In Part I of this set of blogs, we discussed the impact of the rescission of former USPTO Director Vidal’s Guidance Memorandum for handling discretionary denials in inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. We also discussed Chief Judge Boalick’s Guidance Memorandum on the rescission. In Part II, we examine a … Continue Reading
Recent actions from the USPTO have engendered a great deal of discussion among the bar practicing before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. On February 28, 2025, acting Director Stewart rescinded former Director Vidal’s Guidance Memorandum for handling discretionary denials in inter partes review proceedings before the Board. On March 24, 2025, Chief Judge Boalick … Continue Reading
The Federal Circuit has long held that “the general rule” of patent infringement damages law is “a patentee may not claim, as its own damages, the lost profits of a related company.” More than 15 years ago, one patent owner argued that an exception to this general rule should be when a subsidiary’s profits “flow … Continue Reading
Wash World Inc. v. Belanger Inc. raises the question whether lost profit damages for patent infringement can extend to profits related to unpatented products sold with a patented product. As with many legal issues, including the lost profits issue I addressed in my recent post, the answer to the question is “sometimes.” In Wash World, … Continue Reading
In the UK, intellectual property (IP) infringement claims and other disputes in which IP is a major concern can be brought in either the High Court or in many cases the specialist Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC). Based at the Rolls Building in central London, the IPEC has a more streamlined procedure than the High … Continue Reading
Lost profit damages are notoriously difficult to recover in patent infringement cases. Lost profits damages are recovered in only a small percentage of cases that go to trial. Among the challenges in recovering lost profits under the Panduit test are that the patent owner must prove the absence of acceptable non-infringing alternatives (Panduit factor 2) … Continue Reading
In a November 6, 2024 opinion in Certain Computing Devices Utilizing Indexed Search Systems and Components Thereof, the U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC”) held that statements, disclaimers, and positions taken during the prosecution of a later patent apply to the construction and interpretation of the same term in an earlier related patent. Using this standard, … Continue Reading
Earlier this year, as we discussed here, here, and here, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or Office) proposed a number of sweeping changes to the Office’s patent fees, including a very steep set of fees for filing terminal disclaimers, later continuation applications, and three or more requests for continued examination (RCEs). The … Continue Reading
Mandatory deference to an agency’s rulemaking may be gone, and numerous commentators fear that the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will drastically alter the legal landscape surrounding agency decisions. But that does not mean that every agency or agency decision is in peril. We explore here the implications of the Loper … Continue Reading
When a patent application is allowed, the claims may not precisely cover everything that the applicant wants to protect. Rather than add new claims after a notice of allowance and prolong prosecution, applicants will commonly file one or more continuation applications to pursue different claims. The continuation has substantially the same specification and drawings as … Continue Reading
Globally, governments are grappling with the emergence of artificial intelligence (“AI”). AI technologies introduce exciting new opportunities but also bring challenges for regulators and companies across all industries. In the Asia-Pacific (“APAC”) region, there is no exception. APAC governments are adapting to AI and finding ways to encourage and regulate AI development through existing intellectual … Continue Reading
As noted in Part I of this series, patent litigation can be a mechanism for parties to spar and evaluate patent rights, as well as each other, prior to making the business agreements that settle such disputes. Once a patent is asserted to be infringed with the filing of a lawsuit, the dispute can become … Continue Reading
As noted in our related blog, only a small percentage of issued patents are ever asserted to be infringed with the filing of a lawsuit, even when infringed. Why? Because patent litigation is notoriously expensive and it’s risky for patent owners, as patent challengers more-often-than-not win and can invalidate the patent claims. Despite the costs … Continue Reading
The number of patents issuing each year has increased dramatically since the Patent Act of 1952 codified US patent law — from fewer than 50,000 patents issued per year to around 350,000 patents issued per year for the last decade. Yet over the last decade, the number of patent litigations filed has fallen to fewer … Continue Reading
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to seek stakeholder input on AI-generated disclosures and patentability. Earlier this year, USPTO issued a public Request for Comment on the impact of artificial intelligence on prior art, the known understanding of a person of ordinary skill and how this effects patentability, specifically novelty and obviousness of a … Continue Reading
In a May 10, 2024, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the USPTO proposed sweeping changes in the rules governing the filing of terminal disclaimers. If the USPTO implements the proposed changes, entire patent families could be wiped out if just one claim of one patent in the family is found invalid over prior art. Patent … Continue Reading
Every single word matters. Nowhere was this truer than when the Federal Circuit recently held, in an appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board captioned Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. v. Personal Genomics Taiwan, Inc., that an apparatus for identifying a single biomolecule meant examining one biomolecule alone and not inferring its identity from … Continue Reading
As discussed in two of our recent blogs (here) and here), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or Office) recently proposed substantial patent fee increases for continuing applications and terminal disclaimers. The USPTO is also proposing substantial increases for an applicant to request continued examination of an application whose claims have been rejected, … Continue Reading
On March 18, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a Memorandum containing guidance to help patent examiners analyze claim language that may be interpreted as “means-plus-function” or “step-plus-function” language under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). The USPTO said that the Memorandum was not a change in practice for examiners. Sometimes, however, how something … Continue Reading
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published updated guidance emphasizing a very flexible approach to determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103, consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in KSR v. Teleflex. The guidelines are written for USPTO personnel but combined with the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP), they provide … Continue Reading
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are becoming an increasingly important part of our lives and are affecting almost every industry. In compliance with section 5.2(c)(i) of the President’s October 30, 2023 Executive Order (EO) 14110, titled “Safe, Secure, And Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued … Continue Reading
In a much anticipated judgment, the UK Supreme Court delivered on 20 December 2023 its ruling in the case of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (Thaler (Appellant) v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (Respondent) – The Supreme Court) on whether an artificial intelligence (AI) system can be named as the … Continue Reading
Most drugs are covered by multiple patents, with initial patents directed broadly to the compound and later patents directed to increasingly narrower uses of the compound. This provides opportunities for the compound to be approved as a generic drug before expiration of all of the patents, based on a “skinny” label – i.e., a label … Continue Reading
A recent Federal Circuit decision, Allgenesis Biotherapeutics Inc. v. Cloudbreak Therapeutics, LLC, provides some interesting insights into patent challenge strategies, and their consequences, when a potentially infringing product is not yet on the market. Allgenesis, which has been developing a pterygium treatment product using nintedanib, filed an inter partes review (IPR) petition to try to … Continue Reading
