the patent office yesterday and they have approved numerous other claims that make our patents even stronger.”
So I check back with Cabrera, and he says, “Basically, every claim [Lochtefeld] challenged was rejected by the USPTO. He amended his claims and some of those amendments were allowed. So his patents are going to issue, just without any of the claims he claimed AWM was infringing. He’ll likely try to argue that the new claims are infringed, but the problem is that would only start from when the new amended patent is issued—in which case nothing AWM has done to date would be infringing. And it is our belief that the new claims are also subject to challenge and are not being infringed… this ruling puts AWM on track to dismissal of the claims.”
An hour or two later, I get a call from W. David Osborne, who is the general counsel for Wave Loch, and he says that Lochtefeld called him from London too, and he’s sending me a press release titled, “Wave Loch Must Once Again Set the Record Straight Regarding American Wave Machines’ Misrepresentations.”
In its statement, Wave Loch says, “neither the litigation nor the USPTO process is complete” and as a result of the patent review, “Wave Loch now expects the patents asserted against AWM to emerge from the reexamination process even stronger and to be able to add more claims against AWM… AWM, however, continues to attempt to sell the SurfStream, and by doing so, continues to place itself and its customers at risk of being subject to injunctive relief and significant monetary damages.”
A lot of shoobies and other right coasters seem to think that California surfers are easy-going, like Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” or the sea turtles in “Finding Nemo.” But if you start messing with their waves—dude!—they can go aggro in a heartbeat! And so San Diego’s wave war continues—-the arguments pounding, pounding, pounding.
