Patent Baristas

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published the amended rules governing practice before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (Board or BPAI) in ex parte patent appeals. 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 […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office made a change in policy based on the recent decision of In re Tanaka. Basically, the PTO has said that in a reissue application, the addition of claims that are narrower in scope than the existing claims, without any narrowing of the existing patent claims, may be the basis […]

A Practitioner from a Leading U.S. Law Firm sent in a screen capture of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s login screen for Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. 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 […]

At an event co-sponsored by the US Patent and Trademark Office, The Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Biojudiciary Project,  David J. Kappos, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office gave a speech on “From Chakrabarty to Today. Kappos remarked that there is no question that […]

On October 19, 2009, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a “Notice of Change to Docketing of Requests for Continued Examination.” The Notice indicated that requests for continued examination (RCEs) filed on or after November 15, 2009 will be placed on the examiner’s “Special New” application docket instead of the examiner’s amended docket. An […]

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is implementing a pilot program (Extended Missing Parts Pilot Program) in which an applicant can request a twelve-month time period to pay certain fees and to reply to a Notice to File Missing Parts of Nonprovisional Application. Under the Extended Missing Parts Pilot Program, applicant must file […]

The decisions of the Federal Circuit discussed in the 2010 KSR Guidelines Update provide additional examples of the law of obviousness. The purpose of the 2007 KSR Guidelines was to help Office personnel to determine when a claimed invention is not obvious, and to provide an appropriate supporting rationale when an obviousness rejection is appropriate. […]

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued an update to its obviousness guidelines to be used when applying the law of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103. This 2010 KSR Guidelines Update highlights case law developments on obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 since the 2007 decision by the United States Supreme Court (Supreme Court) […]