Posts Tagged: "mpep"

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) publishes the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) (currently electronically, but spanning thousands of pages in printed form) to provide examiners and patent practitioners with guidance on the patent statute, USPTO regulations, and patent prosecution practices and procedures. USPTO regulations are promulgated pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires a process that includes publication of proposed rules and a public comment period and are binding on the public. The 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) strengthened the USPTO’s already-considerable policymaking powers. In a recent law review article addressing the USPTO’s post-AIA policymaking powers, William Neer recognized the USPTO’s AIA-empowered potential to engage in retroactive substantive rulemaking and determined that the USPTO promulgated more rules post-AIA than it did pre-AIA. This article discusses substantive MPEP procedural changes implemented retroactively by the USPTO.

The USPTO was actively working behind the scenes to revise sections of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure pertaining to the subject of its recent Request for Comments, including policies and procedures relating to restriction, continuation, divisional, double patenting and terminal disclaimer practice. Three days after the RFC response period ended, the USPTO announced publication of a revised version of the MPEP in the Federal Register. The revised MPEP (Ninth edition, revision 07.2022) was made retroactive to July 2022…. An analysis of the revised MPEP reveals that it contains multiple changes that not only fail to address the President’s and Senators’ concerns [patent thickets], but instead actively facilitate more “restriction thickets”.

Challenging established processes is a commonly recognized leadership principle. In recent weeks, the emphasis by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on reconsidering and reforming patent bar eligibility, especially with regard to a potential design patent bar, represents a significant challenge to well-established Patent Office procedures. If the health and viability of an organization can be defined in terms of its ability to revisit, revamp and evolve existing rules and procedures, then this initiative, led by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Kathi Vidal, represents a healthy and viable intellectual property community.

This two-part article explains the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) practices with respect to powers of attorney. The pattern of neglect of administrative law identified here with regard to powers of attorney alone imposes a $30 to $40 million per year excess burden on the public. For the USPTO’s rules as whole, the costs are about $2 billion per year. Over the last 18 months, about 100 patent attorneys signed on to letters to ask the USPTO to do the simple right thing: conform its practices to the rule of law.

The USPTO recently revised the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) Section 706.07(b) to retroactively impose a first action final rejection (FAFR) policy that significantly reduces a patent applicant’s options (MPEP, E9R10.2019. Fed. Reg. Vol. 85, No. 133 page 41,571). Here, in Part I of this two-part series, we identify and analyze the final agency petition decision behind the policy change. In Part II, we provide summary and analysis of petition decisions relating to premature final office actions. Codifying the new FAFR standard in the June MPEP revision opens the door for all patent examiners to impose FAFRs on substantively amended claims, if they so wish.

When drafting Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications, or applications intended to be prosecuted abroad, a U.S. drafter inevitably faces the challenge of providing a description in line with the requirements of different jurisdictions. By the time feedback is received from the foreign patent offices, it will be too late to make any adjustments, and important aspects of the invention may inadvertently be lost. The challenge might feel impossible when dealing with the requirements of the European Patent Office (EPO), as the European Patent Convention (EPC) regulations on written description are framed in a way that is fundamentally different from U.S. regulations. For example, the requisites of providing an adequate description and notice of the metes and bounds of the claimed invention are framed in the United States as separate requirements (written description and definiteness respectively) with different legal bases (35 USC 112(a) for written description and 35 USC 112(b) for definiteness respectively).

On April 10, inventor Gilbert Hyatt and the American Association for Equitable Treatment (AAET) filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to review a Federal Circuit case that struck down an Administrative Procedures Act (APA) claim brought by the petitioners. If the Supreme Court grants certiorari, they will determine whether a section of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) authorizing examiners to reopen patent prosecution and block a patent applicant’s appeal after a second rejection violates that patent applicant’s statutory right of appeal under the Patent Act. The particular section of patent examination procedure at issue in this appeal is MPEP § 1207.04, titled Reopening of Prosecution After Appeal. This section was adopted by the USPTO in August 2005. Prior to this, patent examiners could propose reopening prosecution to patent applicants who had appealed a decision after a second rejection and patent applicants were free to disregard this proposal. In Gil Hyatt’s case, Section 1207.04 was used by patent examiners to force the reopening of prosecution, ending 80 appeals of examiner decisions to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

MPEP 2141 actually cites to Arendi, but then quotes the case entirely out of context. This is a worrisome problem that can be found in many parts of the MPEP, which makes the MPEP a useful reference tool to find relevant cases, but as useful as an opponent’s brief when it comes to accurately characterizing the holdings of decisions. For example, MPEP 2141 actually cites Arendi for the proposition that common sense can be used to supply a missing limitation from the prior art in an obviousness rejection. That, however, is the exact opposite proposition for which the case actually stands.

