Podcast: The Briefing by the IP Law Blog - An Idea Doesn’t Have to be Novel to be Stolen (In California)
The Briefing by the IP Law Blog: An Idea Doesn't Have to be Novel to be Stolen (In California)
A patent does not give the owner the right to do anything. Rather, it gives the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, and/or importing the claimed invention, which most...more
In patent examination, the examiner will cite a prior art document in order to determine whether or not an invention or utility model is novel and inventive. The applicants challenge the implementability of the cited prior...more
If you’ve ever applied for a utility patent before, you’re probably familiar with the three primary considerations that dictate whether you can obtain a patent or not: usefulness, novelty, and non-obviousness. With only three...more
Clinical drug candidates are often claimed in a patent as a pharmaceutical composition or formulation with a specified concentration range of the drug or an excipient; as being purified within certain temperature or pH...more
Update: Wyeth’s appeal was discontinued. On April 30, 2021, the Federal Court issued its decision relating to the validity of three patents relating to Pfizer’s PREVNAR 13, a 13-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide protein...more
Congratulations! Your team has made a critical discovery based on its analysis of your company’s clinical data. You want to file a patent application so that your company can secure patent rights for that discovery. Simple,...more
Patent eligibility is a bit of a mess these days. Ever since the Supreme Court handed down the Alice v. CLS Bank decision six years ago, the distinction between what might be subject matter that can be patented and what is...more
In the past several years, the food and beverage space has seen an explosion of innovation—alternative meat products, plant-based dairy and protein alternatives, CBD- and collagen-infused everything, and functional foods and...more
The legal meaning of the transition language “consisting essentially of” is well-established in Federal Circuit case law and is generally construed to mean that the composition or formulation (a) necessarily includes the...more
Mere Potential for Future Appeal Does Not Prevent Triggering Estoppel of Inter Partes Reexamination When Party Fails to Seek Relief in the First Instance - In Virnetx Inc. v. Apple Inc., Appeal Nos. 2017-1591, -1592,...more
On April 17, 2019, Senators Tillis (R-NC) and Coons (D-DE), along with a bipartisan group of three members of the House of Representatives, announced the release of a framework on Section 101 patent reform. Senators Tillis...more
General introduction - In the European Union (EU) plant variety protection – sometimes referred to as Plant Breeder’s Rights or PBRs - is provided by the Community Plant Variety Office (“CPVO”). The CPVO is “a...more
Medical devices are increasingly incorporating software and other computer elements, but software and computer patents are in the middle of a multi-year battle between different worldviews. This battle is destined to trap...more
On May 3, 2018, Nike filed a lawsuit against Puma in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts accusing Puma of infringing seven of its utility patents related to footwear. In an earlier post on this blog, we...more
Over the past few years, a dramatic number of blockchain-related patent applications have been filed at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). Blockchain innovations may be categorized as software-use cases and thus may...more
Inter partes reviews (IPR) are limited by statute to grounds of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 (novelty requirement) and 103 (nonobviousness requirement) and on the basis of prior art patents or printed publications....more
On March 7, 2018, the Federal Court upheld the validity of Kennedy’s patent for a use of infliximab (Janssen’s REMICADE) (Patent No. 2,261,630 [the “630 patent”]), and granted Kennedy’s counterclaim that Hospira’s biosimilar...more
The Situation: A recent decision by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office confirmed that a 2011 ruling dealing with disclosed disclaimers does not overrule its 2004 decision applying to undisclosed...more
Part of the enjoyment of Halloween and Christmas is seeing the clever decorations and novelties people come up with for these two celebrations. But did you know, some of these are patented inventions? With (belated) Season’s...more
In the recent Two-Way Media v. Comcast decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s holding that evidence of non-obviousness was irrelevant to patent eligibility under the Supreme Court’s two-step Alice...more
Addressing indefiniteness under Nautilus, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s finding that the claim term “effective for catalyzing” was indefinite even though the claim did not specify...more
At a recent Knobbe Martens and Bugnion SpA Seminar, Vlad Teplitskiy presented on patentable subject matter in the U.S. ...more
Like Johnny Cash’s famous tune “A Boy Named Sue,” “secondary considerations” of non-obviousness suffer for their name. Courts have historically relegated this 4th Graham factor to a “secondary” status, considering objective...more
One of the benefits of a patent under the U.S. system is, for a limited time, the patent owner gets the exclusive right to manufacture, use and sell the invention. The public policy behind this is to create an incentive for...more
Albania - 6 months - Novelty/Inventive Step in Limited Circumstances - Disclosure not to be taken into account in determining patentability if it occurred within six months before the filing date (priority date) when...more