The Plant Naming Conundrum … Protecting Your Plant Varieties in the Short and Long Term

By Christine Lebron-Dykeman

Development of a new plant cultivar or varietal often requires substantial research and development. These costs can be recovered, however, if a breeder is able to successfully market, sell and/or license the resulting product, while maintaining exclusive ownership rights therein.  There are, of course, a variety of intellectual property protection schemes available to maintain those […]

Time to Consider Patent Protection in China

By Kirk M. Hartung

In the past decade, the Chinese government has made substantial policy changes regarding protection for intellectual property, both for obtaining rights and enforcing rights. These policies are generally favorable to patent owners and are intended to incentivize innovation. In December, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published statistics for worldwide patent application filings for 2016, […]

PTAB Opinion Provides Reminder that Indefiniteness Rejections Must Establish a Prima Facie Case

By Jonathan L. Kennedy

In a recent USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) opinion, the PTAB reversed an Examiner’s indefiniteness rejection as the it failed to establish a prima facie case of indefiniteness. InEx Parte Kimura, Appeal No. 17-1293 (PTAB Jan. 25, 2018), the claims were rejected for reciting, “normal pumping operation.” The rejection stated the term was […]

Constitutionality of Inter Partes Reviews: A Look at Supreme Court Oral Arguments in Oil States

The enactment of the AIA in 2011, inter partes review (IPR), has been available as a method to challenge the validity of a patent in the US Patent and Trademark Office. A total of 6139 IPR petitions (92% of all petitions) have been filed with the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) since that time. […]

USPTO Releases Patent Fee Schedule for 2018

This past week, the USPTO released its final patent fee schedule for 2018. The USPTO has been actively seeking to reduce the overall patent pendency, number of unexamined applications, and reduce its appeal backlog. Part of these efforts have been the continual recruiting and training of new examiners and new Administrative Law Judges at the […]

Federal Circuit Emphasizes “Why” is Important Part of Obviousness Rationales in Chemical Patent Cases

In a recent decision by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, In re Stepan Company, the Federal Circuit reversed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision to affirm an examiner’s rejection that claims were obvious.  The claims in the application were directed to ultra-high load, aqueous glyphosate salt-containing concentrates comprising water, a glyphosate salt in […]

The Most Difficult Definition: Considerations for Defining “Genetically Modified Organism”

A patent applicant is free to act as their own lexicographer in drafting an application and may define terms as they see fit. Should a word not be defined explicitly in the application, the Patent Office will then give the term “the broadest reasonable interpretation according to a person having ordinary skill in the art” […]

When Life Hands you Lemons, Make CoQ10

In the Federal Circuit Decision of Soft Gel Technologies, Inc. v. Jarrow Formulas, Inc., the Court found three related Soft-Gel patents invalid for obviousness. The three patents describe a way to dissolve CoQ10 in monoterpenes for enhanced delivery to the body. The patents disclosed two suitable examples, limonene and carvone and derivatives thereof. However, prior […]

Surge in Patent Applications Related to 3D Printing: Is Yours One of Them?

The USPTO recently released statistics that over 8,000 patent applications were filed in 2016 related to 3D printing (additive manufacturing). Some of the interesting 3D printing inventions that have been subject to publicity include,prosthetic hands and fingers for children without fingers, three-dimensional bioprinting of human-compatible vascularized tissue developed by graduate students at Harvard, and a […]

Court of Appeals Gets Specific with Enablement

In Storer v. Clark, the Court of Appeals explored whether a provisional application had sufficiently enabled interference subject matter.  In order to prove enablement it must be shown that “one skilled in the art, having read the specification, could practice the invention without ‘undue experimentation.’” ALZA Corp. v. Andrx Pharm., LLC, 603 F.3d 935, 940 […]