Following nearly twenty-five years of negotiations, members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently adopted a treaty implementing the new requirement for international patent applicants to disclose in...more
It has been four years since amendments to the Patent Act and Patent Rules were made, bringing the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) into force in Canada. The most consequential changes have proven to be the handling of missed...more
The Background: There has been a growing trend to invalidate European patents by challenging their formal priority and using intervening prior art. The Technical Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office ("EPO") referred...more
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
The enactment of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 includes the Unleashing American Innovators Act of 2022 (UAIA), directed toward increasing innovation of small businesses and inventors in America. Congress is using...more
In Konda v. Flex Logix Technologies, Inc., the Federal Circuit held that a provisional application incorporated by reference in a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application was prior art against the later filed claims of the...more
Speeding up patent prosecution and quickly obtaining an issued patent is generally a good thing. The earlier a patent is issued, the earlier it can protect a product and be enforced against third party infringers. And...more
The International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Working Group held its 14th session from June 14 to 17, 2021. Patent attorney Mary Drabnis (Baton Rouge)...more
Many people applying for a patent in the United States only consider filing in other countries as an afterthought. You should consider whether you want to file in foreign countries before filing a nonprovisional application...more
It is not often that one's vote counts, especially in geopolitics. So it struck me, in researching for another article, that filing a patent application in Ukraine could make a difference. Per the latest World...more
Just about anywhere in the world is where one may claim a patent with an international PCT patent application. There are, after all, 154 countries bound by the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). But almost no one, except...more
The Leahy-Smith “America Invents Act” (hereinafter, “AIA”) was signed into law ten years ago, on September 16, 2011. We have learned extensively from the enactment and this article is part of a series of lessons learned. ...more
Kilpatrick Townsend partner Karam J. Saab, in cooperation with GreyB, offers his key takeaways for “Taking Advantage of Bypass Continuations based on Recent USPTO Practice Trends for US National Phase Entry.” ...more
Patent prosecution—everything that takes places after a patent application is filed until it issues—can be a complex and lengthy process. A majority of time and attention is usually spent on getting a patent application...more
Carbon capture technologies generally pertain to the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) by certain materials or systems. Such materials or systems can then process the captured CO2 in various manners, such as through storage at...more
For the life science industry, patents are more than just tools for restricting the commercial activities of direct competitors. Patents are being used more and more to generate substantial additional returns on research and...more
Shutdown orders due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic have created economic disruption, causing companies to scale back on intellectual property (IP) expense. This creates an opportunity to move ahead of the competition. This is...more
On Wednesday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom declared that the COVID-19 outbreak "can be characterized as a pandemic," cautioning that the WHO has "rung the alarm bell loud and clear." At the time...more
While women are awarded 53% of PhDs, they accounted for only 12% of named inventors on U.S. patents granted in 2016. Fewer than 30% of Patent Cooperation Treaty applications name a woman inventor....more
On October 30, 2019, the final stage of the new Canadian Patent Law will come into force. There will be many changes to Canadian Patent Law and practice. ...more
As discussed in detail in our recent article, new Canadian Patent Rules, implementing requirements of the Patent Law Treaty, will come into force on October 30, 2019. Two requirements under the new Rules warrant particular...more
Recently, the government of Canada published the final version of the new Patent Rules (SOR/2019-251) in Canada Gazette, Part II on July 10, 2019. The new Rules and associated amendments to the Patent Act will come into force...more
In a Patent Alert e-mail distributed last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that beginning July 1, 2019, the Office would once again be accepting new International applications to the IP5 Patent Cooperation...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
This article is first in a two-part series focusing on various issues related to priority claims in U.S. patent applications. Part 1 is a general overview of how to make a proper priority claim, without addressing how to...more