Posts in USPTO

UPDATE: See Sadly, Invention Promotion Alive & Well The United States Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it is adopting new rules relating to a variety of issues that impact who can engage in representation of clients before the PTO, both on the patent and the trademark side of the Office. These new rules, which will go into effect…

On July 23, 2008, the United States Patent & Trademark Office published an interesting notice in the Federal Register. This particular notice announced nothing new in terms of the law, but will have an enormous impact on the way patent services are provided to many corporations and law firms. Specifically, it has finally come to the notice of the Patent…

Pillow with breasts US Patent No. 7,386,902 Issued June 17, 2008  This is an interesting invention indeed.  I am not posting this to poke fun of the invention, but rather because it is certainly unique.  Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that inventions are intended to provide exclusive rights for inventors to insulate themselves from competition.  So any patent…

The 13th annual Independent Inventors Conference will be held on the campus of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia August 8-9. A pre-conference workshop, for anyone interested in learning about the basics of patents and the importance of intellectual property protection, will be held on August 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. The workshop is…

Bi-axial rotating magnetic therapeutic device US Patent No. 6,648,812 [ PDF ] [ HTML ] Issued November 18, 2003 This device varies magnetic field intensity by rotating a single magnet about two axes at the same time.  This could be a legitimate, real invention, if only it were claimed as a human amusement device, or a device for sucking money from…