis? Where is the element-by-element deconstruction of the claims of the ‘539 Patent showing that the patent is invalid? Nowhere: you cannot find such detailed analysis in M-Cam’s paper. M-Cam just says “Look at all this prior art! It’s invalid!” and apparently we’re supposed take it on faith that M-Cam is right and knows what it’s talking about.

I can understand if that kind of detailed discussion is too work intensive for a free publication, but that’s what a real patent analysis looks like. And if M-Cam can’t produce that type of work on its own dime, either because it lacks the resources or is too lazy, then it should not pass off this bullshit as “analysis.” It’s an insult to those of us who actually do perform patent analysis.