Attorney-client privilege refers to the protection of confidential communications made for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice. Application of and exceptions to this privilege are fact-based determinations made...more
On Friday, February 23, 2018, the Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling that attorney-client privilege does not extend to patent agents. The ruling, bound to reverberate throughout the intellectual property...more
As the calendar turns the page from 2016 to 2017, we take the opportunity to review Canadian IP law and practice highlights from the past year....more
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) recently proposed a patent-agent privilege that would bring needed consistency to the discovery phase of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) proceedings....more
Several recent court decisions have shed light on the patent agent privilege, and now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is seeking to weigh-in on the issue....more
Finding that Texas state courts lacked authority to recognize common-law discovery privileges, the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fifth District refused to recognize the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s recently...more
Are communications between a patent agent and a client privileged? Up until last week, the Federal Circuit had not addressed the subject, although there had been a split with the district courts that had considered the...more
On March 7, 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recognized “a patent-agent privilege extending to communications with non-attorney patent agents when those agents are acting within the agent’s authorized...more