Yousef Alkoblan is an Intellectual Property attorney at SABIC, practicing as a legal intern in Womble Bond Dickinson‘s Houston Office. Yousef holds a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, from Georgetown University Law Center and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.
On February 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Weber, Inc. v. Provisur Technologies, Inc., reversing the finding of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that certain operating manuals with limited dissemination and confidentiality restrictions did not qualify as prior art. The Federal Circuit’s decision concluded that the Board misapplied the analysis for meeting the public accessibility standard for a printed publication to qualify as prior art.