Posts Tagged: "inventor"

On August 2, inventor advocacy group US Inventor held a webinar on provisions of the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act that are intended to curb abuses impacting small business patent owners at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). While most panelists on the virtual call acknowledged that the PREVAIL Act wouldn’t solve every problem threatening the U.S. innovation ecosystem’s most vulnerable members, there was widespread agreement that the bill would have beneficial impacts if enacted. The webinar was US Inventor’s second on the PREVAIL Act following a virtual call last week with law professor Adam Mossoff and C4IP General Counsel Jamie Simpson.

With the comment period set to close on June 20, more than 11,000 comments had been filed as of Friday, June 16, in response to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) practices. Only 265 of those had been posted as of Friday, however. The ANPRM was…

Bacon is delightful. And the similarly savory subject of who must be named inventor on a bacon patent was the issue in the recent case of HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corp., No. 2022-1696 (Fed. Cir. May 2, 2023). HIP claimed that one of its employees materially contributed to the invention of Hormel’s patent on methods for precooking bacon. The question of what makes one an “inventor” was central to whether HIP’s employee should be added to the patent. More broadly, questions about inventorship and authorship have become central to recent commentary and speculation about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on intellectual property law. While AI did not factor into HIP v. Hormel, the decision provides a useful reminder about the role of the common law in developing answers to these momentous questions.

Inventor organization US Inventor (USI) and Ron Katznelson—the author of a widely cited study detailing the link between Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges’ decisions and their compensation—have filed separate amicus briefs supporting New Vision Gaming and Development, Inc. in its most recent appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). New Vision is arguing that America Invents Act (AIA) trials violate the Due Process Clause and that the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report documenting how U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and PTAB management control influences Administrative Patent Judges’ (APJ) decision making bolsters its previous arguments and warrants a new appeal. While USI’s brief expands upon this argument, Katznelson’s provides both old and new data that he says proves a “structural bias” exists.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), created by the America Invents Act (AIA) just over 10 years ago, is the most electrifying lightning rod in the industry. As explained repeatedly by Members of Congress at the time the AIA was enacted, the purpose was to create a streamlined, less expensive, alternative administrative means to challenge the invalidity of issued patents. Sadly, with that being the stated purpose, the creation of the PTAB can be objectively characterized as nothing other than an abysmal failure. What has evolved is anything but streamlined, and certainly not inexpensive, even compared with district court litigation.

IPWatchdog has been told that Kathi Vidal, who is President Biden’s nominee for Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), will have her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, December 1. As of the time of publication, the Senate Judiciary Committee, to which the Vidal nomination has been referred, lists a confirmation hearing for the full Committee at 10am on December 1, but provides no additional information. It is believed Vidal will share the hearing with several nominees for federal judicial positions.

Last night, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) released the text of the “Restoring America Invents Act”, which is meant to “support American innovation and reduce litigation,” according to the headline of the senators’ joint statement on the legislation. Many in the patent community, however, are not as optimistic. As reported previously, the bill would essentially end discretionary denial practice under precedential Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) cases such as Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc. and limit denial to petitions where “the same or substantially the same prior art or arguments previously were presented to the Office,” among other changes. Here is what a handful of stakeholders who have had a chance to review the bill had to say so far.

Now that the 10th anniversary of the America Invents Act (AIA) has passed, we can look back not only at the past decade, but also the reactions of various interested parties and how they responded to that anniversary. There were two revolutionary amendments to U.S. patent laws enacted on September 16, 2011; one relating to the U.S. changing from first-to-invent to first-to-file, the other relating to the creation of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and three new procedural mechanisms to invalidate issued patents. While from a philosophical and practical point of view, the change from first-to-invent to first-to-file had the largest impact on patent practice, it has essentially become a footnote in patent history. Yes, the United States had a bizarre system that allowed the second filer in some instances (i.e., the first to invent) to obtain a patent over the first-to-file, but that almost never happened. And now, the United States has a strange, hybrid first-to-file system that still theoretically allows the first-to-invent to prevail in even rarer circumstances, but that change became easily baked into the system, because overwhelmingly, the first-to-invent did file first. The real story of the change to first-to-file is that much more is now prior art, including foreign filed applications as of their foreign filing date, typically, which continues the theme of the last 15+ years of making it harder to obtain and keep patent rights in the United States.

During IPWatchdog LIVE 2021 in Dallas, Texas, I asked a handful of willing attendees for their thoughts on the impact of the America Invents Act (AIA) in anticipation of today, the ten-year anniversary of the day President Barack Obama signed the AIA into law. I began writing for Managing IP magazine in 2007 and remember well the lead-up to the law. The discussion centered mostly on the change from a first-inventor-to-invent to a first-inventor-to-file system, which was seen as a way to harmonize the United States with the rest of the world, but which many feared would be detrimental to U.S. innovation. Some of the most controversial provisions were ultimately dropped in order to get the law through Congress, and overall, the IP world was celebrating on September 16, 2011, that at least some action had been taken on reforming, and ostensibly strengthening, the U.S. patent laws.

Would you believe the following scenario could happen under our patent system? An inventor of a fundamental technology receives a patent less than three months after filing; despite the public disclosure of the patent, industry contemporaries fail to appreciate the invention’s significance for nearly two years; once appreciated, widespread adoption and infringement of the patent ensues. Commanding 50% market share in unit sales of the patented product, the patent holder prevails in patent infringement suits obtaining court injunctions against all major rivals and maintaining a strict no-licensing policy. What happens next during the patent enforcement period would defy all conventional anti-patent narratives:

A patent owner has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee against former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Michelle Lee, and a number of other former USPTO officials, for allegedly depriving the plaintiffs “of their valuable property rights in quasi-judicial administrative proceedings before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (‘PTAB’).” The complaint further claims that PTAB proceedings have been “tainted by various improprieties and underhanded tactics, designed to stack the deck against [plaintiffs] and in favor of their far more powerful opponents. In short, the system had been rigged all along, due to the unconstitutional actions of the Defendants named herein.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, touching nearly every aspect of our daily lives, including how we work, communicate, shop, travel and more. The term “AI” is generally understood to encompass computerized systems that perform tasks ordinarily perceived as requiring some form of human intelligence. Many AI-based systems are able to recognize trends, patterns and connections, test hypotheses using available data sets, and continuously improve decision trees based on user input. As such, AI has been shown to have near endless applications, driving a surge of inventions and related patent application filings.

The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew, taking a different approach to curing the statute than did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in 2019, and ultimately vacating and remanding the case back to the Acting Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). While the CAFC held that the statute could be severed and rendered constitutional by making Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) removeable at will, the Supreme Court said that remedy was not sufficient. The Court said: “[R]egardless whether the Government is correct that at-will removal by the Secretary would cure the constitutional problem, review by the Director better reflects the structure of supervision within the PTO and the nature of APJs’ duties.”

In his keynote video address to PTAB Masters participants today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) championed the record of former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu, and said that Iancu’s successful attempts to address many of the complaints with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) during his tenure should be codified into U.S. law. Changes such as harmonizing the PTAB claim construction standard with that of the district courts and making significant changes to the PTAB’s Standard Operating Procedures that have helped to create uniformity and instill transparency, all helped to provide more certainty for inventors, Tillis said.