America-Israel Patent Law

Israel Ben & Jerry’s Licensee Beats the BDS BS

I wrote last year about the decision by Ben & Jerry’s not to renew its license agreement with Avi Zinger’s company, American Quality Products, when that license expires at the end of 2022. AQP manufactures Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel, and sells it all over the country.  B&J tried to impose as a condition of license renewal an agreement from AQP to no longer sell the ice cream in Judea, Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem. Such a condition is illegal under Israel law, and Zinger refused to agree.

B&J’s demand was part of the so-called “boycott, divestment and sanctions” movement, which ostensibly seeks to get Israel to “leave” what it illogically terms “occupied Palestinian territories” (the illogic being that there never was a state of Palestine and thus the land in question can’t be “occupied” by a foreign power), but which actually wants to see Israel wiped off the map. 

The announcement about the non-renewal of the license came about because, although Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever over 20 years ago, part of the deal was that B&J could still have its own governing board that determined its “social mission”, and that board seems to be composed of people who think as clearly as Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Occasional Cortex, and other luminaries of the American political scene.

Earlier this year, Zinger and AQP, represented by Alyza Lewin of the Brandeis Center and Marc Zell of Jerusalem (among others), filed suit against both Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s in Federal District Court in New Jersey, alleging that the conditioning of the license renewal on capitulation to BDS terms violated both US and Israel law, the Israel government’s consent decree for the Unilever-B&J merger, and the license agreement with AQP. 

Yesterday, it was announced that Unilever, which retained responsibility for financial and operational decisions regarding Ben & Jerry’s, had decided to exercise its prerogative and act like the adult in the room – or at least look after its own financial interests, which had been hurt by reaction to the boycott announcement.  The press releases state that Unilever settled the NJ litigation by agreeing to sell its interest in Ben & Jerry’s in Israel to Zinger, thus allowing AQP to continue to sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream all over Israel – including Judea and Samaria – with Hebrew and Arabic labeling, in perpetuity.  (Unilever press release; Brandeis Center press release).

As an IP practitioner, it was this last statement that intrigued me, because it seems to implicate trademark law, and it implies that the agreement precludes AQP from selling Ben & Jerry’s in Israel with English labeling.  So I wondered how this aspect of the deal might be structured.

There are presently ten active registered Ben & Jerry’s trademarks in Israel (i.e. that contain the words "Ben & Jerry's"), in Hebrew and English, that cover Ben & Jerry’s products, ice cream sales services, and clothing bearing the Ben & Jerry’s logo.  Ownership of all of these marks was transferred to Unilever in early 2021 – several months before B&J announced its refusal to renew AQP’s license agreement.

At their heart, trademark rights, like all IP rights, are negative rights – they don’t give the owner of the mark the ability to prevent others from using the mark, but rather give the mark owner the power to prevent others from using the mark without permission.  But also central to trademark rights is the use of the mark: failure to use a registered mark over a prolonged period can be the basis for a cancellation action to get the mark off the register.  (This is in contrast to patents, where, in most jurisdictions, the patentee need not make, use or sell the patented invention as a condition for keeping the patent in force.) 

There are different ways that Zinger could have obtained the right to sell B&J in Israel in perpetuity, with Hebrew and Arabic labelling. One way is for Unilever to transfer ownership of all the marks in Israel to Zinger, with a stipulation in the settlement agreement that the agreement is contingent upon Zinger not selling B&J ice cream with English labeling.  Or Unilever could transfer the ownership of the Hebrew marks only to Zinger, retaining ownership of the English marks.  These two arrangements are consistent with the statement that Unilever is selling its Ben & Jerry’s business in Israel to Zinger.  Another possibility is that Unilever could retain ownership of the marks, and license only the Hebrew marks to Zinger.  In view of Ben & Jerry’s own statement on Twitter that “Unilever's arrangement means Ben and Jerry's in Israel will be owned and operated by AQP. Our company will no longer profit from Ben & Jerry's in Israel”, such a license would presumably be a royalty-free license.

The problem with any of these scenarios is that it would mean the English marks aren’t being used, and could eventually be subject to cancellation, regardless of who owns them. A way around this would be for AQP to occasionally produce batches with English labeling, or for AQP or a third party (if Zinger/AQP is not the owner of the English language marks) to import and sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream produced outside Israel with English labelling.  However, as noted above, such sales could not legally be subject to limitations on the place of sale, viz. the seller ice cream labelled in English could not deliberately sell only in pre-1967 Israel or agree to such a limitation on the geography of sales.

Another interesting observation is that although the press releases state that the labeling will be in Hebrew and Arabic, none of the marks presently registered in Israel are in Arabic. Presumably such marks will be registered in the near future.

But it’s not just Arabic language marks that aren’t registered in Israel.  While some of the names of ice cream flavors are registered, like Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia, others, like Chubby Hubby, are not.  And Phish Food is registered, in class 30 for ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet, but the registrant is Phish, Inc., not Unilever or Ben & Jerry’s. 

There’s also the matter of the individual ice cream recipes themselves: without those, any agreement is worthless.  Presumably the agreement also gives Zinger rights in those recipes in Israel, as well as the names of the flavors, but what about new flavors developed in the future?

Regardless of the legal mechanics of the arrangement, by reaching an agreement with Unilever, Avi Zinger and his legal team, and the government of Israel, which was also involved in the negotiations, have given the BDS BS a big “KMA”.

Dedication of IP Rights to the Public (Tom Lehrer Fans, Rejoice!)

 

We refer to patents, trademarks and copyrights as "intellectual property" in part because they have attributes of what we normally think of as tangible property.  Just as ownership of tangible property – a piece of land or a bicycle – allows us to say who can and can’t use our property, but doesn’t necessarily allow us to use our own property in all situations (e.g. in most places you need a license to drive a car, even if you own it), so too IP rights provide us with a say over who can use our IP, even if IP ownership doesn’t guarantee us the right to use our own IP (e.g. sometimes it’s necessary to cross-license with another IP owner). 

Additionally, we can dispose of IP rights like we do tangible property: we can transfer ownership to others, we can pass on IP rights to our inheritors, or we can forego our rights and dedicate our IP to the public (in the case of IP, prior to the date on which those rights would otherwise have expired). 

Dedication to the public is probably most commonly encountered in the context of US patent prosecution, which sometimes requires an applicant to disclaim the term of a to-be-granted patent beyond a certain date and to promise that that to-be-granted patent will be co-owned with an earlier-granted patent in order to be enforceable, in order to secure grant of the later patent.  (We’ve discussed this in previous blog posts, e.g. here and here.)  That is at its heart a form of dedication to the public, or can be viewed as such.

Less commonly, an author will dedicate his writings to the public.  Recently, Tom Lehrer announced that that’s what he’s doing with his corpus of songs and, to the extent he can, the music he wrote for those songs.  Actually, since US copyright law doesn’t have a dedication-to-the-public provision, technically what he did was to grant an irrevocable, royalty-free license to all comers to use his words and music, but the end result is the same.  We sometimes see this in the patent sphere; a covenant not to sue can also achieve the same end.

If you’re reading this blog and you don’t know who Tom Lehrer is, he was trained as a mathematician, but he gained fame in writing and performing satirical songs on topics of the day in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  His classic “I got it from Agnes”, for example, seems rather appropriate in this era of the Wuhan virus and “contact tracing”.  As an Eagle Scout and a chemist, two of my personal favorites are “Be Prepared” and “The Elements Song”, respectively. 

In any event, Mr. Lehrer is still alive and now in his 90’s, and has made his lyrics and much of his music available here.

A Few More Thoughts On Israel’s Exercising Its Right to Exploit Abbvie’s Patents

As I mentioned yesterday, the Minister of Health signed an order this week allowing the state to import generic Kaletra (a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir) to be used, potentially, against COVID-19.  I’d like to share two observations about this.

The first is that, despite the increasingly strict isolation measures the state has been putting in place over the past several weeks – people are now supposed to leave their homes only in very limited circumstances – these strictures are being emplaced in a manner that English speakers would says comports with the Rule of Law: the state is following its own legal procedures, to the point that implementation of the latest set of restrictions was delayed by several days until they could be properly published in the Israeli equivalent of the Federal Register. 

This approach can be seen in how the Health Minister’s order allowing importation of generic Kaletra came about, and what the order says. The state didn’t say, “We’re the state and we can infringe willy-nilly”, let alone start importing generic product without informing the patentee or its licensed importer.  The state followed the patent statute. The order itself invoking the state’s statutory rights was prepared by a team of lawyers from several state offices who worked behind the scenes, and those lawyers are not anonymous, but are well-known to people who work in IP in Israel. And, I as noted yesterday, the order is fairly limited in its scope: it’s for a specific solid-state formulation, and is only to be used in corona virus treatment, not treatment of HIV/AIDS. Moreover, the order was issued because the patentee, Abbvie, can’t keep up with demand. Presumably, if Abbvie could keep up with demand, the state would not exercise its rights to import.

