Posts Tagged: "patent office"

Every once in a while you stumble across a situation where what is fair seems obvious. At those moments we are all too frequently reminded that we do not have a fairness system, but rather we have a justice system. Which is one way to say that I think the Federal Circuit made a terribly poor decision; one that flies in the face of common sense, and frankly common decency. If the legal system cannot fix a mistake like this before the mistake has even been made public then the system is broken

Since the Alice Corp. decision, rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101 have become substantially more common in business-method art units, and notices of allowance have become substantially more rare in these art units. Meanwhile, 101 rejections made even pre-Alice were amongst the poorest quality for business-method art units as compared to those from other computer-oriented art units. Thus, it appears as though the patent prospects for applications assigned to business-method art units are grim. Given that the United States has traditionally been a leader in software and that software applications are frequently assigned to business-method art units, it seems unfortunate that the patent office is so unwilling to grant protection to innovation in this area.

The issue of patent reform and patent trolls would go on to dominate the confirmation hearing. At one point during his questioning of Lee, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) explained that patent reform has been a real eye opener for him. While working on the America Invents Act (AIA) he explained that he in good faith tried to take the considerations of his constituents into consideration, offering amendments to address their concerns. Then after he voted for the bill he was inundated with calls and e-mails about why he voted for that “bad bill.” Durbin explained that he has since become determined to be far more proactive because this is such an important issue. He has been holding meetings and talking to constituents and everyone is telling him that it is premature to engage in additional patent reform and the Congress should slow down.

This will be the first time that Lee has had a confirmation hearing. The timing suggests that the Obama Administration and Senator Reid think that they can get Lee confirmed prior to the end of this Congressional session, which may well be the case. Assuming that this hearing will be more than just a show, there are a number of difficult questions that should be asked of Lee… Why is the Patent Office secretly subjecting applications to extraordinary scrutiny? Do you support fee-shifting legislation to combat the perceived problem of “patent trolls”? Does Congress need to step in and amend 35 U.S.C 101 to provide a more clear definition of what is patent eligible?

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will be conducting a roundtable on December 2, 2014 to solicit public opinions concerning the USPTO’s use of crowdsourcing to identify relevant prior art. The roundtable will be held in the Moot Court Room, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003. It will begin at 1 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) and end at 5 pm EST. The meeting will also be accessible via webcast.

Immediately prior to becoming Director of the un-opened Silicon Valley Patent Office, from 2003 to 2012, Lee was the Deputy General Counsel and Head of Patents and Patent Strategy at Google Inc. Google has been a outspoken critic of the U.S. patent system and based on their public positions and lobbying it is clear that the company would like to see software patents abolished and the patent system significantly curtailed. Recently other large Silicon Valley companies have split with Google and have started to work to promote the importance of patents as a tool for American innovation.

The new service will allow the USPTO and the SIPO, with appropriate permissions, to obtain electronic copies of priority documents filed with the other office from its electronic records management system at no cost to the applicant. With this new service, applicants will no longer need to obtain and file paper copies of the priority documents; however, they are still responsible for ensuring that priority documents are provided in a timely manner.

The latest cooperation between KIPO and the USPTO also achieves the goal of KIPO classifying its patent collection in of the Cooperative Patent Classification system ahead of schedule. Starting January 1, 2015, KIPO will begin classifying its entire new patent collection using CPC.

Mariano Rivera knows something about perfection. The New York Yankees now-retired pitcher is regarded by many experts as the greatest closer in the history of major league baseball. For those who are not aficionados of America’s Pastime, the closer comes in after the game has largely been played, and his sole job is to get the last several opposing batters…

At the end of July, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) hosted a press conference to discuss ongoing progress with patent trials which have been or are being conducted under the terms of the America Invents Act (AIA). Scott Boalick, Acting Vice Chief Judge of the PTAB and head of the PTAB’s Trial Section, answered questions from the audience on various aspects of the AIA trials, as well as offer questions for public comments being sought by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in its attempts to determine how and if the AIA patent proceedings can be improved.

Patent owners must modify their strategies during prosecution to make their patents and portfolios less susceptible to post grant challenges. This strategy must take into account the cost of filing a petition by a challenger. Patent owners must obtain enough claims and enough patents to make it extremely expensive for a challenger to go down the path toward an administrative patent trial where the deck is stacked against the patentee. This will require patent owners to obtain patent claims with numerous dependent claims that cover as many variations as possible, but also to ensure that the dependent claims build on one another little by little so as to create a claim set that refers back to as many previous claims as possible. Such a claim mosaic will raise the filing fee that must be paid to institute a post grant challenge.

Although the current administration talks the talk of promoting invention and innovation, they are influenced by special interests that have negative views regarding patents and the patent process, particularly in view of the “patent troll problem.” Unfortunately, it appears that the reason for the long delay in selecting a USPTO head lies almost exclusively with the administration’s and Congress’ views on the patent troll issue, i.e., the head person must be willing to make whatever changes to the patent system to curtail patent trolling, apparently regardless the effect on the patent system as a whole.

The USPTO announced the launch of its newly redesigned KIDS! Web pages aimed to encourage students of all ages to learn about the importance of intellectual property (IP) creation and protection. In addition to featuring young inventor profiles, activities, and videos, the pages also offer curricula that link Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education to IP and innovation through downloadable lesson plans, hands-on instructions for building inventions, USPTO career information and other useful resources.