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
Read More
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
Read More
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
Read More
Another shift in favor of patent holders has been the increased availability of patent litigation funding. Due to its expense, patent litigation has been referred to by some as the “sport of kings.” We have also heard patents referred to as a
Read More
On more than one occasion we have heard a client express surprise or frustration that the Patent Office issued one of their competitors a patent which seems invalid because it claims something known in the “prior art” or has some overly broad
Read More
Are you periodically checking to make sure that your patent marking is up to date? Failure to properly mark your products with the patents that cover them can be very costly if you ever go to enforce your patents. Normally, patent infringement
Read More
With the incredible advances in computing technology over the last 20 years has come a vast array of inventions that are implemented in some form of software. Smartphone apps, TV apps, manufacturing processes, facial recognition technology, artificial intelligence program, the list of
Read More
Patent cases are very discovery intensive, and many courts now have “patent local rules” that provide regulated process by which plaintiffs disclose their infringement contentions (i.e., explanations of why the defendant’s acts infringe the plaintiff’s patent) and by which defendants disclose their
Read More
Lately, we have had several inquiries about whether it is possible to patent a new way of using an existing product. The answer is “yes”. This type of patent is typically called a “method of use” patent.” A method of use patent
Read More
Clients often ask us to perform patentability searches to determine whether it’s worth seeking a patent for an invention. The focus of a patentability search is to determine if an invention is novel, i.e., whether all of its features have been disclosed
Read More