The Rise of OTAs in Defense Contracting: Opportunities, Risks, and What Contractors Need to Know
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PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Cease and Desist Letters: Protecting Your Intellectual Property the Right Way
PODCAST: PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Cease and Desist Letters: Protecting Your Intellectual Property the Right Way
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The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced that, effective September 1, all PTAB hearings will be conducted in person at USPTO offices, marking a departure from the virtual and hybrid formats adopted in recent...more
Acting Director of the USPTO Coke Morgan Stewart recently discretionarily denied institution of an inter partes review (IPR) based on a new consideration, “settled expectations,” that is, the length of time that the...more
A Delegated Rehearing Panel (“DRP”) recently modified the PTAB’s construction of the claim term “workload” and remanded, giving Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (“Petitioner”) another opportunity to challenge a processor patent....more
The PTAB has published its monthly statistics wrap up for April 2025. As expected, those statistics show a significant decline in the institution rate compared to the first six months of the fiscal year. In those first six...more
On May 16, 2025, USPTO Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart released the first four discretionary denial decisions under the PTAB’s new process. Under the new process, the parties separately brief discretionary denial issues...more
On May 12, 2025, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated-in-part and remanded a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) decision in an interference proceeding concluding that the Broad Institute, Inc. (“Broad...more
Those hoping the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit would finally resolve priority in the long-pending dispute between the University of California and the Broad Institute will have to wait a little longer. Oral...more
The Federal Circuit recently issued a decision in Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp., invalidating the patent claims at issue as directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In what it noted was a case of...more
In yet another recent example of the need for care in establishing a full record when appealing the denial of a trademark application, on April 14, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the denial of...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board’s dismissal of an opposition to the registration of the marks IVOTERS and IVOTERS.COM while also noting that the US Patent &...more
CERAMTEC GMBH v. COORSTEK BIOCERAMICS LLC - Before Lourie, Taranto, and Stark. Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. A utility patent may still be considered strong...more
Since serving as a Federal Circuit clerk, Michael Hawes has monitored that court's precedential opinions and prepares a deeply outlined index by subject matter (invalidity, infringement, claim construction, etc.) of relevant...more
In re: Riggs, Appeal No. 2022-1945 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 24, 2025) Our Case of the Week explores the power of an examiner to request a rehearing after the Board has entered a decision on an application. The case also relates to...more
A new interim process for the Director to exercise discretion as to whether to institute an inter partes review(IPR) or a post grant review (PGR) was announced on March 26, 2025, in which discretionary considerations and...more
Addressing the calculation of patent term extensions (PTEs) under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court decision that under the act the issue date of the original...more
Ex parte reexamination (EPRx) is a powerful tool that allows any party — including the patent owner — to request that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reassess the validity of an issued patent based on...more
On March 13, 2025, the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Merck Sharp & Dohme B.V. v. Aurobindo Pharma USA, Inc., No. 23-2254 (Fed. Cir. 2025) that clarifies how patent term extension (PTE) is calculated for reissue...more
On March 13, 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) issued a decision titled In Re: Xencor, Inc. (the Xencor decision). The Xencor decision affirms the decision of the Appeals Review Panel...more
CQV CO., LTD. v. MERCK PATENT GMBH - Before Cunningham, Chen, and Mayer. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The Board erred by failing to explain why it discarded material and unrebutted evidence that a reference...more
On Friday afternoon, February 28, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a brief “bulletin” rescinding a memorandum issued by the former Director Kathy Vidal (“Vidal Memo”) providing guidance on...more
In Restem, LLC v. Jadi Cell, LLC, No. 2023-2054 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 13, 2025), the Federal Circuit upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision holding that U.S. Patent No. 9,803,176 (“the ’176 patent”) was not inherently...more
In Kroy IP Holdings, LLC v. Groupon, Inc., 127 F.4th 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2025), the Federal Circuit held that patentees in district court are not collaterally estopped from asserting claims that were not immaterially different...more
Back in May of 2020, European patent-licensing company Sisvel filed a flurry of lawsuits against a dozen tech companies who had allegedly infringed Sisvel’s portfolio of wireless communication and networking patents. A...more
Apple Inc. v. Gesture Technology Partners, LLC, Appeal Nos. 2023-1475, -1533 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 4, 2025) Our Case of the Week is a high-stakes appeal from an inter partes review concerning a patent titled “Camera Based...more
On February 13, 2025, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) overturned a patent eligibility rejection of claims directed to a method of performing a computation using a quantum...more