Additionally, the patentee will be entitled to compensation for the infringement. It remains to be seen where that will be set, but no one expects Abbvie to walk away from this with nothing.

It instills a measure of confidence that even in tough times, the state makes an effort to follow its own laws. That’s not a given in many parts of the world.

The second observation is that of the three patents listed in the order, the inclusion of two of them is questionable. IL 173939 and IL 207260 are a parent and divisional, and they claim a solid pharmaceutical form per se and a method of making a solid pharmaceutical form. The independent claim of IL 173939 reads,

1. A solid pharmaceutical dosage form which comprises a solid dispersion of at least one HIV protease inhibitor selected from the group consisting of lopinavir, ritonavir, and a mixture thereof, at least one pharmaceutically acceptable water-soluble polymer having Tgof at least 50ᵒC, wherein said water-soluble polymer constitutes from 50 to 85% by weight of the total weight of the dosage form, and at least one pharmaceutically acceptable non-ionic surfactant having HLB value from 4 to 10.

That claim, and several other claims of the ‘939 patent, are presumably infringed by the importation of generic Kaletra.

The independent claim of 207260 reads,

1. A method of preparing a pharmaceutical solid dosage form, comprising:preparing a homogeneous melt of at least one HIV protease inhibitor selected from the group consisting of lopinavir, ritonavir and a mixture thereof,at least one pharmaceutically acceptable water-soluble polymer having Tg of at least 50ᵒC,andat least one pharmaceutically acceptable non-ionic surfactant having HLB value from 4 to 10, wherein the melt is prepared by melt-extrusion; allowing the melt to solidify to obtain a solid dispersion product; and forming tablets, wherein the tablets further comprise one or more additives selected from the group consisting of flow regulators, disintegrants, bulking agents and lubricants.

If the manufacturer uses an infringing process to make its product, then importation of the drug constitutes infringement, and Abbvie will argue it is entitled to compensation for such infringement.  But it’s also possible that this claim is not infringed by the process by which the generic Kaletra is manufactured, in which case the state will argue that Abbvie isn’t entitled to such compensation.  The bottom line is that to obtain royalties on the basis of the ‘260 patent for the importation of the generic drug, Abbvie will need to show that the imported material is prepared by the claimed process.

The third patent listed in the order, IL 185930, has two independent claims:

1. Use of a solid dispersion comprising lopinavir and ritonavir; at least one pharmaceutically acceptable water-soluble polymer having Tg of at least 50ᵒC, wherein said water-soluble polymer constitutes from 50 to 85% by weight of the total weight of the dosage form; and at least one pharmaceutically acceptable non-ionic surfactant having HLB value from 4 to 10, in the preparation of a medicament for treating HIV/AIDS in a patient in fasted state.

3. Use of a solid dispersion comprising lopinavir and ritonavir; at least one pharmaceutically acceptable water-soluble polymer having Tg of at least 50ᵒC, wherein said water-soluble polymer constitutes from 50 to 85% by weight of the total weight of the dosage form; and at least one pharmaceutically acceptable non-ionic surfactant having HLB value from 4 to 10, in the preparation of a medicament that is taken without food for treating HIV/AIDS in a patient.

Both of these claims are in “Swiss” format, a format that is used in many countries that prohibit the patenting of methods of treatment of people (often on moral grounds), as a way to get around such prohibitions. The intended use recited at the end of these two claims would presumably be understood by a court in Israel as limiting these claims to methods of preparation of formulations that are intended for use in treating HIV/AIDS. Since the Health Minister’s order is limited to importation for the treatment of corona virus, that importation presumably doesn’t infringe.

Then again, maybe it does: the generic drug that will be imported is made in India, and as all approvals of the drug worldwide at this time are for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, Abbvie will likely argue that the manufacture of the drug product meets all the limitations of these two claims – the drug is being made for treating HIV/AIDS – and that the fact that Israel is importing the drug for an off-label use doesn’t change the fact that the drug was manufactured for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.  Abbvie will thus seek additional compensation on this basis.

What I find particularly interesting about the inclusion of the ‘260 patent in the Minister’s order is that a few years ago, the Israel PTO sua sponte stopped accepting Swiss style claims, on the grounds that such claims do not recite a product or process.  That reversal of position contradicted decades of precedent in which such claims had been accepted by the ILPTO, and in which such claims had been litigated and not once found to be invalid on the grounds that Swiss claims per se are unacceptable. 

