Posts in Patent Basics

During our conversation we explore much of what is happening in DC relating to patents and innovation, and specifically discuss matters ranging from proposed guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology relating to use of march-in rights to control drug prices, to the recently introduced RESTORE Act, which is little more than one-page would largely if not completely overrule the Supreme Court’s eBay decision and create a presumption that victorious patent owners who have proved infringement and withstood all invalidity challenges would be presumed to be entitled to injunctive relief.

If you are an inventor of a consumer product there are reputable companies looking for inventions and ideas to bring to market, and their business model is built on taking products to market over and over again, and they are in constant need of new products and improvements. They also realize litigation is wasteful when you are dealing with products that often have a 1-, 2- or 3-year shelf life, so they are willing to do deals that allow them to quickly get products onto shelves and into the stream of commerce, and inventors get paid.

Inter partes review (IPR) is a legal process conducted before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to assess patentability based on anticipation or obviousness using prior art publications and patents. Congress established IPR to offer an efficient alternative to litigating patent disputes before the district courts. This article discusses some practice tips for both challenging and defending patents in IPRs before the PTAB.

While working as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Art Unit 2121 (artificial intelligence, or AI) I noticed that the typical patent application that I examined had seven method claims, seven apparatus claims, and six computer-readable medium (CRM) claims. In the typical application, the method and apparatus claims were mirrors of each other, and the first five CRM claims were mirrors of claims 1-5 and the last CRM claim combined the subject matter of claims 6 and 7. While examining a typical patent application, I only had to find prior art that taught these seven unique claims to reject the entire patent application. This led me to ponder why applicants are wasting the 13 other claims included with the standard filing fee with mirrored claims. Though best practice is to have multiple statutory categories with mirror claims by the time of allowance for enforceability reasons, there is a potential advantage for the applicant to file fewer mirror claims initially.

Who holds the patent on gravity? Who collects the royalties for the speed of light? In this episode of IP Goes Pop!, Volpe Koenig Shareholders and podcasts hosts, Michael Snyder and Joseph Gushue, explore what intellectual property (trade secrets, trademarks, patents and copyrights) cannot protect. Hint- some things excluded from IP protection include the Laws of Nature such as gravity, the speed of light and even Einstein’s theory of relativity E=MC2. Abstract ideas are another. But what other “can’t”s stand between you, your idea, and protections for it?

Do you want a simple way to search for specific patents and to get PDF copies of those patents? And do you want those PDF files to come straight from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), so you can be confident that they contain any Certificates of Correction? Our first article in a series about the USPTO’s Public Patent Search (PPS) web page shows you how. PPS launched on December 1, 2021. It’s critical to get to know PPS now—especially if you want to get access to PDF copies of patents, because the USPTO removed the only other remaining method to get PDFs from their site just last month. Like any new technology, it can take some getting used to—but once you get the hang of it, it can make your life much easier. This short how-to article explains the essentials of using PPS to find and download specific patents and how to deal with the unique idiosyncrasies of PPS’s text versions of patents.

Lawyers should always be trying to look at things from new and different angles to gain an edge. We owe it to our clients, and honestly, we should do it for ourselves, because it makes practicing more fulfilling. In an effort to spice up my patent law life, I have become especially interested in patent analytics over the past few years—that’s right, I just used “patent analytics” and “spice up” in the same sentence.

The “interview” during the patent prosecution process is a meeting typically held between a patent examiner and the applicant’s representative (i.e., a patent practitioner). In some cases, the inventor, assignee, or a subject matter expert may also be present. During my time as a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiner, I would almost always encourage scheduling an interview with applicant’s representative to discuss the merits. Curiously, many patent practitioners are not proactive in initiating an interview with the examiner. Why is an interview so important? When and how should it be held? How does an applicant’s representative conduct an effective interview?

Preparing an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) can be stressful. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has very strict guidelines which must be followed precisely to avoid errors. Failure to adhere to these guidelines will result in additional costs and time spent in filing the Information Disclosure Statement (IDS). Often, errors are made due to changes in requirements made by the USPTO, failing to adhere to deadlines, and lack of providing adequate reference materials. While these mistakes can happen frequently, there are steps patent filers and intellectual property (IP) professionals can take to avoid errors. Below are some of the most common IDS-related mistakes made by patent filers and practitioners.

Non-functional descriptive material is a throwback to an earlier time. Historically, the non-functional descriptive matter doctrine was used by examiners to argue that limitations related to the content of information should be given little to no patentable weight. However, current subject matter eligibility jurisprudence provides tools to simply treat content-based inventions as ineligible (e.g., Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A.), and so it is not clear that non-functional descriptive material rejections should continue to play a role in examination. Nevertheless, the doctrine still exists, and so this article presents three examples illustrating how you can respond to non-functional descriptive material rejections when they arise in your practice.

The question that we receive most frequently from inventors, usually independent inventors, relates to whether a provisional patent application can be refiled with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  Before giving the correct answer, it is critically important for everyone to understand that if a provisional patent application is refiled it may become impossible for a patent to ever be obtained, period.  Can a provisional patent application be refiled? The short, easy answer to the question is yes, of course you can refile the provisional application. The USPTO will be happy to have you refile the application, take your filing fee, and send you a new filing receipt. The problem for you, as an inventor, however, is the consequence of refiling a provisional application. So, while it may be very easy to do, and seem like you’ve just extended the life of your original provisional application, that is precisely NOT what has happened, and you may have – indeed likely have – made it impossible to ever obtain a patent anywhere in the world.

Drafting a patent application is a complex task that involves dealing with several critical components of the patent application. If one must ask any patent attorney about the crucial aspect of a patent draft, the answer will always be “the claims”. Even the simplest of mistakes in claims can pose risk to a patent application. In light of this, the following article highlights some potential pitfalls to avoid while drafting patent claims.

Technologies such as computer networking, which, unlike software inventions, typically incorporate at least some hardware elements, may be less vulnerable to rejection under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. However, responding to these rejections when they are issued still requires some finesse. In these cases, rejections usually revolve around whether the hardware included in the claims serves as an improvement over existing hardware or is merely used as a tool for a mental process or other abstract idea. If the examiner concludes that the networking hardware merely serves as a tool, the claims usually fail the Alice/Mayo test. However, if you can show that the networking hardware either presents novel features or is improved by the invention to become a more effective tool, you may overcome the rejection.

How much detail is needed in a patent application for a software-based invention? Software patents present some unique challenges that many other kinds of patent applications do not need to contend with, one of them being the level of disclosure and care in drafting needed to avoid indefiniteness issues. While source code is not required in most cases, a growing body of case law indicates that insufficient detail about the algorithms underpinning the invention could render the patent claims indefinite, meaning that the scope of the claimed invention is too ambiguous. If the patent examiner deems the disclosure to be inadequate during examination, indefiniteness could prevent a patent from issuing. In the case of an already-issued patent, indefiniteness could render the claims unenforceable.