Patently-O Bits & Bytes by Lawrence Higgins

USPTO news

  • On December 20th the USPTO released its updated website. The new website seems to be more user friendly and the design is more attractive than the previous website design. [Link]
  • The USPTO in cooperation with the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (COECI) launched the USPTO Innovation Challenge, a $50,000 prize to develop new algorithms to aid in patent examination. [Link]

Chisum Patent Academy

  • The Chisum Patent Academy will hold its next Intensive Patent Law Training Seminar in New York City on Feb. 22-24, 2012. Topics to be addressed include the America Invents Act of 2011, recent nonobviousness decisions, inequitable conduct post-Therasense, and the continuing schism in the Federal Circuit over patent claim construction. The Chisum Patent Academy offers what CLE providers and patent bar review courses simply can't: premium-quality patent law education in a unique seminar-style setting. Co-taught by leading patent law scholars Donald Chisum and Janice Mueller, the intensive three-day seminars are limited to ten (10) participants and conducted in roundtable, interactive style. [Link]

Student Writing Competition

  • Georgia State University College of Law will hold its first annual Intellectual Property Student Writing Competition in 2012. The GSU Intellectual Property Writing Competition seeks papers addressing legal issues and challenges in the intellectual property field. Winners will have the opportunity to have their paper published in the conference materials for the 2012 Corporate IP Institute (CIPI) and also win a cash prize. [Link]

Evil Twin Debate

  • On November 18, the University of Richmond School of Law hosted the Fifth Annual Evil Twin Debate, featuring Professor Daniel Crane of University of Michigan Law School and Professor Michael Carrier of Rutgers University School of Law at Camden. The video of the event has been posted on YouTube and is very entertaining. [Link]

Patent Jobs:

  • Zagorin O'Brien Graham is seeking patent attorneys with 2+ years of experience and a degree in electrical engineering to work in their Austin, Texas office. [Link]
  • Pioner is searching for IP attorneys with 5-7 years (or more) prior experience in patent prosecution and a background in life sciences to work at their Iowa location. [Link]
  • Bristol-Myers Squibb is seeking an IP Counsel with 5+ years of patent attorney experience and a background in molecular biology or biochemistry to work at their New Jersey location. [Link]
  • Guntin Meles & Gust is looking for patent attorneys with2+ years of patent prep and prosecution experience and a degree in EE or CE to work at their Chicago office (remote locations may be considered). [Link]
  • Steinfl & Bruno is seeking a patent agent with 2-3 years of experience and a degree in EE or related fields to work in their Pasadena, California office. [Link]
  • Klarquist Sparkman is searching for an IP litigation associates with 1-2 years of experience in IP to work at their Portland office. [Link]
  • Klarquist Sparkman is looking for a patent attorney/agent with an advanced degree in organic chemistry and 3+ years of experience to work at their Portland office. [Link]
  • Roberts Mlotkowski Safran & Cole is searching for a patent attorney with 2-4 years of experience and a degree in EE to work at their McLean, Virginia office. [Link]
  • Roberts Mlotkowski Safran & Cole is searching for a patent attorney with 2-4 years of experience and a degree in chemical engineering to work at their McLean, Virginia office. [Link]
  • Clements Bernard is seeking a patent attorney/agent with a degree in electrical/computer engineering to work at their Charlotte office. [Link]
  • Wells St. John is looking for a patent attorney with 4+ years of experience in all aspects of IP to work at their Spokane office. [Link]
  • An IP firm in Northern Virginia is seeking a patent attorney/agent with at least 3 years of experience and a background in semiconductor inventions (telecommuting option). [Link]

Upcoming Events:

  • The American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law, Young Lawyers Division, ABA-IPL Young Lawyers Action Group and the ABA Center for Continuing Legal Education will sponsor a webinar on January 20 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. The webinar, Prosecution Strategies: Tackling USPTO Obviousness Rejections will explore how the KSR standards have been applied in various technology areas and provide guidance for effective avenues of argument based on the technology area. Speakers include: Janet Hendrickson, Gregory Hillyer, Michelle O'Brien, and Zachary Stern. [Link]
  • The American Conference Institute (ACI) The Comprehensive Guide to Patent Reform For Life Science Companies, conference is scheduled for January 31- February 1 in New York. (Patently-O readers register with PO 200 for a discount). [Link]
  • The 7th Annual Conference on EU Pharma Law & Regulation will be held on February 22-23 on London. The conference will bring together eminent in-house counsel from the world's largest pharma and biotech companies, top legal practitioners and regulatory experts in an outstanding speaker panel. (Patently-O readers register with PO 10 for a discount). [Link]

Contact Lawrence.Higgins@patentlyo.com with leads for future Bits and Bytes.

