Posts Tagged: "director ordered reexamination"

Patent Office Orders Reexamination of Tax Related Patent

Typically the Patent Office allows patent owners and third parties to sort out whether a reexamination is necessary. The thought process is that there is no need to waste precious examining resources to reexamine a patent that no one cares about or is enforcing. Thus, something out of the ordinary happened here, although what exactly is impossible to tell. Perhaps the Patent Office was taking some heat on Capitol Hill for these types of patents or perhaps someone just stumbled on something that made them scratch their heads and wonder. It is all just a matter of speculation.

The Strange Case of the Animal Toy Patent: Reexam Redux

Two months ago I wrote about one of my favorite patents — The Animal Toy — which is U.S. Patent No. 6,360,693. See Patent on a Stick: Learning from the Animal Toy Patent. Shortly after writing that article, which was not intended to poke fun at the Patent Office but to merely teach a point relative to claim drafting, I received an e-mail from Stephen Kunin, who is a partner at Oblon Spivak, LLP. Steve wrote to me indicating that this patent was reexamined by the Patent Office and none of the claims exited reexamination. This in and of itself may not be very odd, but something didn’t seem quite right.