below is the response I received on essentially the info in Opty's note on 336, 148.

Dear Congressman,

AUG 24, 2010

Thank you .................

According to our electronic records, patent number 5,809,336 has been the subject of several reexamination proceedings. A first merged request resulted from proceedings 90/008,237 filed November 17, 2006; and 90/008,474 filed January 30,2007. These requests were filed by three different parties (Toshiba Corporation, NEC Electronics America, and Public Patent Foundation), and the merged proceedings led to the issuance of a reexamination certificate which published on December 15, 2009. This certificate included amendments to all of the original claims, cancellation of some claims, and the addition of some new claims. Two subsequent requests for reexamination were also filed, one of which (90/009,457) was granted after consideration of the prosecution history of the patent and the previous reexamination, and one of which was denied as the new information would not have been important to a reasonable examiner.

Our records show that patent number 6,598,148 has also been the subject of two reexamination proceedings filed September 21, 2006, and May 29,2009. These requests were filed by two different parties (NEC Electronics America and an unnamed requester with a different law firm). In the proceeding, some but not all, of the original claims have been amended.

The reexamination statutes allow any person, at any time, to request reexamination. The United States Patent and trademark Office (USPTO) cannot refuse to consider a request because it comes in during the middle of litigation. However, when the information added by a request is determined not to be important, the request for reexamination is denied, as in one of the requests for patent number 5,809,336.

The USPTO has a statuatory obligation to conduct these proceedings with special dispatch, and we are working to improve our timelinessin handling these matters. While reexamination requesters may file at any time, patent owners are given opportunities to ammend their claims and add new claims to preserve their patent rights when new information is added to the record. In these proceedings, the patent owner has amended some claims and added new claims.

According to the electronic record of reexamination of U.S. patent 6,598,148, a non-final action was mailed on July 29, 2010. According to the electronic record of the reexamination of U.S. patent 5,809,336 in the "9457 proceeding, a Notice of Intent to Issue a Reexamination Certificate confirming the patentability of Claims 1, 2, 6, 7 and 9-16 was mailed on July 19, 2010. These reexamination proceedings may be viewed via the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system on our web site, www. uspto.gov.