On Tuesday, May 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear argument in a long-awaited appeal addressing the inventorship of the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR technology. The case is the latest in a continuing legal battle between two groups of innovators, each asserting patent rights to key aspects of the groundbreaking technology.
On May 2, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued its most recent biennial report, entitled “Making Innovation Policy Work for Development,” which analyzes patent filing, scientific publications and economic data across the globe over the last two decades to identify innovation policies effective at diversifying national economies. While WIPO’s report underscores the highly concentrated nature of the global innovation economy, it also highlights several countries that have seen significant improvements in their own technological diversification during the study period.
If the headlines are to be believed, every aspect of American life, from farming to football, is under threat due to excessive patent litigation. While these anecdotes may seem compelling, it is important to look at the underlying data before drawing any conclusions about the state of the U.S. patent system. As an economist and one of the authors of the Federal Trade Commission’s study of patent assertion entities (PAEs), I understand the value data can bring to patent policy debates, and have also seen firsthand the damage evidence-free policymaking has on America’s innovation ecosystem.
The judicially-created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) originated long ago as a shield to protect the public against unwarranted patent term extension (PTE). The Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 (URAA) removed most of these concerns when it changed statutory term from 17 years from issue to 20 years from earliest effective filing date. By limiting patent families to a single 20-year term, the URAA eliminated the ability of patent owners to indefinitely extend the term of their invention by filing successive continuations claiming similar subject matter. After the URAA, all patents in a family are effectively limited to the 20-year term of the first-filed patent, plus an occasional modest term extension due to regulatory delays (PTE) or delays at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (Patent Term Adjustment (PTA)).
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal has released a guidance memorandum for the Trademark and Patent Trial and Appeal Boards (TTAB and PTAB) on the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) tools before the Boards that largely clarifies the application of existing rules to AI submissions. The announcement is a precursor to a coming Federal Register Notice that will provide additional guidance on the use of AI tools for the public and other USPTO departments. The guidance document suggests that part of its impetus was Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ recent year-end report, which acknowledged both the benefits and dangers of AI in the context of the legal profession.
The Judicial Conference of the United States’ Committee on Judicial Conduct (Conference) and Disability issued its decision today in Judge Pauline Newman’s appeal of the Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals’ (Council) September 2023 decision to suspend her from all cases. Federal Circuit Chief Judge Kimberly Moore first identified a complaint against Newman in April 2023. IPWatchdog was the first to break the news, and the court soon published a statement responding to media reports and making previously sealed documents public…. Today’s decision denied Newman’s petition for review of the Council’s decision, holding that the Council did not abuse its discretion in refusing to transfer the proceedings to a different circuit, that Newman has not shown good cause for her failure to cooperate, and that the sanction did not exceed the Judicial Council’s authority.
On February 27, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register providing updated guidance for agency decision-makers on making proper determinations of obviousness under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in KSR International Co. V. Teleflex Inc. While the USPTO’s examiner guidance doesn’t constitute substantive rulemaking, it traces 15 years of case law from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to clarify several areas of confusion stemming from the Supreme Court’s calls for a flexible approach to the obviousness analysis for patent validity.
This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Department of Commerce releases a plan to increase women’s employment in the semiconductor sector in order to meet CHIPS goals; the FTC adds 300 drugs to the FDA’s Orange Book of junk patent listings; and eight major U.S. newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement related to ChatGPT.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed a district court’s decision in Snaprays (dba SnapPower), v. Light Defense Group (LDG) on May 2, finding that Lighting Defense Group (LDG) purposefully directed extra-judicial patent enforcement activities at SnapPower in Utah. The opinion was authored by CAFC Chief Judge Moore.
A client’s recent experience applying for a European patent led to the development of a possible optimization strategy to address patent costs for clients. This client had made an initial U.S. filing and then extended his application in the form of a European patent application. His U.S. application went extremely well, and he obtained a quick grant with very few additional costs. This, unfortunately, was not the case with his European application.
On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list that denied petitions for writ of certiorari filed in at least five intellectual property cases. While none of these cases induced large numbers of amici to ask the Court to grant cert, they do represent several current issues in IP law that remain unaddressed. From the use of joinder to evade time-bar limits in patent validity proceedings to the service of process required for a grant of preliminary injunction, the Court’s cert denials leave several open questions with which the patent and trademark community will likely grapple.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Thursday vacating the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) denial of a petition to cancel a trademark for a medicated tea product to treat colic in babies. Naterra International, Inc. petitioned the TTAB to cancel the mark BABIES’ MAGIC TEA based on likely confusion in the market with its own registrations for the mark BABY MAGIC, which cover “numerous toiletry goods.” The Board found that Naterra failed to prove confusion under the 13 DuPont Factors.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor & Pensions held a hearing today on why the United States pays “by Far, the Highest Prices in the World for Prescription Drugs.” Patents came up throughout the hearing as one barrier to lowering prescription drug prices, while pharmaceutical industry representatives underscored the cost of bringing innovative and life-saving drugs to market and the superior access Americans have to such drugs compared with other countries.
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