Posts Tagged: "kingsdown"

The Role of an Patent Procedure Expert in Patent Litigation

When you review file histories as a patent office practice expert it’s an eye-opening experience because sometimes it’s almost inexplicable as to what happened and how it could possibly have happened. And that’s what leads to some of the litigation because of the kinds of things that happen in these cases. It demonstrates why there’s still a place for a patent office practice expert in patent litigations due to the eccentricities of the practice and procedure that lead to peculiar results. An expert is needed to explain how and why these situations happen in the PTO… Sometimes you shake your head in terms of how one thing happened after another that led to a particular result that is defies how proper PTO practice and procedure is defined in the rules of practice and the MPEP.

Federal Circuit to Consider Inequitable Conduct En Banc

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit earlier today decided to take up important issues relating to inequitable conduct en banc, vacating the earlier panel decision in Therasence, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson and Co., which issued January 25, 2010. Hopefully the entire Federal Circuit will be able to put to rest the nonsense that has become inequitable conduct, and if the questions presented are any indication we might be in store for a major re-write and settling of the law of inequitable conduct.

CAFC Makes it More Difficult to Prove Fraud on USPTO

At the beginning of August 2009 the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its decision in Exergen Corp. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., et al., Case Nos. 2006-1491, 2007-1180 (Fed. Cir. 2009), a decision that changed the playing field with respect to charges of inequitable conduct in patent litigation. Essentially, the Federal Circuit decided that since inequitable…