Patent Office (Again) Seeking Comments on AI Inventions By Kirk M. Hartung On Feb. 14, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published a notice in the Federal Register requesting comments by May 15 from stakeholders regarding the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and inventorship issues. Acknowledging that AI is playing a greater role in the innovation process, the USPTO is seeking input for incentivizing […] Continue Reading →
Congressional Bill on Patent Eligibility Receives Judicial Support By Kirk M. Hartung Proposed legislation to fix the patent eligibility mess has been endorsed by two retired judges from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, former chief judge Paul Michel and former judge Kathleen O’Malley. The bipartisan legislation, introduced in August and entitled The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, is co-sponsored by Senator Thom Tillis (R – N.C.) and […] Continue Reading →
Third Retired CAFC Judge Laments Patent Eligibility Mess By Kirk M. Hartung Last week, retired Chief Judge Randall Rader, of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, expressed concern over the ongoing problem with patent eligibility. Rader, whose 24 years on the Court ran from 1990 – 2014, stated that his former court is contributing to the confusion and flaws on the eligibility issue. Rader blames, […] Continue Reading →
Design Patents Just Got Easier By Kirk M. Hartung In a short, four page, precedential opinion issued on October 4, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that design patents are limited to specific articles of manufacture, and not a design in the abstract. In re Surgisil, L.L.P., case number 2020-1940. The patent applicant, Surgisil, filed a design patent […] Continue Reading →
What is Assignor Estoppel and What Implications Remain Post Minerva? By Blog Staff Particularly within the patent industry, it is common to see that an employment agreement contains a provision where an employee agrees to assign the rights in any future inventions developed during the course of employment to the employer. Provided the prevalence of assignments filed in patent applications, inventors and patent owners should be aware as […] Continue Reading →
THE FIGHT IS ON: MOHAMMAD ALI V. ALIBABA By Kirk M. Hartung The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board will referee the thriller action between two giants over the rights to the trademark/name ALI. In case number 91269471, Alibaba Group Holding Limited has challenged application serial number 90/203382 filed by Mohammad Ali Enterprises, LLC. Alibab’s opposition filing is 419 pages long, including a 20 page brief and […] Continue Reading →
Aevum UAV’s Ravn X to Deliver Cargo AND Launch Rockets By Gregory Lars Gunnerson The Ravn X (Aevum) unmanned aircraft will be used to both deliver cargo and launch rockets, pending approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. For its intellectual efforts in this space, the company was awarded U.S. Patent No. 10,994,842. The heart of the invention concerns a payload delivery system for an aircraft. Aevum is the first […] Continue Reading →
Walmart “Tryin’ to Break Me Down”: Retail Giant Opposing Kanye West’s Yeezy Trademark By Nicholas J. Krob As Kanye West once rapped, “We at war with terrorism, racism, but most of all, we at war with ourselves.” Well, now he can add Walmart to that list. Last December, Kanye West’s apparel brand Yeezy, LLC filed a trademark application for a logo “consist[ing] of eight dotted lines . . . arranged at equal […] Continue Reading →
Federal Circuit reiterates the principle that when a § 103 rejection is based on a single prior art reference, the reference must be self-enabling in order to render the claimed invention obvious By Joseph M. Hallman On April 16, 2021, in Raytheon Technologies Corp. v. General Electric Co., the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) reversed a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) regarding unpatentability due to obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In its decision, the Federal Circuit made clear that when […] Continue Reading →
Supreme Court Sides with Google in Major Copyright Case By On Monday, the Supreme Court handed Google a win in a long-standing copyright dispute over the software used in the Android mobile operating system. The case dates back to 2005, when Google included roughly 11,500 lines of code from an Application Programming Interface (API), a tool that allows software applications to more easily communicate by […] Continue Reading →