Patent Baristas

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sent out a gentle reminder in the Federal Register to all patent applicants and registered patent practitioners that the export of subject matter (transfer of information) abroad under a foreign filing license is limited to purposes related to the filing of foreign patent applications. The Notice states: Applicants […]

Well, it looks like Margaret Peterlin, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has announced that she will be leaving the USPTO in August with plans to pursue employment opportunities in the private sector.  It was probably going to happen some time […]

AstraZeneca filed an application for a patent term extension (PTE) of the patent term of U.S. Patent No. 5,674,860 under 35 U.S.C. § 156 in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  They tried to get the extension based the time for FDA review under section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act […]

In Corliss O. Burandt v. Jon W. Dudas, Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office (07-1504), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit showed no mercy for a patentee that tried to reinstate his patent for failure to pay the maintenance fee a decade later. Burandt designed internal combustion engines for Investment Rarities, […]

After vigorous debate, H.R. 6344 passed in the U.S. House of Representatives to amend 35 U.S.C. 156, the statute governing patent term extensions based on regulatory review delay. This has been bounced around for several years now, and is intended (very specifically) to help Massachusetts-based The Medicines Company, which submitted its PTE application for U.S. […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published some new rules that will improve (their word, not ours) the process of ex parte appeals before the USPTO’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI). The rules are supposed to help to streamline the appeal process and lead to more timely Board decisions.  We’ll see. The […]

Senate Reform Bill It appears that the Senate has pulled the plug on the Patent Reform Act (S. 1145) after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the bill from the floor schedule. This is not a huge surprise given the interests against it. (via ars technica) A problematic area was a proposed change to the […]

The public comment letters on the proposed Markush Rules by the Patent Office are up on the USPTO website. The Patent Office is moving ever onward with its proposed revision to the rules of practice pertaining to any claim using alternative language to claim one or more species. That is, if the claims use Markush […]