5 Key Takeaways | Building a Winning Evidentiary Record at the PTAB (and Surviving Appeal)
Wolf Greenfield Attorneys Review 2024 and Look Ahead to 2025
Recognizing and Avoiding Trademark Scams and Hoaxes
The Briefing: A Very Patented Christmas – The Quirkiest Inventions for the Holiday Season
5 Key Takeaways | Alice at 10: A Section 101 Update
Director Review Under the USPTO's Final Rule – Patents: Post-Grant Podcast
(Podcast) The Briefing: Thirsty for Clarity – Brand Confusion In The Beverage Category
The Briefing: Thirsty for Clarity – Brand Confusion In The Beverage Category
SCOTUS and federal court rulings on TTAB decisions on granting trademarks and trademark renewals; Netflix settling an anticipated defamation case with a disclaimer and donation
Legal Alert: USPTO Proposes Major Change to Terminal Disclaimer Practice
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Artificial Intelligence Patents & Emerging Regulatory Laws
John Harmon on the Evolving Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Intellectual Property
Was the classic song “Over The Rainbow” plagiarized? How about a claim of copyright infringement against the script for “The Holdovers?” AI Legal strategies switch to claims of CMI removal
The Briefing: The Patent Puzzle: USPTO's Guidelines for AI Inventions
The Briefing: The Patent Puzzle: USPTO's Guidelines for AI Inventions (Podcast)
4 Key Takeaways | Updates in Standard Essential Patent Licensing and Litigation
Wolf Greenfield Attorneys Preview What’s Ahead in 2024
8 Key Takeaways | The Presumption of Irreparable Harm After the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020
(Podcast) The Briefing: SCOTUS to Determine if USPTO Refusal to Register TRUMP TOO SMALL is Unconstitutional
The Briefing: SCOTUS to Determine if USPTO Refusal to Register TRUMP TOO SMALL is Unconstitutional
On July 31, 2025, the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) issued a memo clarifying the requirements under 37 C.F.R. § 42.104(b)(4) for inter partes review (IPR) petitions. The memo emphasizes that petitioners must clearly...more
The USPTO must reject a patent application if the applicant’s claim covers what the prior art already disclosed, and patent applicants may respond to such rejections with arguments that what they claimed was different. ...more
In January 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) implemented a broad set of fee increases and structural adjustments intended to address rising operational costs and encourage more efficient patent...more
On June 30, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a decision by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) and remanded the case for further proceedings using a narrower construction of the...more
The Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in In re: Xencor, Inc.concerning written support for Jepson claims. The decision affirms the decision of the Appeals Review Panel (ARP) of the USPTO, which held 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
This Federal Circuit Opinion analyzes invalidity based on anticipation and obviousness, more specifically based on implicit claim construction of the claim limitation and inherent disclosures....more
On April 23, 2025, the Federal Circuit rendered an opinion in Valve Corp. v. Ironburg Inventions Ltd. surrounding U.S. Patent No. 9,289,688 (the '688 patent"). This marks the second time that the Federal Circuit has weighed...more
In Thermaltake Technology Co., Ltd. et al v. Chien-Hao Chen et al, IPR2024-01230, Paper 12 (PTAB Feb. 19, 2025), the PTAB granted the institution of inter partes review (“IPR”) while an ex parte reexamination (“EPR”) on the...more
On March 13, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in the case of In Re: Xencor, Inc. In this Appeal from the Appeals Review Panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (ARP), with regard to...more
Ex parte reexamination (EPRx) comes with risks and rewards for both patent challengers and patent owners. Patent challengers enjoy a lower threshold for institution and avoid the estoppel risk of other post-grant proceedings...more
Last week a remarkably interesting Federal Circuit case was decided concerning whether an asserted reference was properly shown to qualify as prior art in the rejection of a pending patent application. The pending application...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
This article continues our analysis of over 89,000 patents to determine how the number of office actions to allowance during prosecution impacts litigation outcomes. Last month we discussed how prosecution length impacts...more
IN RE: XENCOR, INC. Before Hughes, Stark, and Schroeder (sitting by designation). Appeal from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board. To provide adequate written description for a Jepson claim,...more
In a series of rulings on a motion in limine, the District of Delaware recently distinguished between what qualifies as being incorporated by reference and what does not for the purposes of an anticipation defense. In short,...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
This Article analyzes over 89,000 patents litigated over a twenty-year period to determine how the number of office actions to allowance during prosecution impacts rates of invalidity during subsequent litigation. Many...more
A patent’s specification established a naming convention that applied to terms in the patent’s claims. Microchip Technology filed an IPR, arguing all claims of HD Silicon Solutions’ patent were invalid. The challenged patent...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board obviousness determination even though it found the Board had improperly construed a claim term, because the Court found the error harmless...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted institution of inter partes review of a patent directed to delivery of targeted television advertisements. The board rejected patent owner’s argument that a lack of particularity as...more
The PREVAIL Act is now subject to debate before the full Senate. The Act will require petitioners to certify standing, two new categories of which were recently added via a manager’s amendment....more
United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal had a busy end to her summer, issuing six decisions as part of the Director Review process between July 10 and August 22. In the six decisions, the...more
In Pfizer Inc., v. Sanofi Pasteur Inc., SK Chems Co. Ltd., v. Vidal, 2019-1871 (March 5, 2024), the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s conclusions that claims 1–45 of U.S. Patent No. 9,492,559 were unpatentable due to...more
In Natera, Inc v. Neogenomics Laboratories, Inc., Appeal No. 24-1324 the Federal Circuit held that preliminary injunction may be valid if a substantial question of invalidity was not raised, even if the asserted patent is...more