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Inflation Reduction Act
Re-Calculating Patent Term Adjustments Once Again
The Federal Circuit has adjusted the way we calculate Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) once again with its holdings in Novartis and Exelixis . 1 The Federal Circuit held that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been incorrectly...
Copyright Owners: Keep Your Eye on the Road
Copyright owners need to stay alert! If you have an infringement, ownership interest, or other claim to assert in a copyrighted work and fail to do so within the three year statute of limitations you risk being barred from asserting...
No Claims, No Drawings, No Problems
As part of efforts to unify international procedural rules for patent applicants, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently released new rules that have important procedural consequences generally deemed to be quite favorable for patent applicants and owners...
Fantastic .Voyage: The Launch of First 9 New gTLDs
The first nine new generic top-level domain name spaces (gTLDs) in English 1 are expected to go live on or around October 29, 2013. These first nine domain spaces to join existing gTLDs like .com and .net are: .camera, .clothing...
Bad Faith Patent Litigation Is Bad News For Plaintiffs
Affirming a $1.6 million dollar award for attorney fees against a non-practicing entity (NPE) for pursuing and maintaining patent litigation in bad faith, the Federal Circuit has served notice that patent litigants "must continually assess the soundness of pending infringement...
Beyond Trolling the Trolls: White House Acts to Curb Abuse by Patent Assertion Entities
Earlier this year, President Obama addressed frivolous patent suits in a Google+ hangout session, commenting that Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) "don't actually produce anything themselves" and assert patents "to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they...
Batting Practice with DNA Patents at the U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in Association of Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics (Docket 12-398) regarding the patent eligibility of isolated DNA sequences. More specifically, they probed both parties in search of the line demarcating the patent eligibility...
Key Trademark Rights Protection Mechanism for New Top-Level Domains Opens March 26, 2013
The first of hundreds of new generic top-level domain name (gTLD) registries 1 are expected to launch in the summer of 2013. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the NGO that regulates the domain name space, published...
Stripped of Controversial Provisions, Lame-Duck Patent Reform Heads to Obama's Desk
On January 1, 2013—immediately after passing the fiscal crisis bill—the House of Representatives agreed by voice vote (at 11:13 PM) to approve the Senate's Amendments to H.R. 6621. A controversial provision that would have eroded the patent term of approximately...
Lame-Duck Patent Reform Goes Almost Entirely Unnoticed
With most lawmakers focused on the so called "fiscal cliff" during the current lame duck session of Congress, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) has quietly once again proposed legislation to reform the United States patent system. This time, few seem to...
New USPTO Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Satellite Office Finds Home in Downtown Dallas Location
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently announced that downtown Dallas will serve as the site for its Dallas-Fort Worth regional satellite office. The office is expected to be a place where small businesses and entrepreneurs can learn how...
A Red-Leather Day: Giving Single Color Trademarks in the Fashion Industry a Little Sole
On Wednesday, September 5 th , 2012 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit delivered its much anticipated decision in the case of Christian Louboutin et al. v. Yves Saint Laurent America, Inc., No.11-3303 , holding that Louboutin...
New America Invents Act Provisions Set to Become Effective in September 2012
The switch to a modified first-inventor-to-file system will not take place until March 16, 2013, but notably several provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) will take effect in one month, on September 16, 2012. The U.S. Patent and...
USPTO Opens a Satellite Patent Office in Dallas
On July 2, 2012, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced the selection of Dallas, Texas as the location for one of its satellite patent offices, and it was the sole southern city chosen. The Dallas satellite office...
Federal Circuit Passes Torch From Juries to Judges for Willful Infringement Determinations
Just in time for the London 2012 Summer Olympics, the Federal Circuit, in Bard Peripheral Vascular v. W.L. Gore & Assocs., 1 passes the torch from juries to judges on willful infringement determinations in patent litigation. With an en banc...