User:Ode011/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article

This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.

Name of article: (Czarnik v. Illumina Inc.)
Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate? This article coincides with the reoccurring themes in my class. It has information that could be added and more resources to be included. It involves information that proves how law and science affect each other. In addition, there is some bias in the article that should be removed.

Lead

Guiding questions

Czarnik v. Illumina Inc., 437 F. Supp. 2d 252 (D. Del. 2006), was a United States patent law case heard before the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. In its ruling the district court was the first court to hold that reputational harm could be sufficient to establish standing in an action for correction of named inventor under 35 U.S.C. § 256. That ruling led to a split among district courts that has yet to be definitively resolved.

Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? The article lead only discusses one out of the three court cases for this subject. It is not clearly written of the subject.
Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? No, the lead does not include a brief description of the major sections.
Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? The lead included information that is presented in the article.
Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? The lead does not contain enough details of the subject.

Lead evaluation

Content

Guiding questions

Background[edit]

Anthony Czarnik was a chemist and one of the founders of Illumina, serving as its Chief Scientific Officer from 1998 to 2000. He had a falling out with his co-founders, which eventually led to his termination. At the time of his departure, several patent applications had been filed by Illumina listing Czarnik as an inventor or co-inventor. Almost a year after Czarnik left Illumina, a patent attorney for the company sent Czarnik a letter informing him that Illumina had continued to file patent applications on which the company believed Czarnik was a co-inventor, based in part on invention disclosure forms listing Czarnik as such. Illumina sought for Czarnik to assign all rights to the patents to the company, as he had done while he was employed. While reviewing Illumina's patents and applications pending before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Czarnik discovered that Illumina had filed and prosecuted numerous patents that contained his inventions, without identifying him as an inventor. Czarnik sent letters to the USPTO, requesting a correction of inventorship on the patents and pending applications, but the USPTO did not respond.

In June 2005 Czarnik sued Illumina, seeking corrections of inventorship under 35 U.S.C. § 256, seeking declaratory judgments of patent unenforceability, and alleging a state law claim of fraud. Section 256 of the Patent Act states, "Whenever . . . through error an inventor is not named in an issued patent, the [USPTO] Director may . . . issue a certificate correcting such error." If the patent owner will not voluntarily request the change, an omitted inventor may bring a claim in federal court. Czarnik alleged in his complaint that he "suffered damage to his reputation and standing within the scientific community" and did not receive the reputational benefits of being named as an inventor. He also alleged that he was unable to join a start-up company, resulting in a loss of approximately $1 million.

District Court[edit]

After Czarnik filed an amended complaint, Illumina filed a motion to dismiss. Illumina argued that Czarnik lacked standing to bring his claim under 35 U.S.C. § 256; in the alternative, Defendant argued that 35 U.S.C. § 256 is inapplicable to pending patent applications. Illumina also argued that there was no case or controversy on which a declaratory judgment action could be based and that Czarnik had failed to state a claim for fraud under Delaware law.

The district court first explained that a plaintiff must meet the standing requirements of Article III of the U.S. Constitution in order to bring a claim in federal court. Therefore, Czarnik had the burden of demonstrating (1) an injury in fact, (2) a causal connection between the injury and conduct complained of, and (3) that the injury was redressable. In omitted inventor cases, a plaintiff must show that he has suffered some sort of pecuniary consequence in order to have standing; mere reputational harm is generally insufficient to establish standing. Illumina argued that Czarnik merely suffered reputational harm and therefore lacked standing.

The district court noted that the Federal Circuit, in Chou v. University of Chicago, had suggested in dicta that it "is not implausible" that reputational injury could satisfy the standing requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 256. In Chou the appellate court noted that "being considered an inventor of important subject matter is a mark of success in one's field… Pecuniary consequences may well flow from being designated as inventor." The district court held that dismissal of Czarnik's §256 claim for lack of standing was not appropriate, noting, "Plaintiff has alleged that he has suffered harm to his reputation and standing in the scientific community. As a result, Plaintiff alleges that he has been unable to secure a position at a start-up company and earn a salary comparable to his salary at Illumina."

