Patent Law Weblog
recent posts
- Argentina Repeals Pharmaceutical Patent Examination Guidelines
- USPTO Moves to Protect Design Rights for Digital Innovations
- Judicial Conduct and Disability Committee Has Its Say, Denies Judge Newman’s Latest Request for Review
- PTAB Issues Judgment on Priority in CRISPR Interference
- Parties File Supplemental Priority Statements in CRISPR Interference
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Category: Patent Office Rules & Procedures
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By Donald Zuhn –- Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent an e-mail alert reminding practitioners and applicants that the deadline for migrating their deposit accounts and electronic funds transfer accounts (EFTs) is June 30, 2016. Financial Manager is the Office's new online fee payment management tool, which will allow practitioners and applicants…
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By Donald Zuhn –- Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued further guidance for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In addition to a memorandum on subject matter eligibility determinations that was issued to the patent examining corps, an updated list of court decisions (Supreme Court and Federal Circuit) addressing…
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By Donald Zuhn — In December, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invited stakeholders to submit patent quality-related topics that could be used as case studies in a new Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI) pilot program. At the time, the Office noted that it regularly performs case studies to investigate specific quality-related issues and analyze…
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By Michael Borella — On the heels of the Federal Circuit handing down two subject matter eligibility decisions regarding software, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published a memo to its examining corps regarding these cases. On May 12, in Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., the Court found software claims patent-eligible for the first…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — A few years ago, former PTO Solicitor General Nancy Linck arose from the audience at the BIO International Conference to provide her thoughts on how the Office had responded to the Supreme Court's decisions in Mayo v. Prometheus Labs and Association of Molecular Pathologists v. Myriad Genetics (see "USPTO Provides…
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By Donald Zuhn –- Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued further guidance for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In addition to a memorandum on subject matter eligibility determinations that was issued to the patent examining corps, an updated list of court decisions (Supreme Court and Federal Circuit) addressing…
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By Donald Zuhn –- In a notice published in the Federal Register (88 Fed. Reg. 27381) on Friday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued further guidance for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The notice, entitled "May 2016 Subject Matter Eligibility Update," discusses a memorandum on subject matter eligibility determinations that…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — On April 27th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office held a Patent Quality Community Symposium at the Office in Alexandria, VA (consistent with its efforts to disseminate its workforce into regional offices, the offices in Detroit, Dallas, Boulder and Palo Alto participated by video conference). The Symposium was timed to…
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By Donald Zuhn –- In a notice published in the Federal Register (81 Fed. Reg. 16142) last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that new patent quality metrics were being designed for use in FY2017 and that the Office was seeking comments from stakeholders regarding the new metrics. The new patent quality metrics…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has made its decision regarding the motions each party will be able to bring in Interference No. 106,048 between the Broad Institute and the University of California ("University") over CRISPR (an acronym for Clustered Regularly lnterspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). As discussed previously (see "CRISPR…
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