23 thoughts on “Patently-O Bits & Bytes by Lawrence Higgins

  1. 21

    Why are to claims in Bilski abstract?

    Why?

    I submit for your consideration that the claims in Bilski were not abstract, but were held unpatentable because there are notoriously old, and because limiting the claims to particular fields of use was obvious.

    The ultimate conflation.

  2. 20

    As Chief Justice John Marshall once said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

    So I do agree that placing the power fees in the hands of the commission places in his hands the power to do almost anything he pleases to affect process by taxing that which he does not like and reducing the taxes on the things he does like.

  3. 18

    Those who litigate know a little about page limits.

    And those who litigate and prosecute know that there is a world of difference between discussing what is on the record and creating the record in the first place.

    Please do not engage a litigation conflation mechanism.

    As for the Office ability to set fees, yes, the AIA did hand the henhouse over to the fox. As long as the fees are set “in the aggregate” individual fees can be set to whatever with the express purpose of influencing applicant behavior.

    Aside from the inherent constitutional question that this may bring up, the “in the aggregate” is both a blessing and a curse. If you raise certain fees “through the roof” then you must necessarily lower fees elsewhere.

    Anyone who knows Mr. Stoll also knows this issue is far more thorny than the simple suggestion to “raise the price through the roof.”

    And let’s not forget that merely raising prices only suffices to make the patent game even more the sport of kings and is in itself a poor answer.

  4. 17

    Those who litigate know a little about page limits.

    I think the page limit size could be accomplished implicitly through fees.

    It is my understanding that the PTO has temporary authority to adjust fees. I think they could up the excess page count and excess claims fees through the roof.

  5. 14

    On the left side of your keyboard you will find a button that says “Caps Lock” (Mine also has a Capital [A] surrounded by a round cornered box on the same key) Where is the Examiner Model 6000 when you really need him?

  6. 12

    If you carefully form a Titanium Foil cap, and wear it regularly, it prevents others from stealing your inventive thoughts or creations, or, failing that, a double layered Aluminum Foil cap will work sometimes in a pinch, if you can’t find the Titanium real deal. In my case, I took an old Steel Deutches Army helmut, and bonded a layer of Titanium onto it with a thin sheet of high explosives, ala explosive welding/forming. The poor dummy I used was never quite the same after that, though, but he didn’t seem to care much after that, so what? Me worry? Never!

  7. 11

    Yippee kie yay! Sounds as if someone forgot to take their medication this morning or whenever!! Doesn’t anyone even LOOK at what goes on here?

  8. 10

    I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS LITTLE. I REMEMBER I HAD THIS BIKE. IT WAS THE ONLY BIKE I HAD AT THE TIME. I GOT A FLAT, THEN ANOTHER. BUT I RODE IT ANYWAY. YOU COULD HERE ME COMING A MILE AWAY. IF IT WAS VALUABLE TO THEM THEY WOULD HAVE TAKEN IT. BUT WHEN I WAS ON IT I WAS AWAY FROM THEM… SO TAKING IT FROM ME KEPT ME CLOSE, AND THAT WAS OUT OF THE QUESTION. IT’S FUNNY HOW SAGE A PERSON BECOMES AS THEY REFLECT ON THEIR JOURNEY. MY MEMORIES ARE REFLECTION. NOT GOOD MEMORIES. BUT REFECTION IS A GOOD THING. IT HELPS A PERSON COPE WITH WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO THEM. ESP IS ANOTHER GOOD THING IT HELPS YOU SEE THROUGH PEOPLE. IT HELPS YOU DECIDE WHAT BUCKET THEY GO IN. SO YOU SEE NO DIP HERE.