It is tempting to think that the fact that one of the lawyers involved in preparing this week’s importation order works in the ILPTO signals a change of heart on the part of the ILPTO, but that’s probably reading too much into it: my understanding is that the lawyers who drafted the order didn’t actually look at the patents, and merely listed those that they were told by the patentee or the patentee’s licensed importer might be infringed by unauthorized parallel importation.  If the state and Abbvie are unable to come to terms about the appropriate compensation, and the matter goes to the Compensation and Royalties Committee for adjudication, the question of the permissibility of Swiss claims per se may finally be addressed head-on.

No Sovereign Immunity for YOU, St. Regis!

On Friday a panel of the Federal Circuit (Judges Dyk, Moore and Reyna) ruled that sovereign immunity does not shield Indian Tribes from patent challenges via the inter partes review mechanism.  In a nutshell, the panel noted that (a) Congress must explicitly waive tribal sovereign immunity, but (b) that’s only true in litigation, not administrative proceedings, and (c) IPRs are administrative proceedings (since they look and smell more like administrative proceedings than like court proceedings), therefore there’s no tribal sovereign immunity in IPRs, and therefore the transfer of Allergan’s patents to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe did not immunize those patents from IPR challenges.  Judge Dyk filed a concurrence in which he went through the history of IPRs the earlier ex parte and inter parte reexaminations – which are unquestionably administrative proceedings – and said that IPRs are just the next step in this process.

When I wrote about this case last year, I did not attempt to predict the outcome, but merely noted that SRM’s case passed the I-can-say-it-with-a-straight-face-and-not-blush test.  What I found interesting about the panel’s decision was its complete avoidance of any discussion about the transfer to SRM being a sham, which was one of the arguments made in some corners; the decision was constructed in a way that there was no need to broach this question.  Also noteworthy was the panel’s invocation of the recent Supreme Court decisions in Oil States and SAS, which it relied on to show that IPR proceedings are not litigation – and to presumably help insulate this decision from a grant of cert when the cert request follows.

It will be interesting to see if, as a result of this decision, pharmaceutical companies and others assign their patents to state universities, which the PTAB agreed at the beginning last year (in a case involving the University of Florida) do have sovereign immunity from IPR challenges...at least until it said in a case at the end of last year (involving the University of Minnesota) that the assertion of a patent by a state university in federal court waives state sovereign immunity in IPRs before the PTAB. That case is now on appeal before the Federal Circuit.

What's Wrong With This Picture? Massive Mailing Mishap at ILPTO

Several years ago, at the behest of Israel patent practitioners who were miffed that their lawyer colleagues receive a cute picture ID card every year from the bar association, the Israel PTO began issuing similar ID cards to licensed patent practitioners.  Personally I never quite understood the need for this: it doesn't get me free parking anywhere or a discount on consumer goods, and if I were single there are many, many techniques I'd use before pulling out my patent practitioner card if I was trying to impress a woman.  But I guess it makes some people feel official.

This week, a colleague received such an ID card in the envelope shown at right (click to enlarge, if you dare).  As shown in the picture, the letter was stamped February 28, which meant it took more than a week to arrive, even though the ILPTO and the post office in question are only a few miles apart.  But that's Israel Post for you.  Also as shown in the picture, the envelope was addressed to (and the enclosed card was for) a practitioner named Mirit, who works in one of the offices in Tel-Aviv.  The problem, also shown in the picture, although not apparent unless you go and check the patent practitioner list on the ILPTO web site, is that the address listed on the computer-generated mailing label was for a P.O. box belonging to a different office, one in Jerusalem.

It turns out this wasn't an isolated incident. Another colleague also received someone else's card, and Mirit's own office, which employs a large number of patent practitioners, reportedly received a like number of cards for people who don't work for that office. 

Presumably the person preparing the mailing list somehow shifted one of the columns in the Excel spreadsheet the Office uses to keep track of practitioners, creating this massive mis-match. Or maybe the Office is using a HAL-9000 computer and it's reached the creative phase of its life.

Isn't it good to know that the ILPTO is planning to be a fully electronic office in just three months' time?

