Patents are increasingly being used to protect innovation in the food technology space. Food technology companies should carefully decide whether to use patents or trade secrets to protect their proprietary assets. ...more
Challenges to the validity of the “Patent Cooperation Treaty joint applicant” have been a problem for many applicants at the European Patent Office. On October 10, 2023, the EPO’s highest authority, the Enlarged Board of...more
Earlier this year, and almost one year to the day (January 17, 2019) that the Opposition Division (OD) of the European Patent Office revoked in its entirety European Patent No. EP 2771468, the Technical Board of Appeal...more
Businesses must balance the desire for intellectual property protection throughout the world with budget management goals. There is no “one size fits all” approach for achieving that balance, but there are certain...more
Beginning in 2009, the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office ("EPO") issued a series of decisions that essentially created a new priority law in Europe that allowed members of the same patent family to negate each...more
A valid priority claim can allow a patent application to benefit from the filing date of an earlier patent application so as to exclude certain prior art from consideration. The recent decision of the U.S. Federal Circuit in...more
Patents are Obtained Country by Country - All intellectual property professionals are aware that patents are issued, as a general rule, country by country. However, some inventors are under the misimpression that once...more