For more than a decade, the most prevalent way to attack a patent outside of court has been the “inter partes review” (IPR) provided by the America Invents Act in 2012. That is changing quickly. As the USPTO has issued an increasing
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Obviousness rejections are among the most, if not the most, frustrating rejections a patent applicant can face. The examiner typically assembles two or three old patents or published patent applications as prior art references, announces that a person of ordinary skill in
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Few questions in patent law have caused clients more frustration than the most basic one of all – whether an invention is even eligible for a patent in the first place. Since the Supreme Court’s decisions in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank
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What do you do when a rival sends you a cease and desist letter accusing you of patent infringement? If you said, “nothing,” that was the wrong answer. If you are eventually sued for infringement and you made no effort to investigate
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In our experience, startups and founders often treat design patents as a lesser form of protection – cheaper than a utility patent, perhaps useful for marketing, but not really a serious patent. That view ignores some real strategic benefits they can provide.
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In recent months, we have been working extensively with customized AI tools to assist with both administrative and substantive aspects of our practice. Tools like these can deliver real efficiency gains, and in some cases, they let us operate at a level
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The USPTO’s most recent guidelines (November 2025) concerning AI-assisted inventions may place the validity of patents at risk if the development of the claimed inventions relied heavily on AI tools. The guidelines also pose some perplexing questions about how much AI involvement
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A recent Federal Circuit decision has settled the question of whether a patent can be invalidated under the America Invents Act for improper inventorship. The answer, the Court has now confirmed, is yes. In Fortress Iron, LP v. Digger Specialties, Inc., the
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The International Energy Association (IEA) released its 2026 Report on the State of Energy Innovation in February. A copy can be obtained here: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-state-of-energy-innovation-2026. It contains extensive data on the global patenting of energy technologies and has some surprising findings for companies in
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It is often necessary or desirable for two companies to partner up to develop technologies. One context that frequently arises is when a component supplier is developing a product for an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). In these cases, the design of the
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