Trademark licensing hall of shame: why trademark owners need to monitor their licensees Owners of trademarks should take care that they control how licensees use their marks. This should be common knowledge for most trademark owners, as inconsistent or unauthorized use of a trademark can dilute its distinctiveness, and in extreme cases, cause loss of rights. The owners of one of the most famous trademark brands, the New […] Continue Reading →
Federal Circuit changing its domain name effective October 1 According to an announcement on the Federal Circuit's webpage, the court will be changing its domain name effective October 1, 2007. The change from www.fedcir.gov to www.cafc.uscourts.gov will bring the Federal Circuit in line with the other courts of appeal, whose domain names are www.ca#.uscourts.gov (where # is the circuit number or "dc" for the […] Continue Reading →
First lawsuit to stop implementation of continuation and claim limit rules filed As reported on Patently-O (and predicted here), yesterday a lawsuit was filed against the USPTO and its director, Jon Dudas, to prevent implementation of the new rules limiting continuations and the number of claims in patent applications (expect a more detailed post about the new rules later today). The lawsuit alleges that the regulations are […] Continue Reading →
USPTO publishes Federal Register notice of revised patent fees While most of the focus on USPTO rulemaking this week has been on the continuation and claim limit rules published on Tuesday, yesterday the USPTO published its revised list of patent fees. The new fees are designed to reflect changes in the CPI, and are effective September 30. Update (10/1): The USPTO has published a […] Continue Reading →
New continuation rules published As noted yesterday, the new continuation rules have been published in today's issue of the Federal Register. The bulk of the publication is responses to the numerous comments sent to the USPTO after the rules were initially published in January 2006. The introductory material explains the gist of the new rules, and runs from page […] Continue Reading →
More new USPTO rules on the way, this time for information disclosure statements and Markush claims The USPTO rulemaking machine just keeps chugging along. In today's Federal Register, there are new USPTO proposed rules regarding claims using "alternative language," such as Markush claims. Also, on July 27, the USPTO submitted new rules regarding information disclosure statements (IDSs) to the OMB for review. These rules look as though they adhere to the […] Continue Reading →
Judge sanctions Qualcomm for concealing over 200,000 pages of documents, providing false testimony It's been a rough week for Qualcomm. On Monday, the Bush administration let stand the ITC ruling barring import of mobile phones using certain Qualcomm chips unless a license fee is paid to Broadcom, a competing company who holds patents covering the power management technology used in the chips. Also Monday, a federal judge in […] Continue Reading →
$1.5 billion infringement verdict against Microsoft vacated A judge in the Southern District of California yesterday set aside a $1.5 billion infringement verdict against Microsoft in favor of Alcatel-Lucent (more detail on the facts of the case can be found in this post). The judgment was the largest ever in a patent infringement lawsuit, and has been used as an example (see […] Continue Reading →
Summary of proposed final KSR examining guidelines surfaces The Patent Prospector is reporting that the summary of the USPTO's post-KSR obviousness examination guidelines recently sent to OMB has apparently surfaced. Note that this summary is not confirmed, but it comes from a typically reliable source. Either click below or head over to the Patent Prospector to read the summary. Update (11:15): another source […] Continue Reading →
Revised TTAB rules published, some take effect August 31, others November 1 As noted last week, the revised TTAB rules were published in today's Federal Register. The final rules are somewhat different than those proposed last January. Some of the new rules include: Opposers/Petitioners will serve copies of the notice of opposition or cancellation petition on the opposing party directly, rather than having the TTAB send out […] Continue Reading →