Saturday, November 25, 2017

USPTO - General Information Concerning Patents

If you are looking for an introduction to US patent law, I recommend General Information Concerning Patents on the USPTO website.

This article is well organized and gives a nice overview of the US patent system, explains the difference between utility and design patents, and the difference between inventions protected by patents and other intellectual property (IP) protected by copyright or trademark. It should help new inventors understand the requirements of patent applications, drawing requirements, and patent prosecution in general.

My critical comment is the description of patentability searching is way out of date. It actually recommends searching in the Public Search Facility of the USPTO or in patent libraries throughout the US or worse in CDs. This is not the way to conduct searches today and hasn't been the way since Web searching took over about 1995.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Professor Epstein - Patent Respect

In Patent Respect, Professor Richard Epstein continues to discuss Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene's Energy Group LLC, which will be heard by the Supreme Court on November 27. Again, some persuasive arguments by a smart professor who is a leading expert on property law for decades. This case considers question of whether inter partes review by the USPTO to analyze the validity of patents violates the Constitution by extinguishing private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury. If the Supreme Court rules inter partes review is held unconstitutional in Oil States, it should benefit many small entity patent owners.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Time - The 25 Best Inventions of 2017

Time Magazine's The 25 Best Inventions of 2017 is my pointer to readers tonight.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Forbes - USC Sees The Future With New Course Offering - Intellectual Property

In USC Sees The Future With New Course Offering, Marshall Phelps reports that University of Southern California is offering an intellectual property course for undergraduates through the Marshall Business School.

Here's an excerpt from the article: "... intellectual property is the new watchword for almost any career of the future. The only problem is, most of our higher education institutions haven't gotten the memo yet, and that’s a real bummer for young people.

Here’s why: Intellectual property (IP) now accounts for a whopping 38.2% of total U.S. GDP and 30% of total national employment. Yet despite IP's enormous role in the U.S. economy, almost no American universities offer any undergraduate courses on the basic workings of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets in U.S. social and economic life."

This “IP education gap” poses a real threat to U.S. leadership of the 21st century knowledge economy. To understand why, just imagine how U.S. leadership of the industrial economy of one hundred years ago would have been hamstrung had there been no Wharton School or Forbes or Harvard Business Review to teach industrial management and the organization of mass production enterprises to 20th century business leaders. Similar stakes exist today.

That’s why it’s such good news that the University of Southern California (USC) has stepped forward with a first-of-its-kind course for general undergraduates on the basics of IP. This new program, launched by the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies within USC’s Marshall School of Business, will train tomorrow’s leaders in the skills they need to navigate our IP-driven economy. If successful, it will be rolled out to some 40 other colleges and universities nationwide.

Pioneered by USC President C. L. Max Nikias and billionaire medical inventor Dr. Gary Michelson, USC's new undergrad course — named “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intellectual Property” — launched this fall semester. Taught by Kirkland & Ellis partner Luke Dauchot, this innovative new course has already attracted a who’s who of IP luminaries as guest speakers.

These include former Patent Office director David Kappos, long-time Google head of patents and current Facebook IP chief Allen Lo, Dolby’s General Counsel Andy Sherman, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s chief of IP strategy Paul Lin, and a dozen of the senior-most IP leaders of Apple, Nike, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Dollar Shave, and other high-flying IP-intensive companies."

Good job President Nikias and Dr. Michelson!

Note the author Marshall Phelps led the very profitable IBM and Microsoft patent licensing programs.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

USPTO - Finalizes Revised Patent Fee Schedule

Today, the USPTO announced patent fees for fiscal year 2017. This is effective on January 16, 2018.

"The revised fee schedule is projected to recover the aggregate estimated cost of the USPTO’s patent operations, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operations, and administrative services. The additional fee collections will support the USPTO’s progress toward its strategic goals like pendency and backlog reduction, patent quality enhancements, technology modernization, staffing optimization, and financial sustainability.

 In response to feedback from patent stakeholders, the USPTO altered several of the fee proposals presented in the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). The key differences between the NPRM and the final rule are:

In response to stakeholder concerns, the USPTO reduced both plant and design issue fees from the levels proposed in the NPRM. Still, the large entity plant issue fee increases to $800 (+$40) and the large entity design issue fee increases to $700 (+$140). Plant and design patents do not pay maintenance fees, and the majority of plant and design applicants are eligible for small and micro entity fee reductions, which remain available.

