Andrei Iancu: The man who may be the next USPTO Director Andrei Iancu: The man who may be the next USPTO Director
By Gene Quinn & Steve Brachmann June 25, 2017 If the Washington, DC rumor mill is correct Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will soon announce that Andrei Iancu will be the next Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Sources say an announcement could come as early as the beginning of July. Still, it has been difficult to determine whether those within the rumor mill, which have been in complete agreement on Iancu being the pick, is well informed or simply echoing what everyone else is saying. Regardless, at this point too many indicators are pointing toward Iancu being the pick, with rumors also circulating that he is currently being vetted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
.. One of Iancu’s major successes during his practice as an intellectual property litigator was his work in securing large settlements for American tech company TiVo Corporation(NASDAQ:TIVO) in 2012. That year, TiVo secured a $250 million settlement from NYC-based telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE:VZ). Months before that settlement, Dallas-based telecom firm AT&T (NYSE:T) agreed to a $215 settlement to end litigation surrounding digital video recording technology. Iancu’s bio states that total payments to TiVo from these settlements and others from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and others exceeds $1.6 billion.
The fact that Iancu represented TiVo, a patent owner, against big tech in Silicon Valley will undoubtedly lead to a warm reception in certain patent owner segments of the patent community. Iancu and his firm have a reputation for suing big tech while representing patent owners, and he himself also served as counsel for San Jose-based touch feedback tech firm Immersion Corporation in a patent infringement suit against Japanese tech conglomerateSony Corporation (NYSE:SNE) involving video game controller patents which ended up netting $150 million for Immersion in March 2007.
On the other side of the coin, Iancu’s work in the biotechnology sector will undoubtedly lead to a cold, if not hostile reception should be be named the next Director of the USPTO. Iancu represented Ariosa Diagnostics in patent litigation against Sequenom, the patent owner. The discovery at the heart of the innovation patented by Sequenom resulted in a test for detecting fetal genetic conditions in early pregnancy that avoided dangerous, invasive techniques that are potentially harmful to both the mother and the fetus. The invention, which became embodied in U.S. Patent No. 6,258,540, claimed certain methods of using cffDNA. The patent taught technicians to take a maternal blood sample, keep the non-cellular portion (which was “previously discarded as medical waste”), amplify the genetic material that only they had discovered was present, and identify paternally inherited sequences as a means of distinguishing fetal and maternal DNA. The claimed method does not preempt other demonstrated uses of cffDNA. The Federal Circuit concluded that the discovery was “a significant contribution to the medical field,” but that did not matter insofar are patent eligibility was concerned.
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https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/06/25/andrei-iancu-next-uspto-director/id=84828/