In In re Packard, the Federal Circuit affirmed the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision upholding the rejection of Packard’s claims for indefiniteness. The per curiam decision approaches the issue from the...more
In a Federal Register Notice published March 27, 2014, the USPTO announced a Glossary Pilot Program that will offer expedited examination to new patent applications in certain technology areas that include a glossary of terms...more
According to an article on Law360, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is challenging the validity of two Genetic Technologies Ltd. patents on the basis that the claimed intron sequence analysis methods recite natural phenomena that do...more
Although SmartGene, Inc. v. Advanced Biological Laboratories, SA is a non-precedential Federal Circuit decision, it could be interesting for that very reason, if it is a reflection of what the court sees as settled aspects of...more
In Medtronic CoreValve, LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp., the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s finding that the patent at issue was invalid because of a defective priority claim. While practitioners may cringe...more
A year after its “Roundtable on Proposed Requirements for Recordation of Real Party-in-Interest Information Throughout Application Pendency and Patent Term,” and six months after the White House Task Force on High-Tech Patent...more
Since the Patent Law Treaty Implementation Act took effect on December 18, 2013, applicants may have noticed that they are being given a longer period of time to respond to certain Office Actions, such as Restriction...more
Certain USPTO fees are set to decrease on January 1, 2014, including issue fees and the publication fees for utility applications. Also, as of January 1, 2014, certain PCT International Stage fees will have Small Entity and...more
The EPO has announced that it is changing the EPO divisional application deadline rules to eliminate the current 24-month deadline for filing divisional applications, and permit the filing of a divisional application as long...more
As the USPTO fiscal year comes to an end on September 30, I thought this would be a good time to review the USPTO backlog statistics. The currently available data reflects the backlogs as of the start of August 2013, and...more
In Bayer Cropscience AG v. Dow AgroSciences LLC, the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s claim construction that interpreted “2,4-D monooxygenase” in accordance with its established scientific meaning, even though...more
The AIA Technical Corrections Act made several changes to the Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) statute, including one that could mean additional Patent Term Adjustment for U.S. national stage applications....more
In Novozymes A/S v. DuPont Nutrition Biosciences APS, the Federal Circuit determined that the Novozymes amylase patent at issue did not satisfy the written description requirement of 35 USC § 112, because the disclosure did...more
As I wrote previously, Congressman Goodlatte (R-Va.) released “a discussion draft” of patent reform legislation on May 23, 2013....more
While U.S. patent practitioners have been focusing on the changes to U.S. patent law embodied in the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), Congress has taken additional steps to harmonize and streamline patent application...more
In a Federal Register Notice published on May 17, 2013, the USPTO announced After Final Consideration Pilot Program 2.0 (AFCP 2.0) as part of its ongoing efforts to “reduce pendency by reducing the number of Requests for...more
In In re Morsa, the Federal Circuit reversed an anticipation rejection where the applicant had challenged the enabling quality of the cited prior art reference, even though the applicant had not submitted evidence in support...more
Now that we have made it past the March 16, 2013 effective date of the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the America Invents Act, it is time to turn our attention to Australia, and the April 15, 2013 effective date of the...more
Now that the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) have taken effect, stakeholders should understand how to preserve the first-to-invent status of patent applications that were filed before March...more
Obviousness-type double patenting usually arises between commonly-owned patents or patent applications. While the USPTO has interpreted the judicially-created doctrine as pertaining when there is common or overlapping...more
Now that we are less than one month away from implementation of the First-Inventor-To-File provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA), stakeholders are considering whether to file new patent applications now, to secure...more
In a Federal Register Notice published January, 13, 2013, the USPTO asks the public to consider potential best practices aimed at improving patent application quality ”in order to facilitate examination and bring more...more