May 2, 2014

Two recently decided Supreme Court cases have made it easier for a party to be granted attorney’s fees after winning a case. According to 35 U.S.C. §285, a court may award attorney’s fees to a winning party in “exceptional” cases.…

March 27, 2014

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has announced the initiation of a pilot program to study the effectiveness of glossaries in specifications of US patent applications. The program is part of an overall White House initiative aimed at improving…

December 11, 2013

On December 6, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about whether computer-implemented inventions are patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The case, Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, No. 13-298, involves computer technology…

November 15, 2013

35 U.S.C. § 154(b) allows for extension of patent term for design and utility patents filed after May 29, 2000. The statute provides for patent term adjustment for delays caused by the USPTO. “A Term” adjustments result from untimely responses…

September 25, 2013

Right before the August recess, both chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees committed to introducing omnibus patent reform bills addressing patent troll abuses when Congress returns in September. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte recently released a second draft…

May 14, 2013

In a recent case arising out of Indiana, the United States Supreme Court addressed the patent exhaustion doctrine in the context of seed patents. Monsanto sued Indiana farmer Vernon Bowman alleging infringement of its patents covering its Roundup Ready seed.…

April 19, 2013

Viacom, a major player in both television and film, recently lost another round in its long-running, landmark copyright litigation against YouTube. In yet another attempt to hold YouTube liable for sharing Viacom’s content on its site, Viacom alleged that YouTube…

April 8, 2013

In this year’s FIRST Robotics Crossroads Regional, robots designed and constructed by students of 50 high schools across seven Midwest states competed against one another in front of a crowd of more than 2,200 people. Armed with robots designed to…

March 29, 2013

The presentation and accompanying video below generally concerns the procedures and rules for identifying whether or not patent applications are subject to the America Invents Act, commonly known as the AIA. It more specifically concerns the procedures and practices for…

March 21, 2013

Is a person who lawfully obtains a book from overseas allowed to redistribute the book in the United States without paying royalties to the original copyright owner? That is the question the Supreme Court addressed in its ruling in Kirtsaeng…

March 18, 2013

Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) recently reintroduced H.R. 845, the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes, or SHIELD Act. The bill seeks to “protect American tech companies from frivolous patent lawsuits that cost jobs and resources”…

February 19, 2013

The USPTO recently published final rules implementing the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) that take effect on March 16, 2013.  The full text of the new rules is available here.  The USPTO also published examination guidelines accompanying…