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Intellectual Property Protection Inventions United States Patent and Trademark Office

Jones Day

Discretionary Denial Where Inventors Petitioned for Unpatentability

Jones Day on

Coke Morgan Stewart, the acting director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), exercised discretion under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a) to deny Tessell’s (“Petitioner’s”) petition in favor of Nutanix (“Patent...more

MoFo Life Sciences

What Makes a Good Cell and Gene Therapy Application?

MoFo Life Sciences on

Cell and gene therapies represent a transformative frontier in modern medicine, offering potential cures for previously untreatable conditions. However, securing intellectual property (IP) protection for these innovations...more

McCarter & English, LLP

What to Do Now That the USPTO Accelerated Examination Program Is Ending

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) introduced the Accelerated Examination program in 2006 to help applicants receive expedited examination of important patent applications. The USPTO is ending the Accelerated...more

Offit Kurman

When to Patent: Common Mistakes Business Leaders Make

Offit Kurman on

Suppose a newly hired engineer on your team sketches a promising new concept for a health monitor in a notebook. Excited by the idea, you loop in marketing, and soon, your company is promoting the product’s features through...more

Quarles & Brady LLP

USPTO Expediting Design Patent Issuances and De-Expediting Design Examination

Quarles & Brady LLP on

Starting May 13, 2025, the USPTO has begun accelerating the issuance of patents after the issue fee has been paid. Specifically, the duration between the Issue Notification and the Issue Date will be reduced to approximately...more

Maynard Nexsen

A Guide for Successful Patent Disclosures from Start-Ups to Large Companies

Maynard Nexsen on

The quality of a patent begins to take shape at the time of disclosure. An inadequate disclosure can greatly affect the quality of the patent. The level of sophistication of a client typically dictates the quality of patent...more

A&O Shearman

Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit Holds That Conception Does Not Require Certainty of Success

A&O Shearman on

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

Maynard Nexsen

Patenting Microbial Products: Pitfalls, Value, and Special Concerns

Maynard Nexsen on

The use of microorganisms in human industry is ancient, but has increased markedly in recent years. The modern recognition of the role of microbial communities in the human body has intensified innovation in fields like...more

Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.

Broadening Your (Patent) Protection

In the fast-paced world of innovation, inventors sometimes realize that their patents do not fully protect their inventions until after the patent issues. If the patent family has an application still pending at the patent...more

Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox P.L.L.C.

Maximizing Value for Space-Tech Start Ups

Houston, we fixed it. When an oxygen tank exploded during the Apollo 13 mission, the crew resorted to plastic covers from manuals and duct tape to return home. Now, the International Space Station has 3D printers capable of...more

McDermott Will & Emery

PTO Accelerates Patent Issuance Timeline

McDermott Will & Emery on

The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) announced that it has shortened the time between the issue notification and the issue date for patents. Historically, the time between these two events averaged about three weeks....more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Innovation Madness: The Winner of the Basketball Patent Championship

Seyfarth Shaw LLP on

After weeks of hypothetical buzzer-beaters, patent face-offs, and a few well-placed Braveheart reference, Innovation Madness has crowned a champion....more

DLA Piper

Patenting Quantum Computing: Challenges, Trends, and Future Prospects

DLA Piper on

Predictions about the arrival of fault-tolerant quantum computing and commercially viable quantum computing vary widely. Some experts estimate that within the next three to five years, we may see early quantum advantage in...more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Innovation Madness – Round 3 Recap: Who Made the Final Four?

Seyfarth Shaw LLP on

Welcome back to Innovation Madness, where game-changing basketball inventions go head-to-head to determine which patent truly changed the game. We’ve narrowed the field to eight elite contenders. The matchups are fierce. The...more

Jones Day

Innovative Insights: Legal Updates in Life Sciences | First Quarter 2025

Jones Day on

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing life science R&D (particularly in the realm of drug discovery) and challenging the traditional "human inventorship" requirement for U.S. patents. Recent guidance from the USPTO...more

Mayer Brown

Examining New Guidance from the USPTO on Discretionary Denials in AIA Post-Grant Proceedings

Mayer Brown on

Recent changes at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concerning the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) discretion to deny institution of inter partes reviews (IPRs) or post-grant reviews (PGRs) based on parallel...more

Jones Day

Blurring the Line Between the Dry and Wet Lab: Joint Inventorship in AI-Assisted Life Science Inventions

Jones Day on

In 2024, not one but two Nobel Prizes (in Chemistry and Physics) were awarded to researchers for their work in artificial intelligence ("AI"). Particularly noteworthy for the life science community is the Nobel Prize in...more

Jones Day

PTAB Pendulum Swings in Favor of Discretionary Denial

Jones Day on

Recent developments at the USPTO suggest a significant shift in favor of the PTAB exercising discretionary denial and uncertainty on behalf of parties to PTAB proceedings.  ...more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Innovation Madness: The Ultimate Basketball Patent Bracket. 14 inventions. 1 champion. Who will cut down the net?

Seyfarth Shaw LLP on

The journey from Dr. James Naismith’s invention of basketball in 1891 to today’s fast-paced, high-flying game is a story of constant innovation—one that perfectly showcases the importance of intellectual property....more

Ward and Smith, P.A.

First-to-File: A Game-Changer in US Patent Law

Ward and Smith, P.A. on

The United States patent system underwent a significant change with the enactment of the First-Inventor-to-File (FITF) provision of the America Invents Act, which became effective on March 16, 2013. The FITF provision...more

Miller Canfield

A New Alice Plot Twist - Can a Composition of Matter Be an Abstract Idea?

Miller Canfield on

The patent world tends to think that the Supreme Court’s framework in Alice is a template for determining the eligibility of software and business method inventions. Under 35 U.S.C. § 101, abstract ideas are not eligible for...more

Quarles & Brady LLP

Best Practices for Protecting Transparent and Translucent Designs

Quarles & Brady LLP on

Design patents in the U.S. typically include two types of shading. The first and most common type of shading used in U.S. design patents is opaque shading, which illustrates a non-transparent or non-translucent surface of an...more

MoFo Life Sciences

Navigating Inventorship in the Era of AI-Assisted Drug Discovery

MoFo Life Sciences on

This post is part of MoFo’s 2025 Intersection of AI and Life Sciences blog series. In this blog series, we explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing research, innovation, and patient care in the life sciences....more

Volpe Koenig

Artificial Ingenuity: Is Generative AI the New 'Person of Ordinary Skill' in Patent Law?

Volpe Koenig on

The concept of the "person of ordinary skill in the art" (POSITA) remains pivotal in patent law, particularly in evaluating obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 and compliance with enablement and written description requirements...more

Volpe Koenig

The Obvious Choice? Why Result-Effective Variables Matter in Patent Law

Volpe Koenig on

Determining whether a claimed invention is obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 often depends on whether the prior art provides a clear motivation for modifying existing knowledge. Central to this analysis is the concept of a...more

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