Third Party Observation in Patent Prosecution in China
Ways to Amend the Claims in the Patent Invalidation Proceedings
Cases Updated in CNIPA Guidelines - Eligibility & Inventiveness for AI & Business Method Applications
Five Impactful USPTO Procedural Developments for Patent Practitioners
Podcast: Patentable Subject Matter in 2019
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office handles hundreds of thousands of patent applications per year, as well as various types of administrative patent proceedings. While the USPTO has made incremental improvements in its...more
The Federal Circuit has vacated and remanded a district court’s ruling of noninfringement because of erroneous claim construction that would leave the dependent claims of a patent with no scope. In Littelfuse, Inc. v....more
According to China’s local practice, there are three steps to follow when determining whether a claimed invention is obvious when compared to the prior art: determining the closest prior art; distinguishing the...more
避而不谈可能支持否定性权利要求限定 - 在 Novartis Pharmaceuticals 诉 Accord Healthcare Inc. 一案（上诉案件编号：21- 1070）中，联邦巡回上诉法院认为，一项对药物“速效剂量”避而不谈的专利申请，为要求不存在此类剂量的否定 性权利要求限制提供了书面说明支持。 ...more
記述がないことがクレームの否定的限定のサポートと解釈できる場合がある Federal Circuit は、Novartis Pharmaceuticals v. Accord Healthcare Inc. (Appeal No. 21-1070) に おいて、薬剤の「初回負荷用量」についての記述がない特許出願は、そのような用量がないことを要 求するクレームの否定的限定に記述によるサポートを提供していることになると判示した。 ...more
January 2022 Federal Circuit Newsletter (Japanese) January 2022 Federal Circuit Newsletter (Chinese) Silence May Support Negative Claim Limitation In Novartis Pharmaceuticals v. Accord Healthcare Inc. Appeal No. 21-1070, the...more
Google applied for a patent on video-on-demand systems. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed the examiner’s rejection of the claims as obvious, stating that Google’s responses to the examiner’s rejections were...more
In In re: Google Technology Holdings LLC, the Federal Circuit held that Google forfeited its claim construction arguments made on appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board). The court explained that whether these...more
The availability of post-grant proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has changed the face of patent litigation. This monthly digest is designed to keep you up-to-date by highlighting interesting PTAB,...more
On March 24, the USPTO issued two precedential decisions and one informative decision that clarify the circumstances under which the PTAB will utilize its discretion to deny IPR institution under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d). This...more
Claim construction for a design patent is mainly focused on the drawings, which show the ornamental design that is protected by the patent. But the Federal Circuit recently identified one situation where the drawings weren’t...more
During patent prosecution, Examiners often liberally apply the broadest reasonable interpretation standard in rejecting claims. When responding to these rejections, it is important to remember that there are limits to an...more
When exercising its broad discretion on whether to institute review, the PTAB is not limited to consideration of factors associated with the type of denial it ultimately issues. In a recent decision that the PTAB designated...more
Under the U.S. Patent Act, one can patent “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” Common exceptions to what can be patented include laws of...more
Decisions by the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit over the past decade have wrestled with the question that 35 U.S.C. §101 was intended to answer: What is eligible for patent protection? The text of §101 says a patent...more
On January 7, 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released revised subject matter eligibility examination guidance (“Guidance”), foreshadowed by USPTO Director Iancu last fall. The Guidance is...more
China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) recently circulated its Draft “Provisions on Several Issues concerning the Adjudication of Administrative Cases on Granting and Affirming Patent Rights (I)”...more
The phrase “at least one of” is used in claims to indicate selection from a group of elements that follows the phrase. When used, practitioners may grapple with whether “at least one of A and B” or “at least one of A or B” is...more
Low-cost patent applications may cost quality. It’s no secret that many more clients than in the past are demanding that their outside patent counsel prepare patent applications at a lower cost—often far lower—than their...more
The recent Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. case brought to light a little-known quirk in how national stage patent applications affect the length of one’s patent term. That case involved a drug company losing five days of...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently issued a memorandum to its patent examining corps that changes the way examiners should evaluate the question of whether a claim element is “well-understood, routine,...more
It is time to take a deeper look and derive or strengthen some strategies to argue for patentable subject matter eligibility during patent prosecution, now that the first round articles on the USPTO Memorandum April 19, 2018,...more
On March 21, 2018 the PTAB issued a press release announcing that two decisions denying review under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d) are designated as informative: Kayak Software Corp.v. International Business Machines Corp.,...more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Ottah v. Fiat Chrysler, Appeal No. 2017-1842 (March 7, 2018) - In Ottah v. Fiat Chrysler, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement as to...more
A recent written decision by the PTAB in connection with an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding is a reminder to patent prosecutors to carefully consider the possible construction of claim terms in a continuation or...more