Posts Tagged: "patent"

On July 10, 2023, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), officially introduced S. 2220 in the 118th Congress, called the “Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act,” or the PREVAIL Act. The bill is one of three patent bills that have been scheduled to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee in recent weeks. While the hearing has now been pushed twice, it is on the calendar again for Thursday, September 26.

A new inventors’ rights group was launched Thursday, September 19, with the aim of “helping startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs defend their intellectual property rights and access capital.” The Inventors Defense Alliance includes Professor Kristen Osenga, professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, as its chief policy counselor, and boasts a board featuring the Hon. Paul R. Michel, former Chief Judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC); Russell Slifer, former United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Deputy Director; Alan Heinrich, attorney and adjunct faculty member at the UCLA School of Law; and Earl “Eb” Bright, president and general counsel of ExploraMed Development.

In patent law, claims define the scope of an invention and determine the extent of the patent protection granted. They serve as a crucial tool for patent owners to assert their rights and for competitors to understand the boundaries of those rights. Among various types of claims, inferential claims hold a significant yet often overlooked position.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday told the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware that it “misapprehended its role in adjudicating the issue of patentability” when it sua sponte determined claims of Astellas Pharma’s patent invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to an ineligible natural law. The opinion was authored by Judge Lourie.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday affirmed a district court’s decision to grant a motion to dismiss a patent infringement case against Meta and Instagram due to patent ineligibility. The CAFC also granted Meta’s motion to partially dismiss the appeal for mootness because the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) separately invalidated all of the asserted claims except for one.

You need to have a purpose and a goal. You need to be addressing an identifiable problem with a real, concrete, technical solution. And you need to focus on something that will actually matter to the client… Sure, with smaller portfolios each patent needs to really count, but even if you are acquiring patents by the thousands, for those innovating in the standards space, for example, you need to make sure the patent you will get actually reads on the standard, because as Eli and I discuss, a patent that doesn’t read on the standard is worthless.

In a precedential decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today vacated and remanded a district court decision that invalidated all claims of Vascular Solutions and Teleflex LLC’s (Teleflex) patent infringement suit against Medtronic, Inc. In an opinion authored by Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, sitting by designation, the CAFC said the district court erred when it found the asserted claims were “mutually exclusive” and indefinite and that claiming is not restricted in the way the district court concluded.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced that it will extend the comment period for its “2024 Guidance Update on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility, Including on Artificial Intelligence” by one month. The Notice, published in the Federal Register on July 17, 2024, originally included a deadline for comments of September 16, 2024, which is now extended to October 16, 2024. “The extension ensures that all stakeholders have a sufficient opportunity to submit comments on the guidance update,” said the USPTO announcement.

Last week, Patients for Affordable Drugs (“P4AD”) became the latest amicus to file a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Bristol Myers Squibb Co. v. Becerra et al. The case, which was lodged by the pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (“BMS”) and consolidated with several other pharmaceutical challenges, alleges that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) compels drug manufacturers to provide Medicare with “access” to their leading medicines at steep discounts, effectuating to an unconstitutional taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow in various industries, securing patents for AI technologies is becoming more important. However, protecting inventions utilizing machine learning, neural networks, and other AI techniques can be challenging, and potentially implicates claim construction issues under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), which addresses means-plus-function claim limitations and can impact how AI inventions are interpreted during the patent process and enforcement. It’s helpful for patent practitioners to understand how § 112(f) applies to AI inventions and to develop strategies for navigating these complexities.

Today, the currency of global economies is innovation. Intellectual property (IP) has become the modern cornerstone of corporate value and an increasingly powerful tool for raising capital. Case in point: This year, the value of exported charges for using IP in the United States alone has reached nearly $12 billion. As innovation continues to drive economic growth, effectively leveraging patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets has become crucial for businesses seeking to secure funding and fuel expansion.

Void of pursuing continuations, the language of your patent is frozen in time at issuance. The specifics of the enforceable boundaries of your protection are forever fixed to the claims you chose to pursue with your initial application – but not necessarily with the full breadth of your invention as conceived. For many reasons, practitioners and inventors will often choose to limit how much of an invention is claimed in an initial application. But then the future happens.

On IPWatchdog Unleashed this week, we had a wide ranging conversation on patent strategy, including working with patent examiners—for example, what to do when you are assigned to a difficult patent examiner with a low allowance rate—the importance of interviews, tips for getting past 112 rejections, and how outside counsel can build solid, working relationships with in-house counsel, and much more.

Last week, independent inventor Carrie Hafeman filed an opening brief  for the appellant at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) seeking reversal of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) invalidation of her device location and theft prevention patent claims. The brief includes Hafeman’s most recent challenge to alleged abuses of Sotera stipulations by Big Tech firms working in concert to invalidate Hafeman’s claims. The appellate brief also challenges the PTAB’s claim construction and obviousness analysis in reaching its invalidity determinations.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential opinion reversing a district court’s invalidation of patent claims challenged by GoPro, Inc. as patent ineligible. The CAFC said the district court erred in concluding at Alice step one that the claims were directed to an abstract idea and distinguished the case from its precedent in Yu v. Apple and ChargePoint v. SemaConnect. The opinion was authored by Judge Reyna.