Any party who has ever come before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) quickly realizes the extent to which the Board enforces procedural niceties. This tendency sometimes leads to...more
In a brief Order issued September 25, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board authorized the Junior Party (the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle...more
On Tuesday, August 20, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 10,385,360 to the University of California/Berkeley, directed to an aspect of its CRISPR technology (where CRISPR is an acronym for...more
The parties (University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, Junior Party, and The Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, Senior Party) to the...more
On Friday, July 19, 2019, Sigma-Aldrich filed a self-described "extraordinary" petition to the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (under 37 C.F.R. §§ 1.181-1.183) and the Chief Judge of the PTAB (under 37 C.F.R....more
On June 24th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared an interference (No. 106,115) between patents and applications owned by the Regents of the University of California, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle...more
On June 24th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared an interference between patents (and an application) assigned to the Broad Institute (and other institutions) and applications assigned to the University of...more
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Iancu v. Brunetti, No. 18-302, finding that the Lanham Act prohibition against registration of scandalous or immoral trademarks violates the First Amendment of the U.S....more
6/28/2019
/ Appeals ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Iancu v. Brunetti ,
Lanham Act ,
Reaffirmation ,
Reversal ,
Scandalous/Immoral Marks ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO ,
Viewpoint Discrimination
With great fanfare (and a seeming exercise of appropriate diligence), Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), chair and ranking member of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary committee,...more
The Federal Circuit handed down its decision in Regents of the University of Minnesota v. LSI Corp. on Friday, and perhaps not surprisingly (in view of its decision last summer in Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe v. Mylan...more
Last Tuesday, April 23, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted (at long last) to the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and inventor Emmanuelle Charpentier a patent corresponding to the...more
Over the past six years, since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Mayo Collaborative Services, Inc. v. Prometheus Laboratories, it has become more and more evident that correction of the path embarked upon by the...more
On March 14, 2019, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a new pilot program relating to motions to amend in post-grant review proceedings (post-grant review, inter partes review, and covered business methods...more
On March 13, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board announced that it had updated its Motion to Amend Study to include all trials under the post-grant review proceedings enacted in the...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today granted U.S. Patent 10,227,611 to Jennifer Doudna, Martin Jinek, Krzysztof Chylinski, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, the patent entitled "Methods and compositions for RNA-directed...more
The Federal Circuit recently reviewed yet another decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Amerigen Pharmaceuticals Ltd. v. UCB Pharma GmbH, and once again reviewed...more
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston stuck again on Christmas Eve, giving the biotech patent community a rhetorical lump of coal in their stocking by invalidating on summary judgment claims directed to methods for...more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has released its 2018-2022 Strategic Plan, the first under new Director Andrew Iancu.
Director Iancu provides an introductory Message in which he cites the grant of U.S. Patent No....more
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 10,113,167 today, October 30, 2018, to the University of California/Berkeley, directed to an aspect of its CRISPR technology (where CRISPR is an acronym for...more
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Andrew Iancu gave the introductory keynote address at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association on Monday, and his talk provided the prospect of a...more
On August 8th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued revisions to its Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Guide, first promulgated in 2012 as part of the Office's implementation of inter partes review (IPR), post-grant...more
Federal Circuit Rejects Use of Tribal Immunity to Shield Patents in IPR Proceedings -
The Federal Circuit issued its opinion on Friday in St. Regis Mohawk Tribe v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, affirming the decision by the...more
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched a pilot program on July 1st termed Collaborative Search and Examination (CS&E) that will enable an applicant to have searching performed by all five of the major...more
Judge Pauline Newman has been concerned regarding constitutional issues raised by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board's implementation of inter partes review as provided by the Leahy-Smith...more
Well, that didn't take long. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Guidance today, just two days after the Supreme Court decision in SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu came down, regarding how the Patent Trial and Appeal...more