Posts Tagged: "technology"

The single best tool available to increase patent value and decrease patent costs is not directed to application drafting or patent prosecution or law firm selection. Instead, it occurs much earlier in the process. The best tool is meeting with inventors. When I was outside counsel and I received a new application to draft, the very first thing I did was set up a meeting with the inventors. As in-house counsel, when I receive a new invention submission, I do the same. It does not matter if the invention is simple, non-enabling, or incomplete. It does not matter if the inventor is familiar, experienced, or knowledgeable. It does not matter if we meet in person, by phone, or by video. For every invention, we meet.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has extended the deadline for comments on its joint request for comments (RFC) with the International Trade Administration (ITA) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) on the agencies’ collaboration initiative concerning standards and intellectual property. In a Federal Register Notice (FRN) published today, the USPTO announced the new deadline will be November 6, 2023. The original deadline was September 29.

Privacy and data security issues can scuttle a deal or at least cost the parties a lot of money. For example, in the due diligence process involving the 2017 acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon, Yahoo disclosed two serious data breaches that compromised over a billion accounts. Yahoo had previously attempted to cover this up. The deal went ahead for nearly $4.5 billion but not before Verizon knocked $350 million off the transaction price and Yahoo paid over $100 million to settle SEC fraud charges and class action lawsuits.

Brazil is among the countries currently in the spotlight in the automotive sector. The nation was ranked sixth, according to a survey published in January 2023 by Motor1, among the countries with the highest number of vehicles sold in 2022, and the market for electric vehicles (EVs) is emerging, as the number of EVs sold in Brazil increased by 58% in the first semester of 2023 compared to the same period last year..

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today denied a petition for writ of mandamus filed by Realtek Semiconductor Corporation seeking to direct the International Trade Commission (ITC) to vacate its ruling granting Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD)’s motion to strike Realtek’s witness from testifying at an upcoming evidentiary hearing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that creates software or models that mimic human reasoning or inference. Machine learning is a subset of AI which uses algorithms trained on massive amounts of data to allow the computer to learn with gradually improving accuracy without explicitly being programmed. The biopharmaceutical and healthcare fields produce massive amounts of data, including properties and characteristics of drug compounds, biological, genomic, and clinical data, efficacy of treatments, adverse events and risks, and electronic health records. The data may come from many sources, both public and proprietary. AI systems trained on such data can streamline and optimize the drug development process, including drug discovery, diagnosing diseases, identifying treatments and risks, designing clinical trials, and predicting safety and efficacy profiles, leading to increasing efficiency and reducing costs. 

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.

A recent decision out of the Eastern District of Texas granted the plaintiff patent owner summary judgment with respect to the defendants’ counterclaim that the plaintiff breached licensing related obligations owed to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) by not communicating with the defendants prior to suing for infringement…. While the result is reasonable, the explanations provided by the court raise several questions.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms are already reshaping work life for many professionals, including those in the legal industry. On Day 3 of IPWatchdog LIVE 2023, a panel discussion titled “Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Law and Innovation” explored ways that in-house legal teams can advance their company’s use of generative AI to improve productivity while balancing the need to protect confidential data and intellectual property.

Breakthrough discoveries often receive the spotlight and intellectual property (IP) protection. Unfortunately, lesser, yet nonetheless valuable, contributions often go unrecognized and unprotected. Determining when to contact your institution’s Technology Transfer Office in order for them to assess research projects for IP protection is vital. Reaching out to Tech Transfer early and often will help researchers protect their accomplishments and receive the recognition they deserve.

The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal (FCA), in Attorney General of Canada v. Benjamin Moore & Co. [2023 FCA 168], a 3-0 decision, recently set aside the test on subject matter eligibility of computer-implemented inventions laid down by the Federal Court [2022 FC 923] last year. Acclaimed by patent professionals as a “favorable decision for Canadian applicants who have computer-implemented inventions,” the test had, for the first time, presented a declaratory relief and guidance for examining subject-matter eligibility, particularly for computer-implemented inventions. While the setting aside of the test relays subject matter assessments back to the procedure set by the Commissioner of Patents (Canada), the FCA clarified some key areas associated with the claim construction and patentability analysis.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a number of Tony, Grammy and Peabody award winners are the latest to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement based on the way it trains its popular chatbot, ChatGPT. In July, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey brought a similar suit against OpenAI.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, 143 S. Ct. 1243, 1248 (2023), found that antibody claims defined by their binding and blocking function lacked enablement…. The Supreme Court’s decision relied highly on the unpredictability of the art—scientists cannot always predict how substitutions of even single amino acids will affect the binding and/or blocking function of an antibody. The disclosed methods of identifying species within the scope of the claim were little more than “trial and error.”… The consensus seems to be that Amgen generally forecloses broad genus claims in the biotechnology field. The remaining questions are: Are patent applicants limited to claiming species (e., sequence listings)? What steps may a patent applicant take to obtain broader coverage?

For corporate intellectual property practitioners, the quest to excel can be daunting and all-consuming. Indeed, IP teams and their clients face a multitude of complex internal and external challenges amidst an ever-evolving business, legal, and technology landscape. Cognizant of the considerable trust and influence bestowed upon them by the C-suite, IP teams naturally desire to perform at the highest possible level. As chief IP counsel at a global company, I constantly put myself and my team under the proverbial microscope. I reflect upon our people, strategy, and operations; assess our individual and collective performance; and seek new ways to maximize the value we deliver to our company and internal clients. In some instances, such new ways entail minor course corrections. In other instances, they encompass the pursuit of novel pathways that upend the status quo.

The Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU) has released a report that gauges the level of intellectual property (IP) engagement at the largest U.S. university entrepreneurship and innovation (E&I) programs. The nonprofit organization found that E&I programs at U.S. universities are increasingly incorporating IP into students’ business education. The report’s goal was in part to evaluate whether the observed increase in entrepreneurship in the United States is improving engagement with or is a result of intellectual property. CIPU wrote, “understanding the level of IP engagement among students enrolled at these schools provides insight into ways to increase support for the nation’s would be entrepreneurs.”