May 2010

Peter Menell: Authority of the International Trade Commission

We have published a new Patently-O Patent L.J. essay by Berkeley Law School professor Peter Menell that discusses the Section 337 authority of the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The ITC now conducts more full patent adjudications on an annual basis than any district court in the nation. The ITC’s six Section 337 administrative law judges (ALJs) focus almost exclusively upon patent investigations, making the ITC the only specialized trial-level patent adjudication forum in the nation. Given the importance of international trade to high technology markets, the ability to exclude goods at the border provides a valuable strategic option for patent owners. 

Consequently, all patent litigators and in-house patent counsel should be familiar with the ITC’s Section 337 authority. This article summarizes its key elements and calls attention to an upcoming conference – The ITC Comes to Silicon Valley (May 18, 2010) in San Jose – and the development of a comprehensive, up-to-date treatise: Section 337 Patent Investigation Management Guide.

Documents:

Donald Chisum: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle

In a new essay for the Patently-O Patent Law Journal, Donald Chisum considers the "invention priority principle" and its role in the written description analysis. 

There may be a solution: application of an established patent law priority principle. The principle focuses on a specific embodiment of a generically claimed invention as a constructive reduction to practice, that is, as a completion of the inventive process. Adopting this solution would preserve the written description of the invention's (WDIs) independence and applicability to original claims but would remove WDI as a standard for assessing the scope of a patent claim. WDI would continue to govern whether, at the time an applicant files an application, he or she has completed the inventive process, that is, "possesses" the invention. But only enablement would govern how broadly the applicant is entitled to claim that invention. It may be possible to implement this priority principle interpretation of Ariad without contradicting its clear holdings.

Cite as Donald S. Chisum, Written Description of the Invention: Ariad (2010) and the Overlooked Invention Priority Principle, 2010 Patently‐O Patent L.J. 72.