Five Israeli Universities Among Top 100 University Patentees in USA in 2014

In 2014 we wrote about a report from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association which listed the universities worldwide that received the most U.S. utility patents in 2012.  That same report for 2014 has now been issued, and once again, the tech transfer companies of the Technion, Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University and Tel-Aviv University all made the list, with 65, 41, 30 and 52 US patents, respectively, but this time they were joined by Ben Gurion University of the Negev, with 22 patents (sharing the final spot on the list with seven other universities). The University of California again topped the list, with 453 patents. Again, of the top 100, most of the non-US universities are located in the Far East (27).  The Ecole Polytechnique, Federale de Lausanne was again the only entry for a European university, coming at 86th place with 25 patents, but this time there were three entries for Saudi universities instead of just one.  

Of course, numbers of patents are a proxy for who’s doing inventive work, but tell us nothing about the value of that work.  Princeton University, not even on the list, is still collecting licensing revenues for the patent that protects the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Alimta® lung cancer drug; by 2010 those revenues had already paid for a new $280 million chemistry building.  It’s a safe bet that most of the patents obtained by universities in 2014 will generate no licensing revenue.

Hat tip to Don Zuhn at PatentDocs for posting a piece earlier today about the 2014 NAI/IPO report.

A Copyright CrISIS?

(March 19: see update here.)

Israel has national elections next month, in which, yet again, Israelis will get to go to the polls to vote for a party that won’t represent them.  I suppose that’s better than not getting to go to polls to achieve the same result, which is what transpires in the PA.  Unfortunately, based on what gets reported in the mainstream media, we have no idea as to the views of the leading candidates on the issues of the day, because for the most part we’ve been reading and hearing about media-manufactured crises crudely designed to embarrass the current prime minister, and lots of mud-slinging between the heads of the different parties.  Including the most succinct expression of what’s on the mind of the present opposition heads, the bumper sticker reading “Anyone but Bibi”. 

Over the weekend, the PM’s Likud party came out with a new anti-left campaign video, which shows some ISIS a-holes in a pickup truck listening to an Arabic hip-hop song.  They stop, ask someone for directions to Jerusalem, and are told to turn left (which they do, at which point we can see said bumper sticker - in Hebrew - on the back of the truck.  Cute.)  This is followed by a The-left-will-give-into-terror-only-the-Likud-will-keep-you-safe message.  After the ad’s release, the usual suspects on the political left trotted out their usual responses – “incitement” (whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean), beneath contempt, beyond the pale, there should be a criminal investigation, etcetera.  Ho-hum.

More interesting to this IP practitioner was this report of the reaction of the band that wrote and performed the rap song used in the video, a couple of Jordanian guys who call themselves “Palestinians”: they say that the Likud didn’t obtain their permission to use the video, and that by associating them with ISIS (which – surprise! – is not particularly popular in parts of Jordan right now after immolating a Jordanian pilot), the Likud has placed their lives in danger.  They’re threatening legal action.

Of course, this claim got me to thinking, what legal action could they take, and where could they take it?  I would think their main goal would be to get the video taken down, and perhaps to receive some sort of compensation for its unauthorized use.  Inasmuch as the Likud used a significant portion of the song, and it plays through nearly the whole video, I don’t think “fair use” would be much of a defense.  So an injunction is in principle a possibility, as is financial remuneration.

But where to seek such redress?  I suppose they could approach a Jordanian court. I don’t know anything about Jordanian copyright law, but even if they were able to get an injunction and/or a monetary judgment there, good luck enforcing it here in Israel in a timely fashion, if at all.

More promising would be enforcement in Israel. Maybe. Jordan is member of the Bern Convention, so from the Israeli perspective, if under Jordanian law copyright inhered in their song as soon as it was fixed in a tangible medium, then per section 9 of the Israel copyright statute the song also became copyrighted in Israel at the same time.  Moreover, Israeli courts grant injunctions for IP infringement, and there is statutory compensation for copyright infringement even in the absence of proof of damage. 

There is, of course, the technical matter of finding a lawyer who would represent them: since 2000, the Jordanian Bar Association has forbidden its members from having any contact with Israelis, let alone representing them.  So in this case the band members would need to retain an Israeli lawyer directly, one who isn’t bothered by the asymmetry in representing someone from a country where that lawyer himself couldn’t obtain representation.  However, I have no doubt that such creatures exist, including some who would take a perverse pleasure in representing the band in this case. It wouldn’t be the first time Israel’s openness and tolerance proved to be its undoing.

