The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed significant changes to patent fee structures for the 2025 fiscal year. These proposed changes mark a pivotal shift in the Office’s financial approach toward...more
Can a multi-phase development, consented in outline, be changed from that which was originally contemplated? This recent case, R (Dennis) v London Borough of Southwark, was decided on 17 January and involved...more
A perennial challenge in patenting is to both cover your product and block design-arounds. It is understandably frustrating to incur the expense and disclosure requirements of the patent process only to find that a...more
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has announced plans to negotiate a Design Law Treaty (DLT). The goal of the treaty would be to harmonize different national legal systems for protecting industrial...more
In recent years, the UK Government has pushed for Building Information Modelling (BIM): “BIM is a process for creating and managing information on a construction project across the project lifecycle”. BIM creates a data...more
On October 4, in In re: SurgiSil, the Federal Circuit continued its trend of using the language of a design patent to limit the design. Unlike past cases, however, language in SurgiSil was used to limit the effectiveness of a...more
On April 25, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) once again hosted Design Day at its Alexandria, Virginia headquarters. The event was also streamed live to the USPTO Regional Offices and, for the first time,...more
Provisional patent rights allow a patent owner to seek damages for patent infringement for activities occurring between publication of a patent application and issuance of the patent. ...more
November 5, 2018, marks an important step in the evolution of the industrial design regime in Canada. Numerous and substantial amendments to the Industrial Design Act and Rules are now in force. These amendments modernize...more