Posts Tagged: "Gene Quinn"

Times are changing at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)! Not only are there rumors that the Senate IP Subcommittee may be a matter of several weeks away from marking up the PREVAIL Act and voting it out of committee, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has finally issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) relating to several changes to the Code of Federal Regulations as they pertain to patent challenges at the PTAB.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today that it will be publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) tomorrow aimed at formalizing the rules governing Director Review of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions under the America Invents Act (AIA). In July 2021, the USPTO announced that it would be implementing an interim rule at the agency in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s late June 2021 decision in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew. In the Arthrex ruling, the Court found that the constitutional Appointments Clause violation created by the process for appointing administrative patent judges (APJs) to the PTAB was best cured by review of APJ decisions by the USPTO Director. The interim rule began the process of determining how that review process would play out during the day-to-day operations of the PTAB.

Attorneys who believe they are too busy to spend time marketing themselves are always going to be career limited, and if they are given too much authority within the firm structure, they will ultimately destroy the firm. Attorneys who do not market themselves have a job because rainmakers bring in the work for them to do. But work dries up for a variety of reasons, sometimes because the rainmaker moves on to another firm that better appreciates their contribution, because of an economic downturn, or because another lawyer or firm has stolen away your clients. Whatever the reason, when work dries up, the lawyers who are the workers of the firm have little to do, become dead weight and are the first to be sent packing—at least that is what happens if the firm wants to succeed.

You have probably heard the old saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Obviously, this saying is intended to convey the message that if you are a generalist who claims to be able to do everything that means you do so much that you can’t possibly have mastered any one thing. Because, after all, if you were a master of one thing that would be the one thing you would do—and that one thing would be enough because everyone who needed that one thing would recognize you as one of the few go-to people in the industry capable of handling that one thing.

If you are on LinkedIn, you undoubtedly get messages, perhaps daily, from some service provider that you don’t know who promises to be able to help you with some pain point. Unfortunately for those marketers who do not take the time to do even basic research, these inquiries often come off as rather pathetic and do little more than demonstrate that you certainly don’t want to work with them, ever. Seriously, if they can’t even read your LinkedIn profile to see what type of work you do, are you really going to trust them with something that matters?

The key to rainmaking for lawyers is understanding that those who have decisional authority to hire an attorney are hiring you. Perhaps, once upon a time, those who hired lawyers were more interested in the name of the firm, but the days of an attorney staying with a firm long term are over. Attorneys move, firms merge or sometimes collapse. What this means is that, as long as the firm you are with is large enough to do the work you seek, your name and reputation far and away supersede the name on the letterhead.

For better or worse, anyone can be sued for any reason—even reasons that are completely fictitious and based on allegations that are entirely false. Several cases have recently caused me to ask a simple question: Can something actually be evidence if it is false? I’ve had a few people respond, some thoughtful and others intentionally dense. “Of course, something that is false is evidence,” one person recently told me. “It is up to the trier of fact to determine what is false, and that which is false is clearly evidence to be considered.”

Here we go again! We’ve heard the story in the past, which is sadly all too common. A patent owner prevails in federal district court, and also prevails at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an inter partes review (IPR) challenge, but somehow finds themselves still fighting an ex parte reexamination. How is this possible? Perhaps something will be done—this time—because the abusive, harassing challenger is Chinese company TikTok, who is seeking to invalidate the very same claims it failed to invalidate in an IPR that was denied institution on the merits.

An interesting tale of intrigue and woe is being written in the decade-long relationship between Google and Sonos. The most recent chapter ended with the district court finding the Sonos patents at issue in their patent litigation against Google were unenforceable due to laches because Sonos had the audacity to file a continuation and seek claims supported by—and actually incorporated from—an earlier filing. According to the district court, because Sonos could have filed those claims in the continuation earlier, that created a laches defense for Google.

Many executives and attorneys do not understand trade secrets. Even C-suite executives at many tech companies often mistakenly believe they do not have any trade secrets worth protecting. If you have patents, you also have trade secrets worth protecting. And despite popular misconception, patents and trade secrets can, do, and absolutely should co-exist. On Thursday, November 16, 2023, at 1…

Microchips control the behavior of all modern devices and are frequently the centerpiece of high-tech patent infringement litigation. However, these cases are complex, expensive, and prone to errors that can compromise the outcome of your case if not done right.  To dominate high-tech patent litigations, a well-conceived approach to optimizing your budget for compiling high-impact evidence can be the difference…

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, intellectual property (IP) teams face unprecedented challenges. The need to protect and monetize patents, trademarks, and copyrights has never been more critical, yet budgets are decreasing. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to unlock business value with intelligent insights will be – and already is – a game-changer for those willing to thoughtfully leverage the tool…

The system behind global standards, such as 5G, is one of the great commercial success stories of the modern industrial age. The process of collaboration, which brings together innovators from around the world, advances technologies and helps deliver ever-more sophisticated devices to consumers. Standardized technologies should be supported by balanced IP rights, but they unfortunately face an increasingly uncertain policy…

Yesterday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held a “public listening session” to hear from industry leaders on the topic of standard essential patents. The event was specifically related to the USPTO’s effort to obtain stakeholder input on questions regarding proposed international standards that were presented in a recent Federal Register Notice, as well as strategies identified in the White House’s National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies.