The medal is awarded annually to individuals, teams (up to four individuals), companies or divisions of companies for their outstanding contributions to America’s economic, environmental and social well-being. The purpose of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation is to recognize those who have made lasting contributions to America’s competitiveness, standard of living, and quality of life through technological innovation, and to recognize those who have made substantial contributions to strengthening the nation’s technological workforce.

By highlighting the national importance of technological innovation, the medal is also meant to inspire future generations of Americans to prepare for and pursue technical careers to keep America at the forefront of global technology and economic leadership.

Established by the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980, the medal was first awarded in 1985. On August 9, 2007, the president signed the America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act of 2007, amending Section 16 of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980.

Selection Process

The National Medal of Technology and Innovation Nomination Evaluation Committee, a distinguished, independent committee appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, reviews and evaluates the merit of all candidates nominated through an open, competitive solicitation process. The Committee makes its recommendations for Medal candidates to the Secretary of Commerce, who in turn makes recommendations to the President for final selection. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureates are announced by the White House and the Department of Commerce once the Medalists are notified of their selection.

Contact Information

Program Manager
Phone: (571) 272-8400
Fax: (571) 270-9100
e-mail: NMTI@USPTO.GOV

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The USPTO amends the rules to:

Remove several of the briefing requirements for an appeal brief, provide for the Board to take jurisdiction over the appeal earlier in the appeal process, no longer require examiners to acknowledge receipt of reply briefs, create specified procedures under which an appellant can seek review of an undesignated new ground of rejection in either an examiner’s answer or in a Board decision, provide that the Board will presume that the appeal is taken from the rejection of all claims under rejection unless cancelled by an applicant’s amendment, and clarify that, for purposes of the examiner’s answer, any rejection that relies upon evidence not relied upon in the USPTO action from which the appeal is taken shall be designated as a new ground of rejection.

The notable changes to the rules are:

(1) The Board will presume that an appeal is taken from the rejection of all claims under rejection unless cancelled by an amendment filed by appellant (final Bd.R. 41.31(c));

(2) the Board will take jurisdiction upon the filing of a reply brief or the expiration of time in which to file such a reply brief, whichever is earlier (final Bd.R. 41.35(a));

(3) the requirements to include statements of the status of claims, status of amendments, and grounds of rejection to be reviewed on appeal and the requirements to include an evidence appendix and a related proceedings appendix are eliminated from the appeal brief (final Bd.R. 41.37(c));

(4) the Board may apply default assumptions if a brief omits a statement of the real party-in-interest or a statement of related cases (final Bd.R. 41.37(c)(1)(i) and (ii));

(5) for purposes of the examiner’s answer, any rejection that relies upon Evidence not relied upon in the Office action from which the appeal is taken (as modified by any advisory action) shall be designated as a new ground of rejection (final Bd.R. 41.39(a)(2));

(6) an appellant can await a decision on a petition seeking review of an examiner’s failure to designate a rejection in the answer as a new ground of rejection prior to filing a reply brief (final Bd.R. 41.40) and thereby avoid having to file a request for extension of time in which to file the reply brief; and

(7) the examiner’s response to a reply brief is eliminated (final Bd.R. 41.43 [removed]). A more detailed discussion of the final rule follows.

Further information relevant to particular rules appears in the analysis of comments portion of the final rule.

Applicability Date: This rule is applicable to all appeals in which a notice of appeal is filed on or after January 23, 2012.

See:  Rules of Practice Before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences in Ex Parte Appeals

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A rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 251 will no longer be made in this scenario, provided that the claims are otherwise compliant with 35 U.S.C. § 251. This change revises the policy in the current Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) that is provided in MPEP § 1402, which was not consistent with the Tanaka decision.

