Wolf Greenfield Attorneys Preview What’s Ahead in 2024
Under the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) modernization efforts, the time between paying the issue fee and issuance of the patent is being reduced. Faster patent issuance gives patent applicants less time...more
On April 15, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) informed the public that, effective May 13, 2025, the USPTO will be accelerating the process for issuing patents. Currently, the time between Issue...more
What You Need to Know: • Instead of filing multiple applications claiming different aspects of an invention but not sharing a single priority chain, patentees should strive to file highly comprehensive applications that...more
Before the USPTO was subject to a hiring freeze, it assumed it would onboard 400 new examiners between fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026, and still predicted an increase in the backlog of unexamined patent applications....more
This Article analyzes over 89,000 patents litigated over a twenty-year period to determine how the number of office actions to allowance during prosecution impacts rates of invalidity during subsequent litigation. Many...more
Under U.S. law, most patents are limited to a term of 20 years from the earliest nonprovisional filing date. However, Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and Patent Term Extension (PTE) can be used in certain circumstances to gain...more
Unity of invention and double patenting law and practice in Canada can create challenges for patent applicants. For example, applicants may not expect a unity of invention objection to be raised, requiring claims to be...more
2024 was an active year in Canadian patent law, with the Federal Court issuing several decisions on the merits regarding invalidity and/or infringement. The courts also considered issues of the regulation of patent agents,...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") raised patent fees and introduced new surcharges....more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced changes to patent fees, which will take effect on Jan 19, 2025. Most current fees are subject to a 7.5% across-the-board increase while other fees are...more
For branded drugmakers, the development of a pharmaceutical product approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) all but assures generic competition. As discussed during the first installment of our Hatch-Waxman series,...more
In 2024, the Rx IP Update team at Smart & Biggar reported on a number of developments in Canadian life sciences IP and regulatory law. Highlights from 2024 are below; see also our top ten Rx IP Update reads of 2024....more
As 2025 begins and intellectual property (IP) strategies are being developed for the new year, it is a good time to reflect on what IP issues were prominent in 2024. According to many readers, hot IP topics included...more
On January 1, 2025, Canada will implement a patent term adjustment (PTA) system to account for unreasonable delays by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) in issuing a patent. The final regulations were published...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a “final rule” to fee adjustments for patent applications and appeals, effective January 19, 2025. These changes represent some of the most significant changes to the...more
The USPTO has published its final rule setting patent fees that will take effect January 19, 2025. The final rule steps back from some of the new fee structures proposed in April 2024, but still could have a significant...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today the finalized fee increases taking effect on January 19, 2025. While applicants can still expect significant increases in certain areas, some proposed fee...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in Allergan USA, Inc. v. MSN Laboratories Private Ltd., No. 24-1061 (Fed. Cir. 2024), holding that “a first-filed, first-issued, later-expiring claim cannot...more
The Supreme Court denies Cellect LLC's petition for certiorari to consider whether patent term adjustment ("PTA") should be included in patent term for obviousness-type double patenting ("ODP") purposes....more
On October 7, 2024, the Supreme Court declined to hear Cellect LLC v. Vidal, No. 23-1231. The case has been followed closely by patent professionals ever since the Federal Circuit upended the judicially-created doctrine of...more
On October 2, the USPTO terminated proceedings in approximately 3,100 patent applications due to the fraudulent entry of S-signatures of registered practitioners by others. The final order noted that improper use of a...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has revealed “a coding error” in the software used to calculate Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) awards that may have impacted patents issued from March 19, 2024, through July 30,...more
In Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation v. Apple, the Federal Circuit expanded the preclusive effect of non-infringement rulings. It ruled that prior judgments of non-infringement can prevent follow-on lawsuits involving...more
In Allergan USA, Inc. et al., v. MSN Laboratories Private Ltd., et al., the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision relating to obviousness-type double patenting (“ODP”) and...more
On August 6, 2024, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced the fee standards for patent term adjustment (PTA) requests. Before this announcement, all submitted requests for PTA were pending...more