Posts Tagged: "USPTO"

Consumer 2.0, Inc. d/b/a Rently has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision holding its patent claims ineligible for patent protection under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The claims are directed to “the use of lockboxes able to recognize time-limited codes and coordination of those codes with software to facilitate secure automated entry.” Rently’s petition was filed just as the High Court kicked off its new term by denying certiorari yesterday in Chamberlain v. Techtronic, which also sought review of a Section 101 eligibility decision.

“The world is unaware of the cannibalistic nature of the current IP system and what it means for innovation and jobs,” Dan Brown, an award-winning inventor (40+ patents) and Professor of Design at Northwestern University, told a livestream presentation last week, titled ‘Living with the Impact of Covid-19.’ He added: “We have failed to support the rights of the inventor. Providers of look-alike products, both domestic and foreign, are engaged in theft but not held accountable. It is more efficient to infringe or steal someone’s work than to spend the time and money to develop it yourself. The chances of being caught and punished are much more unlikely today than a decade ago.”

Legal writing has long attracted criticism. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift complained of lawyers’ “peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand.” (p. 317.) More recently, Loyola Law School professor Robert Benson lamented how “[l]egalese is characterized by passive verbs, impersonality, nominalizations, long sentences, idea-stuffed sentences, difficult words, double negatives, illogical order, poor headings, and poor typeface and graphic layout.” Robert W. Benson, “The End of Legalese: The Game is Over,” 13 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 519, 531 (1984). Ouch. Patent disclosures often reveal the same warts. But if “[t]he purpose of the written description requirement is to assure that the public receives sufficient knowledge,” Zoltek Corp. v. United States, 815 F.3d 1302, 1308 (Fed. Cir. 2016), why must we suffer such side effects? Drafters guilty of these crimes must’ve forgotten the public’s right to “receive meaningful disclosure in exchange for being excluded from practicing the invention.” Enzo Biochem, Inc. v. Gen-Probe Inc., 323 F.3d 956, 970 (Fed. Cir. 2002).

Not too long ago, independent inventor Josh Malone finally received a settlement for willful infringement of his patents. He won in court and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and from what I’ve read, I know it was a long, hard fight, and the cost to litigate was in the tens of millions of dollars. But, he did it, and his product Bunch O Balloons continues to be a number-one hit summer toy. Licensing his invention to one of the fastest growing toy companies in the world (ZURU) clearly had its advantages for Malone. But what about the rest of us independent inventors? For the last decade or so, the patent system has not been in favor of the independent inventor. But has it ever been? I don’t think so.

District court filings were low this week with 49, a substantial percentage of which were filed against small or medium-sized companies by IP Edge or Leigh Rothschild-owned subsidiaries.  The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) was steady with 33, one post grant review (PGR), the rest inter partes reviews (IPRs).  The fallout from the Magnetar-backed Irish entity Neodron filing in the International Trade Commission (ITC) continued with the usual trickle of filings against their portfolio; frequent litigant Omnitracs, LLC (through various subsidiaries), a fleet management company, was the target of a handful of challenges, and a handful of parties filed challenges on semiconductor-related disputes.

On September 24, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed-in-part and reversed-in-part the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas’s claim construction and remanded to the district court in Network-1 Technologies, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Company. In particular, the CAFC concluded that the district court erred in construing the claim term “main power source” and held that a party joined to an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding is not estopped from raising new invalidity grounds in district court, since the joinder provision does not allow parties to raise grounds not already instituted. The CAFC ultimately affirmed-in-part, reversed-in-part, vacated and remanded the district court’s judgment for a new trial on infringement.

In the latest episode of a long-running saga between Apple and Voip-Pal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday denied Apple’s request to reverse the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) determination that 15 claims of Voip-Pal’s voice over IP communications patents were not invalid for obviousness. The Court also affirmed the PTAB’s sanctions order, which Apple had appealed because the Board did not enter adverse judgment against Voip-Pal or vacate the final written decisions and assign a new panel. The opinion was authored by Judge Reyna.

