As 2025 begins and intellectual property (IP) strategies are being developed for the new year, it is a good time to reflect on what IP issues were prominent in 2024. According to many readers, hot IP topics included...more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today the finalized fee increases taking effect on January 19, 2025. While applicants can still expect significant increases in certain areas, some proposed fee...more
The duty to disclose required by 37 CFR § 1.56 is a constant weight on patent practitioners and applicants to cite references via an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS). The indiscriminate or reflexive filing of an IDS...more
If the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is going to implement fee changes in January 2025, we should see a Federal Register Notice detailing the proposed fees soon. The USPTO started this round of fee-setting in April...more
Effective July 17, 2023, the USPTO will "require" Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) safe harbor statements to be made on a specific USPTO form and electronically filed under a specific...more
The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) announced on July 12, 2022, that it intends to revise the rules pertaining to patent term adjustment to require that the patent term adjustment statement regarding information disclosure...more
The USPTO Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) rules include a “safe harbor” that avoids a PTA deduction for “Applicant delay” for Information Disclosure Statements that are accompanied by a certain statement averring that the items...more
In 1999, Congress created a system of patent term adjustment (PTA) that adds additional time to patent terms to remedy certain delays caused by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in issuing a patent....more
An essential part of U.S. patent prosecution is the duty of disclosure, which requires the disclosure of all known information that is material to patentability. 37 C.F.R. § 1.56....more
On June 16, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released final rules (the “Rules”) implementing changes to how Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is calculated in certain circumstances in view of Supernus Pharms.,...more
Patentees may obtain additional PTA if the USPTO’s calculation of “applicant delay” includes a period of time during which the patentee could have taken “no identifiable effort” to avoid. However, the onus is entirely on the...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) erred in calculating a patent term adjustment (PTA) for a patent covering an oral osmotic form of an antihypertensive drug,...more
The Situation: The USPTO took a long time to issue Supernus's patent application. Although Supernus would otherwise have been entitled to significant patent term adjustment, the USPTO ruled that the accumulated term should be...more
The USPTO recently issued two announcements related to Information Disclosure Statements. Interim Procedure for Requesting Recalculation of Patent Term Adjustment With Respect to Information Disclosure Statements Accompanied...more
This article is second in a series focusing on various issues related to Patent Term Adjustment for U.S. patent applications. While Part 1 is a general overview of how to calculate patent term adjustment (“PTA”), this...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has extended its After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0 and Quick Path Information Disclosure Statement programs through September 30, 2016. The programs are part of the USPTO’s...more
In Gilead Sciences, Inc. v. Rea, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upheld the USPTO Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) rule that provides for a PTA deduction when an applicant files a “supplemental reply...more