The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) joined the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH) program on July 6, 2024. Coordinated by the Japan Patent Office (JPO)....more
PPH, literally the Patent Prosecution Highway, is a procedure to facilitate the prosecutions in a national phase. The prosecutions can be accelerated, based on the allowed claims from the office of first filing. Or for short,...more
PPH, literally the Patent Prosecution Highway, is a procedure to facilitate the prosecutions in a national phase. More particularly, if an application has all or part of its claims allowed in one country, more precisely we...more
From the moment a new invention or technology is realized, the race to patent the invention has begun. Anyone can apply for a patent to protect their inventions, discoveries and technologies at the U.S. Patent and Trademark...more
USPTO Leadership - On April 13, Kathi Vidal was sworn in as the new Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Director Vidal offered...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
The Russian government has issued a decree to deny compensation to patentees from “unfriendly states” when their patents are used for Russia’s national security purposes. Additionally, the US Patent and Trademark Office has...more
US and EU Sanctions - IP Engagement Suspended with Russia, Belarus, and Eurasian IP Offices - Four days after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the United States Treasury Department issued Directive 4 under...more
USPTO Launches New Patent Search Tool - In a press release issued earlier this year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced the launch of a new Patent Public Search tool. The Office notes that the new patent...more
As we’ve reported elsewhere in our blog, the U.S., EU, and other nations recently have enacted significant economic sanctions against Russian individuals and entities in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia is...more
The Russian war on Ukraine has resulted in a series of US sanctions and Russian countermeasures that have disrupted the coordination of patent and trademark rights between the United States and Russia. ...more
As we wrote in this recent blog, whistleblowers from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have called for the closure of WIPO’s Russia office in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They’re concerned...more
On March 22, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it was breaking its final ties with Russia’s intellectual property agencies. Specifically, the USPTO has terminated engagement with officials...more
While the humanitarian crisis has received the most attention during the emerging situation in Ukraine, numerous other facets of the world economy, international relations, and daily life have also been affected. One...more
Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was terminating engagement with officials from the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) and Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO), per...more
USPTO Leadership - ..Drew Hirshfeld is still performing the functions and duties of Director. President Biden nominated Kathi Vidal to be the next Director. On Jan. 13, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 17-5 to forward...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently launched an online First Office Action Estimator, which provides an estimate when a patent application will receive a first Office action. Having an idea of when a patent...more
Strategic patent portfolio management requires a portfolio manager to expedite prosecution for quicker allowance for some patent applications, and to extend the pending time for more flexibility for some other patent...more
On January 6, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced a Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response Pilot Program (the “DSMER Program”). We provide a brief overview of this program....more
This is the second article of the multi-part series discussing benefits of prosecuting patents under Patent Prosecution Highway or PPH. The first article can be accessed here. To recap, PPH is a set of initiatives promulgated...more
Patent Prosecution Highway or PPH is a set of initiatives promulgated by participating patent offices around the world to accelerate patent prosecution in countries of the participating patent offices. PPH allows the...more
It is not uncommon for applicants to file related patent applications in the United States and in Japan. When the applications claim priority to a common patent application, or one of the applications claims priority to the...more
The extensive amendments to the Patent Act and Patent Rules that came into force on October 30, 2019 have complicated the practice for responding to an Office Action (i.e. an “Examiner’s Report”) issued by the Canadian Patent...more
Major patent offices around the world have long been aware of backlog and redundancy issues facing the global patent landscape. As previously reviewed, the Patent Prosecution (PPH) program aims to accelerate examination...more
The October 2020 issue of Sterne Kessler's Global Patent Prosecution newsletter discusses the factors you need to consider when filing strategies to protect your innovations in Asia and reviews the benefits for using the...more