  9. 8

    WHY DID THE BOPR SAY DAVID DAY DID NOTHING? I AM SURE MY PHONE WAS TAPPED. SO THEY HEARD EVERYTHING. CENTURY TELEPHONE KNEW EVERYTHING! WHEN I CALLED AT&T THEY WOULDN’T LET ME SPEAK TO THE GIRL THAT PRETTY MUCH TOLD ME IT WAS TAPPED! AND WHAT A BOUT PATRICK AT MY PHONE BOX. AND WHAT ABOUT THE FAX MACHINE JIM TOOK OUT OF THERE. AND THEY KNOW HE DIDN’T USE IT. BUT YET BERKENSTOCK’S FILE CLAIMED I FAXED HIM AND I FIRED HIM IN APRIL, JUNE, JULY, AUGUST! SO WHAT UPPPPIIIEEEEEEEE? I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF A STATE AND FEDERAL WAR.. THIS IS NOT FAIR TO ME! YOU KNOW TAMAI STOLE IT. YOU KNOW HE HAD NO WHERE TO GO SO YOU MADE UP KENT! SO NOW WHAT? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!
    AND YOU ALL PICK ON THAT OTHER COUNTRY… YOU KNOW WHICH ONE… SAYING “THEY” STEAL IDEAS? SO YOU REALIZE I HAVE A GEM AND YOU PROTECT TAMAI. NOW YOU REALIZE I HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF A KIND GEM. AND I SIT HERE.. SHAKIN BABY. SO WHAT.. I DIDN’T GET THROWN IN A TRASH BIN! SMASHED MY HEAD.. SO WHAT I DIDN’T DIE! DO YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAT THREW ME AWAY? LETS GET ON WITH IT. I AM AFTER ALL 60 YEARS OLD… BUT THEN MAYBE CLOSER TO 61… SEEING YOU SAY I’M A TAURUS TOO. LOOK I TRULY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE PARENTS IF THEY ARE STILL ALIVE. THEY MADE A CHOICE. THEY CAN LIVE WITH IT. I CAN SO WHY CAN’T THEY.

  10. 7

    establishing fixed limits on the size of the disclosure” = arbitrary.

    Fails at the start.

    (Didn’t the Claims and Continuations debacle teach you anything?)

  11. 6

    (Palpatine voice) “We are the government. We’ll infringe as we please…”

    Seriously, maybe someone could find another $50K and spend it on an information campaign to remind applicants that they are filing a patent application. Not a dissertation, not an encyclopedia. There is no need to get all Matsushita on us and bring 200+ pages of drawings for a handful of claims. If it takes you more than 10 pages of drawings to explain your invention then you probably don’t have an invention. You probably have several, and they should be covered in separate focused applications.

    I think the office should consider reducing filing fees in exchange for establishing fixed limits on the size of the disclosure. “Fixed” by the way means no loopholes where you can pay a trivial extra fee and get away with nonsense. Although they’ll be cheaper, we’ll get more applications, which should mean even more profit for Congress. Shorter applications should be more quickly examinable, and could well benefit the public as issued patents since John Q. Sixpack won’t go blind trying to sort through all the fluff. Special K seems to be a fan of new approaches. He could make something like this work.

    Speaking of the desire for more informative drawings, I wonder if there is any possibility that we could start permitting color drawings to be published? We can have standards to prevent loud colors but I think there are many instances where simply outlining different parts or regions with distinct colors could make a figure much easier to digest. Some applications are filed with color drawings which can help the examiners during prosecution, but upon patenting everything zips back to black and white. I can understand that printing an official patent copy in color would be expensive, but are colorized electronic images really more expensive than monochromatic ones?

  12. 5

    One can’t help but wonder how USPTO is going to make sure that the algorithms created by this team coding even won’t violate the intellectual property of other American inventors.

    Since a very simple patent search turns up over 16,000 different patent on finding image components and assigning matching text to the elements on the image, USPTO could find themselves infringing a whole host of patents. Perhaps they should have sent the challenge to their prior art whiz kids to make sure no one is infringing anyone’s IP before they start encouraging folks to build this stuff.

  13. 1

    “•The USPTO in cooperation with the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (COECI) launched the USPTO Innovation Challenge, a $50,000 prize to develop new algorithms to aid in patent examination.”

    Oh the irony.

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