Posts in USPTO

While this decision will be widely cheered by many who are concerned with political correctness, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that from a legal standpoint this decision is clearly wrong… This is not to say that the trademarks in question are not hurtful to some, but the law simply requires direct evidence that the relevant audience, in this case Native Americans, found the term disparaging when the trademarks were actually registered. On this critical question there was simply not competent legal evidence, which is not to say that the term in and of itself isn’t offensive or it hasn’t been used as a racial slur. Based on the appropriate legal standard those things simply are not relevant.

Pilot participation requires an applicant to include a glossary section in the patent application specification to define terms used in the patent claim. Applications accepted into the pilot will get expedited processing, be placed on an examiner’s special docket prior to the first office action and have special status up to issuance of a first office action.

Written by David J. Kappos, former Director of the USPTO: “The language of the Myriad decision did not on its face mandate drastic, innovation-dampening action. The Supreme Court chose to narrowly decide the Myriad case, stating that a DNA segment merely “found” from nature without further human innovative intervention is not patentable subject matter… Indeed, the stakes are high – the decision and the USPTO’s interpretation may impact a number of industries that depend on patent protection to provide products, goods and services to the market and jobs to Americans, not to mention the future of life-saving medical discoveries. Of the over 300 drugs on the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List, fewer than a dozen were brought to market without having received patent protection. From the ibuprofen ubiquitous in the world’s medicine cabinets to breakthrough treatments for epidemics like the HIV-inhibitor AZT, the patent system has long played a pivotal role in global health.”

The new USPTO permanent satellite office in Denver, Colorado, will officially open on June 30, 2014. Located in the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building in Denver’s central business district, Denver satellite office will also soon begin hiring patent trial judges and patent examiners—creating new, high-skilled jobs in the Rocky Mountain region.

The fee for a new application filed using the regular Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) application form will be reduced $50, from the current fee of $325 to $275 per class, if the applicant authorizes e-mail communication with the USPTO and agrees to file documents electronically during the prosecution of the application. The fee for an application for renewal of a registration submitted via TEAS will be reduced $100, from $400 per class to $300 per class while the filing fees for trademark applications and renewals filed on paper will remain unchanged.

The purpose of the roundtables is to engage further with members of the public on the following issues: (1) the legal framework for the creation of remixes; (2) the relevance and scope of the first sale doctrine in the digital environment; and (3) the appropriate calibration of statutory damages in the contexts of individual file sharers and of secondary liability for large-scale infringement. The roundtables, which will be led by USPTO and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), will be held in Nashville, TN on May 21, 2014, Cambridge, MA on June 25, 2014, Los Angeles, CA on July 29, 2014, and Berkeley, CA on July 30, 2014. The meetings were called for in the Task Force’s Green Paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy released last year.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will host a public forum on May 9, 2014 at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, to solicit feedback from organizations and individuals on its recent guidance memorandum for determining subject matter eligibility of claims reciting or involving laws of nature, natural phenomena, and natural products (Laws of Nature/Natural Products Guidance). The Laws of Nature/Natural Products Guidance implemented a new procedure to address changes in the law relating to subject matter eligibility in view of recent Supreme Court precedent.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) recently announced that Patents for Humanity is being renewed as an annual program. Started as a one-year pilot in 2012, the program recognizes businesses, inventors, non-profits, and universities who leverage their intellectual property portfolio to tackle global humanitarian challenges. The renewal was first announced on February 20 as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing commitment to strengthen the U.S. patent system.

As part of the Trademark Operation’s continuing series of roundtable discussions to gather stakeholder views on important issues, a roundtable discussion about USPTO’s practice regarding amendments to identifications of goods and services due to technology evolution will be held on Friday, April 11, from 2 – 3 pm. The session will be open to the public and webcast. The event will take place in the Madison Auditorium at the USPTO offices, located at 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314.

The USPTO today announced the creation of a new Office of International Patent Cooperation (OIPC). The OIPC will be led by Mark Powell who will serve as USPTO’s first Deputy Commissioner for International Patent Cooperation and report directly to the Commissioner for Patents Margaret (Peggy) Focarino. The establishment of the OIPC reflects USPTO’s strong commitment to work with global stakeholders and intellectual property (IP) offices to develop means to increase quality and create new efficiencies within the complex processes of international patent rights acquisition, and its commitment toward global patent harmonization, which both protects America’s ideas and makes it easier to do business abroad.

What seems to be happening is that the PTAB is literally applying KSR v. Teleflex in a way that many initially feared it would be applied, but in a way it has never been interpreted by the Federal Circuit. Under a literal reading of KSR nothing is patent eligible… If you are a defendant in a patent infringement litigation and you haven’t filed an inter partes review, what are you waiting for? The Patent Office giveth with the examiners allowance and taketh away with a PTAB decision. As long as the PTAB is killing patents can you blame defendants and their lawyers? It would be practically malpractice for a defense attorney in a patent infringement case to fail to recommend seriously considering inter partes review.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is extending the nominations deadline for the 2014 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The medal is presented each year by the president of the United States and is this country’s highest award for technological achievement. The deadline is being extended June 2, 2014.

The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today commemorated the issuance of the 700,000th design patent during a ceremony with United States Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker at Langdon Education Campus in Washington, DC. The patent for the ornamental design for a “Hand-Held Learning Apparatus” was issued to Jason Avery of Berkeley, California and is currently assigned to Emeryville, California-based LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: LF). The ceremony also included the launch of a new Intellectual Property (IP) Patch developed as a joint project between the USPTO, Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital and the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation (IPO).

Last week the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced that they will be holding a roundtable event on April 10, 2014, to discuss President Obama’s desire to find ways to allow the public to provide the Patent Office with prior art… [T]he real problem facing the Patent Office isn’t just that the industry by and large has completely rejected preissuance submissions, but rather the real problem is why. I have repeatedly heard this: “Why would I want to file prior art to help make the patent stronger?” In fact, at a recent conference I heard one attorney who had filed a preissuance submission explain that a strategic decision was made not to file the best prior art because if the patent examiner issues the patent anyway the client decided they wanted to hold on to the best prior art to challenge the patent later.