Posts Tagged: "patent term"

Could In re Cellect Be the End of Patent Term Adjustments? The Federal Circuit Will Soon Tell Us

Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) was designed to serve an important purpose – to compensate patentees for time lost during examination due to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) delays. Most industries rely heavily on their patent portfolios to drive business strategies that ultimately impact their bottom line. The impact of patent term is especially acute in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, where companies spend billions of dollars to develop new drugs. For these companies, every day that their patent is in force matters, generating millions in additional revenue. With so much at stake, companies strive to accrue all the patent term they are entitled to under the current statutory regime, including by way of PTA.

IP Practice Vlogs: Lessons in Calculating Patent Term

After June 8, 1995, U.S. utility patent terms changed from 17 years from issuance to 20 years from filing to harmonize with the rest of the world under the Uruguay Rounds Agreement Act. For design patents, after the Hague Agreement on May 13, 2015, design patent terms changed to from 14 years from issuance to 15 years from the date of grant/issuance. In the United States, patent term is subject to the following: patent term adjustment (PTAs), patent term extension (PTEs) and terminal disclaimers. While many other countries also have PTAs and PTEs, terminal disclaimer practice exists only in the United States because we are the only country that issues judicially-created, non-statutory double patenting rejections.

CAFC Shoots Down Patentee’s Bid to Reclaim Deducted Patent Term

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Monday said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) properly deducted days from a patentee’s Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) under Supernus Pharms., Inc. v. Iancu because there were clear steps the applicant could have taken to conclude prosecution. Eurica Califorrniaa owns U.S. Patent 10,245,075 for a “Nondestructive means of ectopic pregnancy management.” Following a lengthy prosecution, the examiner made an amendment indicating minor additional changes to the claim language and issued a notice of allowance on December 11, 2018. Califorrniaa requested an additional interview on January 7, 2019, and included a new proposed amendment.

China extends drug patent exclusivity to 25 years

Among members of the news media, patents have been a popular whipping boy when contemplating why Americans pay higher drug prices relative to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the Chinese national government extended the period of exclusivity on pharmaceutical patents from 20 years up to 25 years. While China makes moves to embrace further innovation in the pharmaceutical sector by extending exclusivity for drug developers, the United States has evidenced an incredible amount of skepticism regarding the activities of pharmaceutical patent owners trying to protect their property.

It’s time to talk about a longer patent term in America

The brief duration of the patent term is why a patent is considered a wasting asset. Today, given the erosion of the patent rights over the last 12 years, one has to wonder whether the brief patent term is long enough to properly incentivize innovators… It is time to serious ask whether the 20 year basic patent term – a term that no patent ever actually fully enjoys – is too short in light of the extraordinary erosion of the rights associated with the patent grant over the last 12 years. If an absolute maximum of 17 years of term versus life plus 70 made sense when patents were strong, what number for patents makes sense now that they are so weak and fragile?