The USPTO recently revised Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) Section 706.07(b) to retroactively impose a first action final rejection (FAFR) policy that significantly reduces patent applicants’ options (MPEP, E9R10.2019. Fed. Reg. Vol. 85, No. 133 page 41,571). In Part 1 of this two-part series, we analyzed the final agency decision provided by the USPTO as basis for the FAFR policy change. Here, in Part II, we analyze petition decisions relating to FAFRs made on amended claims filed in continuing applications. We discovered, when determining the propriety of a FAFR, the USPTO has been comparing whether claims are drawn to same invention using two separate legal standards: identical scope or patentably indistinct. The majority of the patent corps apply the 1969 legal standard which limits FAFR to claims of identical scope as previously examined. The results of our analysis indicated the new patentably indistinct standard authorizing FAFR on substantially amended claims originated in one Technology Center (TC), was upheld by the FA Decision (defined below), and then adopted by another TC in 2018. Codifying two alternative FAFR standards in the June 2020 MPEP permits all patent examiners to arbitrarily impose FAFRs on substantively amended claims, if they so wish.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has submitted proposed rulemaking for review by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Although the details are not public, the proposed rule is anticipated to formalize prudential doctrines on trial institution that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) currently applies through precedential opinions such as Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc.; General Plastic Industries Co. Ltd. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha; and Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. B. Braun Melsungen AG. These doctrines provide legal frameworks under which the PTAB may deny institution of an inter partes review (IPR) based on fairness—rather than on merits alone. Because the doctrines reduce the odds that certain categories of IPRs will be instituted, they are subjects of fierce dispute among patent lobbyists and, most recently, a lawsuit filed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in the Northern District of California. Apple Inc. v. Iancu, No. 5:20-cv-06128 (N.D. Cal.). As the two sides fight for their respective interests, the public—and policymakers—should not lose sight of the big picture: these doctrines protect basic tenets of fairness and they are, on balance, good policy. Stakeholders and OMB should therefore support the USPTO in its rulemaking effort.

District court patent filings bounced back this week to 86, while the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw a slight jump to 44, fueled in part by eight under-the-wire covered business methods (CBM) filings just prior to that program’s expiry. WSOU Holdings filed another round against new defendants from their massive Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent portfolio, asserting new one-off patents not previously asserted, bringing their litigation total this year to 131, and bringing new defendants F5 Networks and Xilinx into the fray. It seems there may be no end to new suits in sight.

In his address to the Intellectual Property Owners Virtual Annual Meeting yesterday, USPTO Director Andrei Iancu said that, despite sharp declines in filings and renewals, COVID-19 seems to have spurred innovation in some areas. “Small and micro entity patent filings are at a historic high, with more than 112,000 filed during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2020,” Iancu said. In an August interview with IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn, Iancu discussed one of the COVID-19 relief programs the Office has instituted to support small inventors during the pandemic. A pilot that offers free prioritization of COVID-19 related patent applications has been working well, Iancu told Quinn, and is expressly geared to assisting smaller entities.

The USPTO recently revised the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) Section 706.07(b) to retroactively impose a first action final rejection (FAFR) policy that significantly reduces a patent applicant’s options (MPEP, E9R10.2019. Fed. Reg. Vol. 85, No. 133 page 41,571). Here, in Part I of this two-part series, we identify and analyze the final agency petition decision behind the policy change. In Part II, we provide summary and analysis of petition decisions relating to premature final office actions. Codifying the new FAFR standard in the June MPEP revision opens the door for all patent examiners to impose FAFRs on substantively amended claims, if they so wish.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today that Shira Perlmutter, the Office’s Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs, has been chosen by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden to be the 14th U.S. Register of Copyrights. Maria Strong has been serving as Acting Register since January 2020, after former Register Karyn Temple left the position in December 2019. Temple had been promoted to Register in March 2019 following two and a half years serving as Acting Register. Maria Pallante, the 12th Register of Copyrights, had been fired from the position in 2016.  

Trademark law has seen substantial developments in 2019 and 2020, with four major cases in the United States and Europe rising to the top. The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issued two of those decisions, the most recent being especially significant because the court has not opined on the topic of trademark genericism in nearly 100 years. The other SCOTUS case dealt with the hotly contested topic of awarding profits obtained through innocent (unknowing) trademark infringement.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) earlier this week announced the creation of the National Council for Expanding American Innovation (NCEAI), an initiative ostensibly intended to “build a more diverse and inclusive innovation ecosystem by encouraging participation demographically, geographically, and economically.” Reactions to the Council were mixed, with a number of IPWatchdog sources contacting us to alternately express their confusion, skepticism or support. We put out a call for official reactions to share these varying responses, which raise a number of questions to be monitored as the NCEAI moves forward.