The 2024 Guidance Update on patent subject matter eligibility applicable to AI inventions, which will be incorporated into the MPEP “in due course,” is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on July 17, 2024. ...more
In a stunning Federal Register Notice published May 10, 2024, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proposes to impose a new requirement on terminal disclaimers filed to overcome obviousness-type double patenting...more
As discussed in our prior piece on Patent Law, the United States patent system is built on a “carefully crafted bargain” between inventors and the public. Issuance of a patent allows the owner of that patent to prevent others...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published the latest revision to its Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) on June 30, 2020. According to the Executive Summary, in this revision, nearly all of the...more
Under the U.S. Patent Act, one can patent “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” Common exceptions to what can be patented include laws of...more
Decisions by the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit over the past decade have wrestled with the question that 35 U.S.C. §101 was intended to answer: What is eligible for patent protection? The text of §101 says a patent...more
Once you have an idea for a new invention you may ask yourself whether your invention is patentable and whether you can commercialize your invention. While there is no surefire way to know if your invention is patentable...more
The decision in HVLP02 LLC v. Oxygen Frog turned on whether or not a YouTube video could qualify as a "printed publication," and therefore constitute prior art for patent purposes. As courts tend to assign the term "printed...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a memorandum to its patent examining corps that changes the way examiners should evaluate the question of whether a claim element is “well-understood, routine,...more
It is time to take a deeper look and derive or strengthen some strategies to argue for patentable subject matter eligibility during patent prosecution, now that the first round articles on the USPTO Memorandum April 19, 2018,...more
On April 18, 2018, the Director of the USPTO Andrei Iancu informed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that he aims to propose changes to America Invents Act reviews by this summer 2018. The Director told the Committee that...more
Bitcoin is often portrayed as an untraceable method of payment that facilitates illicit activities by enabling criminals to make and receive payments without being tracked. This depiction implies that users transacting in...more
Since 1999, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“Patent Office”) has permitted the claiming of antibodies by disclosing the targeted antigen. In 2002, the Federal Circuit adopted Patent Office guidelines and...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published a new revision to the Ninth Edition of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) (Revision 08.2017). This revision added a number of chapters...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) quietly increased the examiners’ arsenal by slipping a new rejection into the latest revision of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (“MPEP”) released last month. One of the...more
Struggling to keep case law relating to subject matter eligibility organized? In February 2018, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released an improved Eligibility Quick Reference Sheet, providing patent...more
On January 30, 2018, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) quietly published a new revision (Revision 08.2017) to the Ninth Edition of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP). The revision includes...more
The Federal Circuit sitting en banc recently held in Tam that Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, which prohibits the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from registering trademarks that “may disparage” persons, institutions, or...more
A recent U.S. District Court decision has clarified a potential danger when filing terminal disclaimers that contain overly-broad language. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Hagenbuch v. Sonrai...more
USPTO and INPI Establish PPH Pilot Program - On November 23, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Brazil's National Institute for Industrial Property (INPI) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a...more
In re Packard - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision upholding an examiner’s indefiniteness rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b), invoking the...more
In a 2-1 decision issued earlier today, the Federal Circuit affirmed a determination by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences upholding the rejection of the claims of U.S. Application No. 10/650,509 for...more