Upon filing a patent application, the USPTO mails a filing receipt.  The domestic and foreign claim of priority is stated and should be checked to make sure that it reflects the claim of priority that the inventor intends.  Otherwise, the patent owner may not be able to cure the defect when trying to sue an infringer after it issues as a patent.  If it can be fixed after it matures into a patent, the costs are much higher than the costs to fix while the patent application is still pending. 

Patent claims can recite a numerical range and a patent can be awarded based on the novelty and nonobviousness of the claimed range. Normally, compositions are claimed in this manner but other types of inventions can be defined in terms of a numerical range such as a length as well. In re: Brandt (Fed. Cir. March 27, 2018) explains that very small differences in the respective ranges can support an obviousness rejection unless the inventor shows a meaningful difference exists.

The memorandum points to Amgen for stating that the “newly characterized antigen” test could not stand because it contradicted the quid pro quo of the patent system whereby in order to obtain a patent one must describe an invention (the antibody, not the antigen recognized by the antibody). The memorandum states that in view of Amgen, “adequate written description of a newly characterized antigen alone should not be considered adequate written description of a claimed antibody to that newly characterized antigen, even when preparation of such an antibody is routine and conventional.”

A casual observer may read the Aatrix dissent, or cases cited therein, to say it is improper to consider extrinsic evidence.  In particular, the dissent quotes Secured Mail Sols. LLC v. Universal Wilde, Inc., 873 F.3d 905, 912 (Fed. Cir. 2017), which says “[T]his court has determined claims to be patent-ineligible at the motion to dismiss stage based on intrinsic evidence from the specification without need for ‘extraneous fact finding outside the record.’”.  But Secured Mail is itself quoting In re TLI Commc’ns LLC Patent Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 613–14 (Fed. Cir. 2016), where the court found it unnecessary to look outside the record because the patent itself admitted so much of the claimed invention employed well-known technology.  Neither Secured Mail nor TLI explicitly prohibited a patentee from relying on extrinsic evidence, especially where the specification does not admit the technology is conventional.

While most commentary to date has focused on the implications for litigation, two recent Federal Circuit decisions have promising implications for patent prosecutors struggling to overcome conclusory rejections that claims lack subject matter eligibility.  Since Alice and the subsequent interim guidance by the U.S. Patent Office, one aspect of subject matter eligibility determinations that has frustrated patent prosecutors has been the fact-free, conclusory analysis commonly provided.  However, the Federal Circuit’s February decisions in Berkheimer and Aatrix conflict with the Patent Office’s guidance that “judicial notice” fact-finding is sufficient for subject matter eligibility rejections, and the substantial evidence standard applicable to administrative fact-finding during examination does not comport with the underlying “examiner expertise” rationale for that guidance.

The MPEP requires that “[i]n particular, the initial burden is on the examiner to explain why a claim or claims are ineligible for patenting clearly and specifically, so that applicant has sufficient notice and is able to effectively respond.” MPEP § 2106.07. In examining under Step 2A, “the rejection should identify the judicial exception by referring to what is recited (i.e., set forth or described) in the claim and explain why it is considered an exception.” Id. Specifically, “if the claim is directed to an abstract idea, the rejection should identify the abstract idea as it is recited (i.e., set forth or described) in the claim and explain why it corresponds to a concept that the courts have identified as an abstract idea.” MPEP § 2106.07(a) (emphasis added). USPTO policy instructs that “[c]iting to an appropriate court decision that supports the identification of the subject matter recited in the claim language as an abstract idea is a best practice that will advance prosecution.”