Your patent is finally filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (or the office of your local country). Then you remember your attorney saying something about patents being jurisdictional, whatever that means…....more
Suppose that you have an invention disclosure for a design of an article that you want to protect. When you review the invention disclosure, you notice that the design is ornamental, for example, a pattern, on an article such...more
One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, and its affects still are impacting patent prosecution, especially as it relates to the difficulty of obtaining paper copies of official documents. While the USPTO rarely requires...more
In a Federal Register notice published earlier this month (80 Fed. Reg. 60367), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a change in practice for the correction of errors in foreign priority claims. Under the change in...more
The European Patent Office (EPO) has been a desirable venue for seeking patent protection in Europe. For instance, a patent application granted by the EPO can provide patent protection in many European countries, such as the...more
The transition to the first-inventor-to-file (FITF) system occurs on March 16, 2013. To prepare for implementing the change to the FITF system, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), on February 14, 2013,...more
The USPTO’s final First Inventor To File rules and Examination Guidelines were published in the February 14, 2013 edition of the Federal Register. While many of the final rules are identical to the proposed rules, there are...more