The Chicago Sun-Times reported some IP-related news Sunday.  In a piece entitled "Futures Exchanges Fight Back on Patents," the Sun-Times reported that Brinks Hofer, a Chicago IP boutique, filed a petition with the PTO, on behalf of an unnamed client (PTO regulations do not require identification of Brinks’s client),  seeking reexamination of patents assigned to Trading Technologies ("TT").  The patents are at issue in a series of Northern District law suits, which have been consolidated to some degree before Judge Moran.  You can read more about the suits in the Blog’s archives.  According to the Sun-Times piece, the reexam petition argued that the TT patents were invalid based upon an order-entry system adopted by the Tokyo Stock Exchange several years before the filing dates of the TT patents.  TT responded to the petition’s allegations in the Sun-Times piece, saying that the arguments were recycled from the Northern District lawsuits and that the Court was skeptical of the arguments. TT also noted that a trial was set for June 28, just two months away.  Finally, TT pointed out that the majority of reexam petition are granted and said that it "is confident that the validity of its patents will be upheld."