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gw-news@gwmicro.comSubject:
Federal Circuit Court affirmed the US Patent Office Decision invalidating Freedom Scientific's patent and eliminating their claims against GW MicroDate:
Mon, Oct 29, 2012 9:45:42 am<HTML><HEAD><TITLE> Federal Circuit Court affirmed the US Patent Office Decision invalidating Freedom Scientific's patent and eliminating their claims against GW Micro</TITLE></HEAD><BODY><P><p>In July of 2008 on my first day back in the office after the Sight Village conference, someone entered our office and handed me a summons and notification of a lawsuit brought on by Freedom Scientific against GW Micro. They received a patent for certain screen reader features and our response was that Window-Eyes had those same basic features several years prior to their patent. This was the beginning of a long waste of time and money, which finally came to a close last week. GW Micro is vindicated - it's over - the court decided in our favor!</p>
<p>I won't provide all the details but in general, the Patent Office reexamined their patent at our request and found it to be invalid in view of prior art. Both the patent examiner and the Board of Appeals in the Patent Office came to the same conclusion - the patent is invalid. Despite those results, they asked for a federal court to review the decision and again they came to the same conclusion as everyone else. You may listen to this final argument by going to <a href="http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings/search/audio.html">http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings/search/audio.html</a>; search for Appeal 2012-1145, listen to the MP3 file and you will easily come to the same conclusion as everyone else. Their original patent should not have been granted in the first place and without the patent, there are no grounds for their lawsuit against GW Micro. If you decide to listen to that file, you should be aware that it is a large file, which will take some time to download.</p>
<p>We want to thank you all for the many words of encouragement, support and prayers that we've received over these past 4 years. Not one person ever suggested that we should do anything other than fight and defend ourselves. However, the sad fact is that actions like this hurt all of us. This caused a waste of dollars and time for both our companies, which could have been spent improving existing products and developing new ones.</p>
<p>GW Micro chooses to take the path of creating new products, features and innovations and our recent release of our Window-Eyes 8 public beta illustrates that perfectly. If you haven't done so already, I hope you will give it a try. Simply doing that will show your support of GW Micro. We promise to continue to work hard and conduct business in an honest and proper fashion. The reputation of GW Micro will never be litigation instead of innovation.</p></BODY></HTML>
<p>I won't provide all the details but in general, the Patent Office reexamined their patent at our request and found it to be invalid in view of prior art. Both the patent examiner and the Board of Appeals in the Patent Office came to the same conclusion - the patent is invalid. Despite those results, they asked for a federal court to review the decision and again they came to the same conclusion as everyone else. You may listen to this final argument by going to <a href="http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings/search/audio.html">http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings/search/audio.html</a>; search for Appeal 2012-1145, listen to the MP3 file and you will easily come to the same conclusion as everyone else. Their original patent should not have been granted in the first place and without the patent, there are no grounds for their lawsuit against GW Micro. If you decide to listen to that file, you should be aware that it is a large file, which will take some time to download.</p>
<p>We want to thank you all for the many words of encouragement, support and prayers that we've received over these past 4 years. Not one person ever suggested that we should do anything other than fight and defend ourselves. However, the sad fact is that actions like this hurt all of us. This caused a waste of dollars and time for both our companies, which could have been spent improving existing products and developing new ones.</p>
<p>GW Micro chooses to take the path of creating new products, features and innovations and our recent release of our Window-Eyes 8 public beta illustrates that perfectly. If you haven't done so already, I hope you will give it a try. Simply doing that will show your support of GW Micro. We promise to continue to work hard and conduct business in an honest and proper fashion. The reputation of GW Micro will never be litigation instead of innovation.</p></BODY></HTML>