Tanaka sought reissue to add one dependent claim to his original patent. Because the only error alleged was the failure to present the narrower dependent claim during the original patent examination, the examiner rejected the reissue application under 35 U.S.C. § 251, relying on MPEP § 1402. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed the examiner and the matter was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

On appeal, the Federal Circuit held, in its decision of In re Tanaka, that “the omission of a narrower claim from a patent can render a patent partly inoperative by failing to protect the disclosed invention to the full extent allowed by law.” Tanaka, 640 F. 3d at 1251, 98 USPQ2d at 1334. The court went on to state that:

“[t]his court also rejects the PTO’s assertion that the omission of a narrower claim from an original patent does not constitute an error under § 251 because the omission of a dependent claim does not render the patent inoperative. While the Board correctly recognized that a patent is inoperative under § 251 if it is ineffective to protect the disclosed invention, the Board improperly assumed that Tanaka’s original patent cannot be deemed partly inoperative in the absence of claim 16, whose scope is subsumed by  claim 1, from which it depends…. Finally, this court rejects the Board’s conclusion that adding a single dependent claim to the originally issued claims is equivalent to the disallowed practice of filing a ‘no defect’ reissue.” Tanaka, 640 F. 3d at 1250-51, 98 USPQ2d at 1334 [emphasis added].

Even further, the court stated that “…the narrow rule relating to the addition of dependent claims as a hedge against possible invalidity has been embraced as a reasonable interpretation of the reissue statute by this court….” Tanaka, 640 F. 3d at 1251-52, 98 USPQ2d at 1335.

Now, the Patent Office has directed:

Where the only change to a patent made in an application for its reissue is the addition of a claim or claims that is/are narrower in scope than the existing patent claims, without any narrowing of the existing patent claims, the application claims are not to be rejected as failing to state an error under 35 U.S.C. § 251. In addition, any rejection of record in a pending application on this basis will be withdrawn, and any new Office action issued will inform applicant of the withdrawal, and the resulting status of the application in view of the withdrawal.

See the Tanaka Notice here.

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I find some interest that the site shows a bit of an international flavor in the use of Arabic characters.  The full image is here:  PAIR reCAPTCHA.

Thinking this might be a spoof, I contacted the Electronic Business Center and inquired about the alternate characters.  I received the following reply:

Hello,

ReCAPTCHA images are generated automatically from scanned documents.  It is possible that a CAPTCHA could contain non-English characters, such as Arabic letters or mathematical symbols. 

If you receive an unreadable CAPTCHA on the Public PAIR site, simply click the refresh button next to the CAPTCHA text box.

If you have additional questions about the reCAPTCHA system, please contact Google using the following page:  http://www.google.com/recaptcha/contact

If you have any other questions or concerns about the PAIR system, please let us know.

Thank you,

EBC

I also looked at the function of reCAPTCHA.  A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You’ve probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows at the same time! To archive written information, physical books are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA.

Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day, representing more than 150,000 hours of free work each day for Google Inc. (GOOG).

Hmmmmm…perhaps lawyers should join in the lawsuit against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the company’s digital reproduction of books.

The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed when a federal judge in New York rejected a $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers. Google has already scanned some 15 million books.

See:  Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 05-CV-8136, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)

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Kappos remarked that there is no question that the Chakrabarty pivotal decision had a seismic effect on US patent policy, giving birth to a new mode of thinking at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

In part, Kappos connected the past changes to the patent system with the now proposed patent reform act:

And while we gather here in the light of this case’s 30th Anniversary and reflect on its history to infer guidance for the road ahead—

Today, we also stand at the precipice of a new history.  One that, through Congressional patent reform legislation, will historically redefine the nexus of patenting and innovation.

Just last week the U.S. House of Representatives demonstrated significant leadership in passing the American Invents Act—representing a major step towards transforming our patent laws to account for the modern stresses and expectations of a fast-moving 21st century global economy.

While we are diligently working to reconcile the bill with a version passed earlier this Spring in the Senate—we are stand at the threshold of major change and a truly “Jeffersonian moment.”

Recognizing that innovation is at the heart of human progress and patents are how we drive that progress forward, Kappos believes that changing the patenting process, small and independent inventors to move their ideas to the market place faster and enable all of you to do your jobs more easily.

And if we get this right, we can foresee resolutions to post-grant review processes that take shape in less than one year.

If we get this right, we can equip our agency with the thousands of additional examiners it will require to tackle the backlog—which for far too long as been an enemy of progress.

If we get this right, we can confirm the strength of patents efficiently or even promptly let businesses know that their claims are in fact not strong enough.

Either way, efficient processing grants independent inventors and large biotech firms alike the assurances you need to move your technologies and services forward. That way, if we get this right, business can conduct business…without constant speculation or endless arbitration.

Let me be clear—should patent reform be signed into law, implementing a robust IP infrastructure around it will not be easy—but we are up for the challenge.

30 June 2011

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