Patents

Posts on patents

How the Smallest Detail Becomes the Biggest Pitfall in Trademark Applications

Filing a federal trademark application in the U.S. requires careful attention to a number of details, including obvious components, like the configuration of the mark and the nature of the goods and/or services on which it is being used or will be used. Of the numerous elements that go into the application, there are certain “routine” details that can be easily overlooked. One such “inconsequential” detail, if handled improperly, can doom a trademark application and any resulting registration. The culprit: designation of the mark’s owner. (more…)

The Lost Einsteins: Women Underrepresented Among U.S. Inventors

A new report issued by the USPTO points to an untapped segment of U.S. innovators – women. Released on February 11, “Progress and potential: a profile of women inventors on U.S. patents” outlines the trends and characteristics of women inventors named on U.S. patents over the last 40 years. The report shows a modest increase in the number of women inventors, but documents that women still make up a small minority of inventors and highlights the untapped potential of women to spur innovation. (more…)

When filing a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), certain applicants have the option to designate “small entity status” or “micro entity status.” Claiming either small or micro entity status has some benefits, but can also have drawbacks. When faced with that decision, what should the company do? (more…)

The United States Supreme Court’s May decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC was widely seen as a limitation on the jurisdictions in which a patent owner can file infringement claims. That decision set off a minor scramble among patent owners to find suitable and accessible alternative forums. More recently, a district court decision has swung the pendulum in the other direction and could potentially preserve the ability of patent owners to choose their own venue, including one so-called “rocket docket” in the Eastern District of Texas. (more…)

Last month, the Federal Circuit issued a decision confirming that a “private” sale of an invention, more than one year before the effective filing date of a patent application for that invention, invalidates the resultant patent. The case, captioned Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., addressed the “on-sale bar” in 35 U.S.C. § 102 and verified that the America Invents Act (AIA) did not change the pre-AIA statutory meaning of “on sale.” (more…)

The process of creating “link relationships” between documents and personal profiles used by Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and other social media platforms came under fire in October 2012 via a patent infringement suit filed by technology company Bascom Research, LLC.  Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and three other network software companies were named as defendants in that suit.  More than two years later, and in the wake of the seismic ruling issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, Bascom’s challenge came to an unsuccessful end when the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California determined that Bascom’s patents for the linking technology were invalid as being drawn to abstract ideas. (more…)

At its heart the Internet is an information distribution network and the ease with which all manner of information can be shared instantly has led to numerous innovative methods of doing, well, most anything. A hallmark of patents on such methods is that the various steps are carried out by multiple actors as information is passed around the Internet. Often the actors between which the steps of the patented method are divided have only the most tenuous connection with one another. In a case that is reshaping our understanding of what it means to infringe a method patent in the digital age, the Supreme Court reversed the Federal Circuit’s ruling on such divided infringement in Limelight Networks v. Akamai Tech. (more…)

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Mathmatical algorithms are unpatentable. Software is a collection of algorithms expressed in machine code. Under current law, only software that involves a specific machine or physical result. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted cert in a case,  Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International (docket 13-298), involving financial software to mitigate risk in settlement transactions. The trial court decided the software is unpatentable because it merely uses “the abstract idea of employing an intermediary to facilitate simultaneous exchange of obligations”. the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit split on the decision, teeing it up for the Supreme Court.

Timothy Lee of the Washington Post points out that if the Supreme Court broadly invalidates the software patents, it would allieviate the nuisance suits by ‘non-producing entities’ or ‘trolls’, since most involve software. Would it discourage Congress from its present mission to identify a legislative solution to the troll problem? (more…)

Will Prior Art Block My Patent Application? Prior Art 101 for §§102 and 103

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If you read IP blogs with any regularity you no doubt know that patent reform has come courtesy of the America Invents Act (“AIA”), although the “old” patent law hasn’t really left us and won’t for quite some time.  The most blogged about change brought on by the AIA has undoubtedly been the change from the previous “first-to-invent” system to the current “first inventor to file” system. The AIA accomplished this switch by revising the language of 35 USC §§102 and 103 to redefine what constitutes prior art that can serve as a basis on which to reject an application to patent an invention. Section 102 does the heavy lifting in this regard and the changes to its language are significant. Exactly how significant though is difficult to say in some regards because new statutes come with something of a clean slate in as much as there is no judicial history of interpretation to serve as a lens through which to interpret the language. The “old” §102 has a long history of interpretation by the courts and BPAI and just how clean the slate is on which it was written is itself not clear since there is much similarity between the current and former language. But similarity in form or structure does not necessarily require the same outcome and we lawyers, being what we are, will certainly argue for interpretations beneficial to our clients in the absence of binding precedent from the bench. This post, or more likely a series of posts, will compare the definitions of prior art under the AIA and under the older, first-to-invent regime. (more…)