On September 16, 2011 President Obama signed into law the Leahy-Smith Patent Reform Act, thereby ending the most favorable patent system in the world for legitimate small businesses. The law is lengthy (169 pages) and … Read More
You Cannot Patent Ideas (Theoretically).
The foundation of United States patent law is based on a quid pro quo between the patent applicant (or patentee) and the government. The government grants a monopoly for the invention in exchange for a … Read More
Interpreting Patent Claims
Many businessmen and engineers evaluate patents for one reason or another. Usually, the process boils down to an interpretation of patent claims. As defined in other posts on this site, patent claims are the governmental … Read More
USPTO Issues Interim Guidance for Determining Subject Matter Eligibility for Process Claims in View of Bilski v. Kappos
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has recently announced that it has prepared further interim guidance for the patent examining corps to use when determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in … Read More
The Advantages of Narrow Patent Claiming
The Legacy Approach: For decades, patent attorneys have been taught to submit claims to the USPTO that are as broad as possible. The theory is that submission of broad claims are opening gambits in a … Read More
Software Patents
While there is no reason to go into the entire history of software patents, it is fair to say that filings of software patents increased exponentially during the 1990s. In 1998, in a case called … Read More
Suggestions for Investors
When investing in a small company, part of the critical information that investors need to know are (1) whether the product or products produced by the company infringe or will infringe patents owned by others, … Read More
Transferring Intellectual Property to Others
Generally, there are two ways of transferring intellectual property to others: (1) an assignment, and (2) a license agreement. Assignments: An assignment is a legal document which transfers all the rights in an intellectual property … Read More
What is a Provisional Patent Application?
Since June 8, 1995, the United States Patent Office has offered inventors the option of filing a provisional application (or a “provisional”). According to the patent office, a provisional patent application was designed to provide … Read More
What is a Design Patent?
A design patent protects an ornamental design for an article of manufacture. In other words, the design patent protects only the appearance of an article, but not its structural or functional features. The procedures relating … Read More
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