The question of whether a term is defined adequately is really a legal question, so the views and opinions of those who are not well versed in the law are hardly probative. Inventors invent and patent attorneys describe those inventions to satisfy the legal requirements. If inventors could describe their inventions to meet the legal requirements they wouldn’t need patent attorneys, but we all know that inventors who represent themselves make numerous errors and always obtain far more narrow protection than they would have been entitled to receive. They just don’t understand the law well enough and are not qualified to offer opinions on matters of law.

What these numbers tell you is if your application is in Art Unit 3622 or 3689 you are in for a long wait to obtain a patent. The numbers also show that if you carry the case all the way through appeal there is quite a high success rate for applicants; 66.7% when in Art Unit 3622 and 71.4% when in Art Unit 3689. It is hard to know for sure what is going on in Art Units 3622 and 3689, but one number jumps out at me as particularly alarming. In Art Unit 3689 nearly 4 out of 5 of the applications they allow require the applicant to hop on the appeal track.

Consider, for example, the old axiom that entrepreneurs must be unwaveringly fixated on a single goal. Most startups are built around a single product or service that is assumed (but not yet proven) to meet a real consumer need and offer a lucrative market opportunity. The CEO of that startup is likewise singularly focused on getting a fully-baked product out the door as soon as possible in order to start generating revenues while at the same time building a pipeline for future offerings. Given the limited resources in most startups, this often means that the engineers are building Version 2 of the product before Version 1 has even been tested in the market.

To all those who can read the Constitution it has to be clear that the Supreme Court’s decision in Golan v. Holder is absurd. It is a ridiculous decision that lacks intellectual honesty and defies common sense. Further, the facts of this case provide ample ground for the suspicions of many who wonder why it is that the United States is so interested in losing its identity and compromising Constitutional principles in order to facilitate some ill conceived plan to join the world community. Simply stated, treaties and international law cannot trump the Constitution. With all due respect to the six Justices who ruled in favor of stripping works from the public domain, the Constitution does not support this decision and any attempts to argue to the contrary are insulting and show a contemptuous understanding of the history and role of intellectual property in America.

Therefore, returning to my hypothetical inquiry above, assume a continuation is filed on or after March 13, 2013, but is accomplished in such a manner so that its does not qualify to be treated as a patent application under current law. This means, as a consequence, that if, for example, the parent application when originally filed relied upon the one year grace period or if someone else files a patent application describing the subject matter of the invention before the filing of the parent application (but otherwise was not the “first to invent”), the claims of the continuation will be rendered unpatentable. Furthermore, since it would have been possible to file the continuation in a manner so that current law continued to apply even after March 13, 2013, one might imagine that a patent prosecutor in this situation may be subject to liability and/or perhaps a bar complaint. If I now have your attention, continue reading, because this situation can take place much more easily than I certainly would have imagined.

I spoke to five patent practitioners (attorneys and agents) who filed successful 12 month accelerated examination cases in 2011 to get their input on how the process went for them and what subjects should be considered by applicants and their patent counsel before embarking on it.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has submitted reports for two intellectual property law studies required by the America Invents Act (AIA) to Congress. The first report was prepared under Section 3 of the AIA and addresses the scope of prior user rights defense in industrialized countries. The second report was prepared under Section 31 of the AIA and concerns international patent protection for small businesses.

Just like people, all brands have their own personality. Brand personality is defined as a set of human characteristics that are associated with a brand name and is determined by consumer interactions with your brand. It is essentially, how your brand behaves in the public light. Your brand personality is determined mainly by your own personality and identity. There are many influences on brand personality including profession, industry, age, gender and emotional characteristics, to name a few. But your brand personality should also reflect what you want others to think of when they hear your name.

In this installment we learn from Director Kappos that the USPTO budget is not a problem whatsoever. While the Office did not achieve a permanent end to fee diversion, Congress has appropriated $2.7 billion for the USPTO for this fiscal year. The USPTO is NOT operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) as is the case with most of the rest of the federal government. Furthermore, current projections have the USPTO collecting $2.5 billion in fees this fiscal year, so there will be a $200 million subsidizing of the USPTO by the General Treasury.

On September 17, 2011, I attended the Signing of the America Invents Act at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. A young lady named Rebecca Hyndman, who is a senior at the high school, introduced President Obama, which took place immediately prior to his signing the Act into law. Rebecca was chosen for this honor because at the age of just 14 she acquired a patent for her own innovation. Recently, I ran into her father, Kelly Hyndman, at another IP event. While discussing the AIA signing ceremony, I asked Mr. Hyndman if he would mind my interviewing his daughter for our blog. With his blessing I conducted the following Interview.

The Obama government restructuring plan is of particular importance within the patent community because it will affect the Commerce Department as well as five smaller agencies. As soon as I heard that my Spidey-senses started tingling. Wasn’t there something in the America Invents Act that applied only so long as the United States Patent and Trademark Office remained an agency within the Department of Commerce? Sure enough, there is. The new fee setting authority vested in the USPTO is contingent upon the Patent and Trademark Office remaining within the Department of Commerce.

The beginning of Part 2 of my interview picks up where we left off, but more generally broadens out to generically ask how Kappos approaches the daunting task of getting over 6000 patent examiners on the same page to provide uniformity when by the very nature of the decisions they make they are dealing with one-of-a-kind innovations. There is always going to be subjectivity in prosecution, but the Kappos Administration seems to have gone back the philosophy of old, which is that patents should be granted on patentable inventions and it is the job of patent examiners, with the help of applicants and attorneys, to work together to find patent allowable matter in applications. But getting the message from the 10th floor of the Madison Building to trickle down to 6000+ patent examiners is something that cannot be taken for granted.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced on January 10, 2012 that it has concluded a five-year lease agreement through the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Great Lakes Region for a 31,000 square foot space to be located at 300 River Place Dr. in Detroit, Michigan 48207. The building, listed on the National Historic Registry, was the former home to Parke-Davis Laboratories as well as the Stroh’s Brewery Headquarters. Anticipated opening is July 2012.

Earlier today IBM announced that it set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marking the 19th consecutive year that the company has led the annual list of patent recipients. Leading up to this announcement I had the opportunity to chat with Manny Schecter, who is the Chief Patent Counsel for IBM, and someone I interviewed previously. Whenever I talk with Schecter I always ask him whether it is a struggle to continue to have senior management at IBM buy into eye-popping research and development budgets. Although I am sure I always sound like a broken record I am genuinely amazed. Schecter replied, as he always does, “it is not a struggle… everyone at IBM is on board with being the industry leader.” IBM spends nearly $6 billion annually on research and development and has now spent a generation as the top patenting company in the world.