As to Illumina's alternate argument, the district court noted that with respect to the pending applications, Czarnik had requested the Court to issue an order directing the USPTO to correct inventorship on the pending applications, relying on 35 U.S.C. 116. The court distinguished Section 116 from Section 256 and agreed with Illumina that the court had no statutory authority to order corrections to pending applications. The court also found there to be no case or controversy relating to the claims for a declaratory judgment and dismissed those claims but found that Czarnik had alleged elements of a state law fraud claim. Therefore, the court granted Illumina's motion in part and denied it in part.

Significance[edit]

The holding in Czarnik v. Illumina Inc. was the first time a court held that reputational harm was sufficient to satisfy the standing requirement to bring a correction of inventorship claim. The Czarnik ruling has since been relied on by multiple courts for the proposition that reputational harm can confer standing on a plaintiff pursuing a claim under 35 U.S.C. § 256. For example, in Hoang v. Abbott Laboratories, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois stated that "one court determined that a plaintiff had standing to assert a claim under section 256 for alleged harm to his reputation", referencing Czarnik. Courts and legal scholars have characterized this idea as a "moral right to credit". However, other courts have rejected the theory, leading to a split among district courts that has yet to be definitively resolved; however, the Federal Circuit in Shukh v. Seagate Technology LLC held that "concrete and particularized reputational injury can give rise to Article III standing."

Is the article's content relevant to the topic? There are some portions that seem irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Is the content up-to-date? The content is dated 5 years back from now.
Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? There is some information missing in the text. The rulings and procedure of the court case involved in this lawsuit are not explained in detail. There are some biased points in the article that does not belong.
Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics? The article relates to its significance in addressing a standard for harm involved with patents.

Content evaluation

Tone and Balance

Guiding questions

Is the article neutral? The article is not neutral. There are some portions in the article that contain bias. The article was founded by someone who is directly involved in the case, therefore the text is not free of bias.
Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? There are some instances where the information shows bias towards the victim in the court case.
Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? The victims view point is overrepresented in the court case and does not equally represent both side of the lawsuit.
Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? The article is written in a manner that reads in favor of Czarnik.

Tone and balance evaluation

Sources and References

Guiding questions

^ Faryniarz v. Ramirez, No. 3:13-CV-01064 (CSH), 2015 WL 6872439 (D. Conn. Nov. 9, 2015).
^
^ Czarnik v. Illumina, Inc., No. D041034, 2004 WL 2757571 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 3, 2014).
^ Czarnik successfully sued Illumina for wrongful termination. Czarnik v. Illumina, Inc., No. D041034, 2004 WL 2757571 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 3, 2014). Chemical & Engineering News 2005, 83(7), 22.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 255 (D. Del.2006).
^ 35 U.S.C. § 256
^ Jump up to:^a ^b , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 255–56 (D. Del. 2006).
^ , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 256–57 (D. Del.2006).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 256 (D. Del.2006).
^ , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 257 (D. Del.2006).
^ , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 257–58 (D. Del.2006).
^ , 437 F. Supp. 2d 252, 258–60 (D. Del.2006). Mann, Philip P. "The Invisible Man" Intellectual Property Today 2007, 12 (Dec.), 39.
^ Shukh v. Seagate Tech. LLC, No. 10–404 (JRT/JJK), 2013 WL 1197403 (D. Minn. Mar. 25, 2013)
^ , 975 F. Supp. 2d 1247, 1256–57 (S.D. Fla. 2013).
^ Hoang v. Abbott Labs., No. 08-c-189, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49468 (N.D. Ill. June 12, 2009); see also, GE v. Wilkins 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22005 *4 fn. 2 (E.D. Ca. Jun. 13, 2011).
^
^ Faryniarz, 2015 WL 6872439 at *7; see also, Pedersen v. Geschwind, 141 F. Supp. 3d 405, 417 (D. Md. 2015).
^ , 803 F.3d 659, 663 (Fed. Cir.2015).

Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? All the facts are backed up by sources in the text. However, in the text box, one of the editors stated that one portion needs to be cited.
Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? There are limited resources that are cited in this article.
Are the sources current? The most current citation dates back to 5 years ago.
Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible? Some of the sources come from the same source and only differ in what pages they are citing from. The citations include information from scientific journals, websites, and physical texts.
Check a few links. Do they work? Source #3 does not work. The link is no longer available. In the text box when transferred over, there a few citations that did not copy over. However, #1 & 17 links do work on the original Wikipedia page.

Sources and references evaluation

Organization

Guiding questions

Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? The article contains some confusing material and is not easy to follow.
Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? The article does have some errors.
Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? The article is broken down appropriately to reflect the main topics of its assigned court case described in the header. However, it should be reorganized and broken up in smaller sections to discuss the topic on hand in more detail.

Organization evaluation

Images and Media

Guiding questions

Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? There is one image included, which is the ensigna of the Delaware District Court.
Are images well-captioned? N/A
Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? A citation is shown when the image is clicked.
Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? The picture is not visually appealing.

Images and media evaluation

Checking the talk page

Guiding questions

This page should not be speedy deleted as an attack or a negative unsourced biography of a living person, because it's only purpose is to teach a precedent in U.S. Patent juris prudence new in its 218-year existence. There is no defamatory content in the article whatsoever. In addition, there is no reference to a living person other than the Plaintiff, which is publicly-available information. --AWCzarnik (talk) 14:37, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I have reverted the WP:CSD G10 attack page template notification and associated blanking of content. I have explained this both at the Teahouse, and in this note on the Talk Page of Barbara (WVS) who also replied at the Teahouse just before I did, and placed the template and blanked the page as a courtesy. (Note that all this was done in Good Faith). I don't think the fine detail at the beginning helped one bit (I also thought you were on a mission to 'out' your former employer at first sight, but then realised this wasn't so).

I would urge you to follow my advice, and restructure this draft as soon as possible to conform to the layout of other encyclopaedic legal case study articles. (Here are some supreme court ones to look at: Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court) If, as I suggest, you delete extraneous content immediately, you can always find it again in the edit history of the page, so nothing is lost completely unless it gets formally deleted by an administrator. But even then, deleted content can be reinstated upon request to that administrator or on further appeal. Note that it's very bad form to edit another user's sandbox without invitation, but if you would like some assistance, just let me know and I'll make any tweaks that I'm able. I still recommend putting this to the WikiProject Law group via its talk page or via WP:requested articles, rather than trying to create the mainspace article yourself. I think you're too closely involved, and others may also jump to conclusions regarding your motives. Whether the topic meets out notability criteria is something others must judge, as I'm totally out of my comfort zone in legal topics. Regards Nick Moyes (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? The person who founded the page is directly involved in the publication of the article content and therefore there is a warning message on the page. The message states there is bias found in the article due to the person being directly involved in the development of the case.
How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? It is rated with a B and is part of WikiProjects
How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? This topic is not neutral and clear in its

Talk page evaluation

Overall impressions

Guiding questions

What is the article's overall status? The article was graded with a B and was given low importance.
What are the article's strengths? The article summarizes they key points well and is straight to the point on the topic.
How can the article be improved? This article can be improved by providing information on the other relevant court cases that Czarnik was involved in with the company. The article can include more sections where they discuss the court cases ruling clearly. The court cases themselves is not clearly discussed in the article.
How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? The articles is very short and does not explain much of the court case in detail of how the ruling was processed and went to the supreme court.

Overall evaluation

Optional activity

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