Maryland IP Litigation: 2008 Lawsuit Summaries Nos. 16-17

    

     Plaintiffs Henry Garnet Wolsey and Althea Wolsey are residents of the United Kingdom, and the inventors of U.S. Patent No. 6,067,803 for “Cooling Pouch,” which they describe as being used for cool storage of vials containing medicine. Plaintiffs’ sell in the U.S. the Frio Wallet, a flat foldable storage device with pockets similar to FIG. 1 from the ‘803 patent.

     Plaintiffs allege that Tactical Medical Solutions, Inc., and Tactical Medical Solutions, LLC, both reportedly South Carolina entities, have infringed the ‘803 patent by selling the “I.V. Evaporative Cooling System” (IVECS™) to the U.S. Army Medical Research & Material Command, which is a Command organization headquartered at Ft. Dietrich, MD. Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction and unspecified monetary relief.

     Daniel Chemers and Sherry Flax of Saul Ewing (Baltimore) filed the complaint on behalf of the Plaintiffs.

     Rockville, Maryland's Simon Systems, Inc., sued Corel Corp., which is based in Ontario, Canada, for infringement of SSI’s U.S. Patent No. 5,559,562, entitled “MPEG Editor Method and Apparatus.” SSI alleges that Corel has sold in Maryland, MPEG editing equipment that infringes the ‘562 patent, and further alleges that such sales were willful and deliberate. Damages are estimated at “well in excess of $1,500,000.”

     Daniel Ward of Ward & Ward, PLLC, filed the complaint on behalf of SSI.

IP Database Highlights Maryland Technologies

     Maryland tops the nation in research and development spending at universities, government laboratories, and other private entities and institutions, so it should come as no suprise that Maryland has lots of intellectual property that is available for commercialization. The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO), a Maryland State government corporation, is tasked with the responsibility of trying to transfer all of that technology into the private sector in Maryland and elsewhere. 

    

     Enter Invenio-IP®, a database developed by the University of Maryland through a grant from TEDCO.  Invenio is a free, web-based, searchable access point containing patented and non-patented technologies available for commercialization. The database includes not only technologies developed by Maryland entities and institutions, but those developed outside the state (for now, only Virginia and DC):

  • Avanti Therapeutics
  • College of William and Mary
  • Georgetown University
  • Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (Laurel, MD)
  • Johns Hopkins University (MD)
  • US Army Medical Research & Materiel Command
  • University of Maryland Baltimore County
  • University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
  • University of Maryland, Baltimore
  • University of Maryland, College Park

     Don't expect to find only state of the art technologies in the Invenio database. I ran a search for "drug" and was presented with 291 technologies, some of which was patented several years ago. The web interface is not the best I have seen, but it gets you the information quickly. One nice feature is that you can set up an alert that will ping you when technologies matching your keywords are added to the database.