The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced changes to patent fees, which will take effect on Jan 19, 2025. Most current fees are subject to a 7.5% across-the-board increase while other fees are...more
If the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is going to implement fee changes in January 2025, we should see a Federal Register Notice detailing the proposed fees soon. The USPTO started this round of fee-setting in April...more
The USPTO Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) rules include a “safe harbor” that avoids a PTA deduction for “Applicant delay” for Information Disclosure Statements that are accompanied by a certain statement averring that the items...more
Consider requesting examination of your Canadian patent applications now to avoid potential fees - Last summer, the Government of Canada issued draft regulations introducing claim fees and a continued examination scheme for...more
A patent gives the patent holder the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing an invention covered by the patent. However, the right only lasts for a limited period of time and will...more
In Chudik V. Hirshfeld, the Federal Circuit upheld the USPTO’s determination that a Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) award for “C” delay is not available when an examiner reopens prosecution after an Appeal Brief is filed,...more
CHUDIK V. HIRSHFELD - Before Taranto, Bryson, and Hughes. Appeal from the United State District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia - Summary: An examiner’s self-reversal may not qualify as “reversing an...more
On June 16, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released final rules (the “Rules”) implementing changes to how Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is calculated in certain circumstances in view of Supernus Pharms.,...more
In a case explaining what comprises an “applicant delay” in the context of a patent term adjustment (PTA), the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) ruling that the...more
Mayo Foundation v. Iancu reads more like an arithmetic problem than a Federal Circuit decision. The reason is the case involves the Patent Term Adjustment Act (PTA) (see 35 U.S.C. § 154(b)). ...more
A weekly summary of the precedential patent-related opinions issued by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the opinions designated precedential or informative by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board....more
MAYO FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH v. ANDREI IANCU, UNDER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE - Before: Newman, Lourie, and Dyk - ...more
Earlier this week, the Federal Circuit declined to further extend the patent term of an antibody patent held by the Mayo Foundation. In Mayo Foundation v. Iancu, the court held that the time spent on a request for continued...more
The importance of patent term, or the period of time during which the exclusive nature of a patent is in effect, cannot be overstated. The patent term for an issued patent, which is currently set at 20 years from the filing...more
Patentees may obtain additional PTA if the USPTO’s calculation of “applicant delay” includes a period of time during which the patentee could have taken “no identifiable effort” to avoid. However, the onus is entirely on the...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
Your patent may be entitled to a later expiration date if the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) characterized time periods during which you could not engage in reasonable efforts to conclude prosecution as “applicant...more
On January 23, 2019, the Federal Circuit decided Supernus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. vs. Iancu and shed light on Patent Term Adjustment (PTA). PTA was established by the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 and codified at 35...more
The Situation: The USPTO took a long time to issue Supernus's patent application. Although Supernus would otherwise have been entitled to significant patent term adjustment, the USPTO ruled that the accumulated term should be...more
The Federal Circuit recently held that the USPTO’s calculation of “applicant delays” related to Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is contrary to the plain language of the PTA Statute....more
In Novartis v. Lee (Fed. Cir. 2014), the Federal Circuit agreed with the USPTO that “time spent in a continued examination” does not count towards the three years the USPTO is allotted to examine a patent before if it must...more
This article is second in a series focusing on various issues related to Patent Term Adjustment for U.S. patent applications. While Part 1 is a general overview of how to calculate patent term adjustment (“PTA”), this...more
This article is first in a series focusing on various issues related to Patent Term Adjustment. Part 1 is a general overview of how to calculate patent term adjustment, without addressing the numerous factors that can affect...more
In Singhal v. Lee, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed a complaint that challenged the Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) awarded to two patents, because the complaint failed to state a claim upon...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) allows a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) to be filed with a request to suspend processing of the RCE for up to 3 months, in accordance with 37 CFR 1.103(c). The suspension...more