The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down many patents on the grounds that they are invalid as directed to an abstract idea, relying on the Supreme Court’s Alice decision. In In re Elbaum (Fed. Cir. 12/20/2023)...more
On July 24, 2023, the United States Patent and Trademark Office changed its procedures for the PTO Director’s review of certain decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The decisions in question are those decisions of...more
On Monday this week, the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that the PTO would be revisiting the test for patent subject matter eligibility. The announcement was made on the blog homepage of PTO...more
A design patent protects a new, original, ornamental design for an article of manufacture. 35 USC section 171. “Ornamental” means that the design is purely decorative; the patentability is based on its visual aspects. ...more
Business owners often ask whether they should protect their intellectual property with a trade secret or a patent. The answer is: It depends.
What Can Be Protected?
The first thing to consider is what it is that...more
The validity of a United States patent can be challenged in federal court litigation. Patents can also be challenged in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which, in most cases, is a quicker and less costly process...more
Is it possible to legally protect an idea? The answer is: not really.
Intellectual property is intangible personal property. There are four types of intellectual property that are protected by law: patents, copyrights,...more
Most patent applications are initially rejected on obviousness grounds by the patent examiner in the US Patent and Trademark Office. That means that the examiner believes that the invention, as set forth in the claims in the...more
An inter partes review (IPR) is a procedure to challenge a patent in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The IPR procedure was established by the American Invents Act, and was intended to be an improvement on the...more
A new temporary pilot program in the US PTO will speed up appeals in patent applications before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The program, which went into effect on July 2, 2020, is called the “Fast Track Appeals...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has established a new program for prioritized examination for patent applications for inventions related to COVID-19 and for trademark applications for marks used for certain...more
On March 31, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that, pursuant to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, certain deadlines for patent and trademark applications would be extended. The CARES...more
The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) may reject a patent application on several different grounds. One of those grounds is obviousness. Under 35 U.S.C. § 103, if an invention is obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the...more
Before 1995, the term of a U.S. utility patent was 17 years from the day the patent issued. In 1994, the federal statutes were changed to make the patent term 20 years from the effective filing date of the patent application....more
To be patentable, an invention must satisfy two key requirements, as determined by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). First, the invention must be novel. This means that the same invention cannot have been disclosed...more
A lot of things are patentable. Under 35 U.S.C. §101, machines, articles of manufacture, processes, and compositions of matter (including new chemical compounds) are patentable. But some things are not: the exceptions are...more
Every year about this time, I search the PTO database for any new patents on inventions related to Christmas. This year turned up several. Interestingly, most of the ones I looked at issued at October and November of this...more
An inter partes review (IPR) is one of the ways a party can challenge a patent in the Patent and Trademark Office. This procedure was added by the America Invents Act, which established a panel of judges called the Patent...more
A business’s intellectual property may be its most valuable asset. Whether it is biotechnology, trade names, business methods, or computer software, intellectual property should be protected to the greatest extent possible...more
Patent law is a complicated area of law governed by a confusing set of statutes and regulations that are interpreted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and the federal courts. Patents themselves are...more
In In re Stepan Co., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16246, decided August 25, 2017 the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals made it very clear that during patent prosecution, the burden of proving patent ability lies with the PTO examiner....more
Patent law is a complicated area of law governed by a confusing set of statutes and regulations that are interpreted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and the federal courts. Patents themselves are...more
*This line is the title of a song written by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager that was performed in Bob Fosse’s movie “All that Jazz.” The song was a hit, and the phrase has a lot of relevance to everyday life, but the...more
The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has reminded the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in no uncertain terms that covered business method review has limits. In Unwired Planet, LLC v....more
The last time I checked (which was a couple of years ago), I found over 900 U.S. patents in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s database that had the word “Christmas” in the title. Every year at this time, I look at a few...more