Posts in IPWatchdog Articles

How often have you felt you had a great invention that was just what the world was waiting for. Unfortunately, many would-be entrepreneurs are under the illusion that that is all they need for someone to beat a path to their doorstep, big check in hand. If only it were that easy! The average entrepreneur usually does not think about what is really necessary to make their invention a commercial success. As a result, their great ideas often fizzle before they ever have a chance to get to the marketplace.

I understand the objections to embryonic stem cell research, but I simply cannot understand anyone that has a moral objection to embryonic stem cell research. How is it moral to watch those with crippling diseases agonize without trying to do everything we possibly can to find cures and treatments? Simply put, there is nothing moral about watching the suffering of another human being and doing nothing.

You have probably had circumstances when you have positively associated with a certain trademark.  Perhaps you were traveling and had the option to eat at one of several restaurants.  You might have preferred a sit-down meal, but you might have opted for McDonald’s or Burger King instead because you are familiar with what you will get, know it is going…

Put simply, Section 337 requires that an ITC complainant show that, as of the time of filing, (a) it maintains a certain level of economic activity within the United States in connection with the asserted intellectual property right, and (b) this economic activity is devoted to exploiting the intellectual property right at issue (in the case of a patent, at least one claim of the asserted patent). Alternatively, the complainant may show that a domestic industry “is in the process of being established.” This standing requirement is called the “domestic industry requirement,” and the two sub-requirements listed above are called respectively the “economic prong” and the “technical prong” of the domestic industry requirement. “Domestic industry” is a term of art that refers to the entity or entities exploiting the asserted intellectual property in the United States – the rights holder, plus its licensees, if any.

The Commerce Department’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks of the Russian Federation (ROSPATENT) have agreed to partner in establishing a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program.

The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice on Friday, August 19, 2010, issued revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines that outline how the federal antitrust agencies evaluate the likely competitive impact of mergers and whether those mergers comply with U.S. antitrust law. These changes to the Guidelines mark the first major revision of the merger guidelines in 18 years, and is…

If you are really serious about doing a high quality patent search on your own I recommend doing whatever you can to find 1 or 2 patents or patent applications that closely relate to your invention, whether that means in terms of structure or concept. I hear all the time that inventors do searches and cannot find anything relevant, which is unbelievable. If you do a search and find nothing then you are doing something wrong. See No Prior Art for my Invention. Do whatever you have to, and in a pinch to find something quick that is at least somewhat relevant Google Patent Search will do. Then visit Public PAIR and see what you can find out about the prior art found and used by the patent examiner against that patent or patent application.

For now we can be thankful that the U.S. enjoys dominance in an important and growing field like nanotechnology. Even though China does not receive high marks yet, it seems only a matter of time before the Chinese figure out what we in the United States, most in Western Europe and many in Asia have know for a very long time. Significant investment in technology and the creation of a business friendly climate lead to businesses locating, investors investing and high-paying technology jobs being created. Of course, there is also the national security angle to consider as well. So not only are we allowing other nations to catch up to us from a technology and business standpoint, we are allowing other countries to catch up to us from a military technology standpoint, which is concerning.

This past Sunday there was a brief but very interesting segment on Fox New Sunday that actually discussed the plight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and how the enormous backlog of inventions in the queue at the USPTO is preventing organic job grow at a time when our economy desperately needs job creation. Sitting in for Chris Wallace was Brett Baier. He was interviewing Mark Zandi, who is Chief Economist for Moody’s Analytics, and Liz Claman, an anchor on the Fox Business News channel. The topic for this 11:54 second segment was the health of the U.S. economy and what can and should be done by our leaders in Washington, DC. Surprisingly, at least to me, Claman brought up the USPTO as an ideal opportunity for “instant stimulus.”

Patent applications as a whole over the past 10 years have had an average allowance to rejection ratio of about 0.3. We arrived at this ratio by generating a list of 300 randomly selected application serial numbers in the 10/, 11/, and 12/ series, and individually reviewing the transaction histories for each serial number. An allowance to rejection ratio of 0.3 corresponds to about one allowance for every three rejections. First office actions have a somewhat lower allowance ratio than the average. This is consistent with the common knowledge that applicants will take a more aggressive position with the claims that they file relative to the amended claims they present after a rejection. The allowance to rejection ratio for second and higher rejections remains relatively constant. This has the somewhat disturbing implication that practitioners and examiners are not getting any better at understanding each other as prosecution progresses. If practitioners and examiners were learning from each rejection – response interchange, then the allowance ratio would increase for each succeeding office action.

There is an important role that open source could play moving forward, and that role is to set the foundation of innovation and technology, which is no small task in terms of importance and seems to perfectly fit with open sources strengths. But too many open source regimes are like the Borg of Star Trek fame, or a little like the Mafia. Once you are a member you simply cannot get out. With too many open source regimes once you join and take then anything that you produce must be free to be taken by other members of the consortium. It really is akin to a patent deal with the devil, and ignores human tendencies. Ingrained in almost everyone is a feeling they should be able to profit from their own work, and most would feel injured if they worked and others were allowed to take without some kind of in kind return.

The Federal Trade Commission has permanently halted the operations of Canadian con artists who allegedly posed as domain name registrars and convinced thousands of U.S. consumers, small businesses and non-profit organizations to pay bogus bills by leading them to believe they would lose their Web site addresses unless they paid. Settlement and default judgment orders signed by the court will…

Late yesterday Oracle announced in an exceptionally brief and direct press release that it has filed a lawsuit against Google. But someone at Google didn’t find this amusing and seemingly tampered with Google’s search algorithm and database by eliminating Oracle altogether. This was brought to my attention earlier today and then confirmed at approximately 3:00pm Eastern Time. By approximately 6:00 pm Eastern Time things seemed back to normal with Google search, someone apparently getting wind that some intentionally harmful and malicious behavior was engaged in by someone somewhere.

It is great to know that settlement has been achieved, and incredibly newsworthy to learn that the victorious party was “pleased with the outcome.” But really, sometimes I do stumble across rather interesting press releases that are newsworthy. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to write about everything I would like to. So I thought I might start a News & Notes column that collects some interesting news items that could be of interest, but which probably don’t warrant detailed treatment or analysis. With that in mind… here goes…

Summer is almost over, but the Practising Law Institute still has some great Intellectual Property courses that all come with CLE credits. So whether you are looking for an excuse to take a trip to beautiful San Francisco, California, or the City that never sleeps, or you are looking for some great information and CLE credits via webcast, PLI has you covered. The remaining IP courses for Summer 2010 are all new and completely revised, with the exception of the extremely popular Claim Drafting & Amendment Writing workshop, which will still integrate recent changes and provide tons of practical learning.