Stakeholder feedback suggested that increased appeal fees could discourage patent holders’ access to increasingly important USPTO appeal services. In response, the USPTO elected to maintain the existing Notice of Appeal fee at $800 instead of increasing it to $1,000 as proposed in the NPRM. Likewise, the fee for Forwarding an Appeal to the Board increases to $2,240 (+$240) instead of $2,500 as proposed in the NPRM. The revised fees still do not fully recover costs, but taken together should allow continued progress on reducing the backlog of ex parte appeals.  Since the 2013 patent fee rulemaking, ex parte appeal fees have enabled the PTAB to hire more judges and greatly reduce the appeals backlog, from nearly 27,000 in 2012 to just over 13,000 at the end of FY 2017. Additional appeals fee revenue will support further backlog and pendency reductions.

Increases to the PTAB AIA trial fees are aimed at better aligning these fees with the USPTO’s costs and aiding the PTAB to continue to meet required AIA deadlines. The Office’s costs for Inter Partes Review requests are consistently outpacing the fees collected for this service.  These fee adjustments seek to more closely align fees and costs. Trial fees and associated costs still remain significantly less than court proceedings for most stakeholders.

Inter Partes Review Request Fee – up to 20 Claims increases to $15,500 (+$6,500)

Inter Partes Review Post-Institution Fee - Up to 15 Claims increases to $15,000 (+$1,000)

Other fee changes proposed in the NPRM remain the same."

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Renjun Bian - Many Things You Know About Patent Infringement Litigation in China Are Wrong

The conventional wisdom is filing a patent in China is a waste of money, because China is lax in enforcing patent rights especially those of foreign patent owners. Now U.C. Berkeley law student Renjun Bian's article Many Things You Know About Patent Infringement Litigation Are Wrong gives some data that suggests that conventional wisdom is wrong.

Here's the Abstract:

"As the Chinese government continues to stimulate domestic innovation and patent activities via a variety of policies, China has become a world leader in both patent applications and litigation. These major developments have made China an integral venue of international patent protection for inventors and entrepreneurs worldwide.

However, due to the lack of judicial transparency before 2014, westerners had virtually no access to Chinese patent litigation data and knew little about how Chinese courts adjudicated patent cases. Instead, outside observers were left with a variety of impressions and guesses based on the text of Chinese law and the limited number of cases released by the press.

Taking advantage of ongoing judicial reform in China, including mandated public access to all judgments made since January 1, 2014 via a database called China Judgements Online (CJO), this paper analyzes 1,663 patent infringement judgments – all publicly available final patent infringement cases decided by local people’s courts in 2014. Surprisingly, many findings in this paper contradict long-standing beliefs held by westerners about patent enforcement in China.

One prominent example is that foreign patent holders were as likely to litigate as domestic patentholders, and received noticeably better results – higher win rate, injunction rate, and average damages.

Another example is that all plaintiffs won in 80.16% of all patent infringement cases and got permanent injunctions automatically in 90.25% of cases whose courts found patent infringement, indicating stronger patent protection in China than one might expect."

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Joe Mullin - Supreme Court Won't Hear Apple v. Samsung Round Two

In Supreme Court Won't Hear Apple v. Samsung Round Two, Joe Mullin reports that the US Supreme Court has left in place Apple's damage award of $120 million for Samsung's infringement of US Patent No. 8,074,172 (auto correction), US Patent No. 5946647 (quick links), and US Patent No. 8,046,721 (slide-to-unlock).

For background details on this lengthy battle see the Supreme Court of United States blog: Samsung Electronics, Ltd. v. Apple, Inc. 

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.

Friday, November 3, 2017

Northwest University Kellogg School of Management - Waiting to Protect Intellectual Property Could Doom Your Startup

Northwest Kellogg School of Management's publishes a free online magazine that has a section on entrepreneurship with well written articles on innovation and intellectual property (IP) that is worth checking out. For example, here's an article that may help startups seeking to protect their IP: Waiting to Protect Intellectual Property Could Doom Your Startup. In this article, Mark McCareins, Northwestern's clinical professor of business law argues a startup really needs to spend time and money to protect its IP and interviews four patent attorneys' for tips on protecting IP.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.