Posts in Inventors Information

A person recently approached me at church with excitement regarding a software process he developed. His company was so pleased with the result that it is filing a patent, listing him as the inventor. This person knew that I had some kind of patent backstory, so he asked for my thoughts. My name is Jeffrey A. Killian, and I am the patent applicant in the Federal Circuit Court case # 2021 -2113 (In Re: Killian). I took no pleasure in telling my  friend at church that his patent application will be rejected. Plus, the official notice will have my precedential case quoted all over his rejection. With friends at church like me, who needs enemies? 

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte brought together leaders from government, academia, industry, and the defense community for its 2026 Invention of the Year Awards, an evening that showcased the university’s growing role as a national engine of innovation, commercialization, and technological impact.

Whether or not the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) wants to admit it, over most of the last generation there has been a secret examination docket. Not surprisingly, such a secret examination docket is strictly prohibited by federal law. A newly filed joint status report in Morinville v. USPTO brings this issue to the fore and underscores the lack of transparency and accountability of secret internal patent review programs at the USPTO. Procedurally, the latest filing seeks to expose the USPTO shadow docket through a new round of discovery, which is currently being considered by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Welcome back to Cool AI Patents of the Month, where we highlight innovations that blur the line between science fiction and real-world engineering. Last month, we looked at AI-generated voice replicas, particularly in sports broadcasting. That concept is no longer theoretical. Major League Baseball players have reportedly entered into agreements enabling the creation of AI-driven digital avatars, allowing fans to engage directly with AI-generated versions of their favorite players. The takeaway is clear: personality and likeness are being productized. What once seemed futuristic is quickly becoming commercially relevant.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Centripetal Networks, LLC v. Keysight Technologies, Inc., affirming a final written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and holding that the Board correctly construed a limitation of one independent claim of Centripetal’s patent and properly found that a prior art reference anticipated the claim.

Since 2024, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued multiple AI-specific guidance documents on inventorship and subject matter eligibility, including the February 2024 Inventorship Guidance, the July 2024 Subject Matter Eligibility Update, and the November 2025 memo rescinding the February 2024 guidance. The pace of change has created a prosecution environment where the strategies that worked 18 months ago may actively undermine a patent application filed today. The inverse is true; applications drafted for today’s guidance may be structurally unprepared for the next revision.

On remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on Thursday reaffirmed its decision that The Broad Institute, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and President and Fellows of Harvard College (“Broad”) were the first inventors of the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in eukaryotic cells.

In the final session of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 on Tuesday, March 24, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart had a conversation with IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn in which she confirmed the Office is paying attention to the recent surge in ex parte reexamination filings and also said she is “optimistic” that the pending Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) will be finalized. 

Although I am not an attorney, I have been deeply enmeshed in the patent process as an inventor for three decades. And I have grown an appreciation for your profession that is perhaps deeper than most folks’. The majority of my work over the past 30 years has been in AI and machine learning. And I want to share some thoughts with you today about how all of this intersects and how you, everyone in this room, are really the last line of defense that humanity has in maintaining what it means to be human. 

The latest chapter in the long-running saga of inventor Gil Hyatt is beginning to unfold. The current fight is over prosecution laches—and whether the doctrine even exists. In his last appeal to the Federal Circuit, Hyatt argued that prosecution laches is not available in Section 145 proceedings because it is inconsistent with the Patent Act of 1952, as confirmed by recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (2014) and SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products (2017). Whether Hyatt is correct about prosecution laches being inconsistent with the 1952 Patent Act, it is clear that the Supreme Court has unequivocally ruled in both Petrella and SCA that laches simply does not exist when there is a statutorily prescribed timeframe to act.

It is hardly a secret that corporate IP departments are under growing pressure to do more with less. Budgets are tightening, leadership increasingly expects patents to deliver measurable business value, and artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how patent work can be performed. What does this mean for the future of in-house patent teams—and for the law firms that support them? Our conversation explores several major trends shaping patent strategy today, including the shift toward quality over quantity in patent portfolios, the growing emphasis on maintenance fee pruning and portfolio discipline, and the evolving relationship between in-house counsel and outside patent law firms. We also examine how companies are using competitive intelligence, patent analytics, and emerging tools to guide filing strategy, manage costs, and identify licensing and enforcement opportunities. We also tackle one of the biggest questions facing the IP profession: What can AI realistically do for patent practitioners today—and what can’t it do yet?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday issued a precedential decision holding that the principle of forfeiture can apply even where an intervening  correction of inventorship was granted that would have directly affected the outcome of a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceeding. The opinion was authored by Judge Cunningham.

In a recent Substack post discussing Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) policy and current U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reforms, former USPTO Deputy Solicitor Thomas Krause referenced my PTAB case as part of his broader argument. Because my case was cited in that discussion, the factual record matters… My case does not support the claim that the PTAB primarily exists to correct examiner errors or clean up patents issued over missed prior art.

Under today’s patent system, inventors are only allowed to procure one type of patent—the standard utility patent. Despite the amount of power in the standard utility patent, this restriction oppresses the American inventor. Large numbers of people cannot afford the costs to procure and enforce the standard utility patent, and for many of the ones who can, it often does not pack enough firepower to allow them to fully recover. Because each invention is different, each instance of infringement is different. A single $20,000-$30,000 utility patent is not even close to being capable of addressing every one of those instances. The solution is very simple—different types of patents must be created.