After retaining an Israeli lawyer, the band members would need to get a judge’s attention soon; obtaining an injunction after the elections would by a Pyrrhic victory.  While there are procedures for obtaining emergency injunctions, I’m not going to speculate on whether or not an Israeli judge would grant such a motion in this case, and if he doesn’t, the case might not be heard for years. And here’s a bit of (not so) heretical speculation: the alacrity with which the case is handled might depend on the judge’s political views.

In addition to the straightforward assertion of infringement for use of the song without permission, the band members would also, apparently, have a claim for infringement of their “moral rights” per sections 45 and 46 of the statute to have their names associated with their work, and possibly for a derogatory association between them and the song by virtue of its being used in a Likud advertisement.

If infringement is found, the authors could receive up to 100,000 NIS (about $25K) without proof of injury.  But since the big political parties routinely go into debt to finance their campaigns, and then make the public pay for the shortfall, I wouldn’t count on monetary compensation if I were a member of the band.

Of course, the more obvious, faster and surer way to get the clip taken down is to file a copyright complaint with Youtube, where the clip is hosted.  Or maybe it’s not so obvious: as of this writing, the clip is still up.

It’s a safe bet that even if the clip comes down on Youtube, it will be reposted on Youtube and other clip-sharing services. 

"All Our Patents Are Belong To You"

Yesterday Elon Musk of Tesla Motors put up this blog post, in which he is apparently trying to say that as long as he's in charge, Telsa won't enforce any of its patents, because he wants to encourage others to develop sustainable transportation.  (That reading of it seems to be consensus among tech business writers, such as Will Oremus at Slate.)

Inasmuch as none of the big automakers are trying to copy Tesla or even make a serious run at the non-hydrocarbon burning vehicle market, a point that Musk makes in his post, there seems to be little downside to taking this stance, and far be it for me to second guess his business strategy.  As a lawyer, however, I ask myself if his promise is backed up by action.  For example, by dedicating Tesla's patents to the public, something that can be done through the USPTO. 

A quick, non-exhaustive sample out of the over 100 US patents issued to Tesla Motors indicates that so far, such a step hasn't been taken.  For instance, as of this writing, US 8421469 is still listed in the assignment listings as being owned by Tesla Motors, and there is nothing in PAIR showing that the patent has been dedicated to the public.  Same thing for US 7741750, which was renewed last year, (and along with ownership by Tesla Motors shows with a security interest on record to Midland Loan Services, Inc.)  Ditto for US 7404720.  The same attorney, with his address given as Tesla's Palo Alto addressm, is listed as the contact person for all three patents.  

 

I do not doubt Mr. Musk's sincerity, and perhaps his online statements would be construed by a court as constituting a dedication the public, or an offer for a non-royalty bearing license, or a covenant not to sue.  But until there's something in the record of the patents themselves to corroborate his statements, it's hard not to advise a client thinking of using technology covered by Tesla's patents to obtain written permission to do so before proceeding.  Then again, as my brother the US patent litigator noted, the announcement says "Tesla will not *initiate* lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology", language which implies that Tesla wants to reserve the right to sue if sued, or if it feels someone is using the technology for purposes that Tesla doesn't approve of.  So this statement may be all that we see from Tesla on the matter.  

 

On the humorous side, for those of you who remember Highland Applicance (of blessed memory), the title of his post, "All Our Patent Are Belong To You", reminds me of this classic commercial:

 

Four Israeli Universities Among Top 100 Patentees in USA in 2012

Today Don Zuhn at PatentDocs posted about a report from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association, which lists the universities worldwide that received the most U.S. utility patents in 2012.  The University of California tops the list with 357 patents; last on the list is Seoul National University Industry Foundation with 18 patents.  Of the top 100, most of the non-US universities are located in the Far East (27).  There is only one entry for a European university (Ecole Polytechnique, Federale de Lausanne, coming at 94th place with 20 patents) and one entry for the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia with 57 patents.  The tech transfer companies of the Technion, Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University and Tel-Aviv University all made the list, with 30, 35, 30 and 37 patents, respectively. 

While numbers of patents per se aren’t necessarily a measure of the patentee’s successful contributions to commerce, it’s nevertheless impressive that Israel, with a population significantly smaller than those of any of the other countries represented on the list (unless one counts Hong Kong as separate from China), and which has to devote a larger proportion of its budget to defense than the other countries, has four universities on the list (out of seven Israeli universities total).  And according to this slideshow, and this news article, and this publication, Hebrew U. (Yissum), Weizmann (Yeda) and Technion have licensing revenues on par with those of the leading US universities.