Posts Tagged: "Gene Quinn"

Communications between the C-suite and IP counsel can be layered with misunderstanding and peril. How can IP teams get the resources they need to do the job they are tasked with doing if the C-suite doesn’t understand what it is that the IP department is actually delivering for the company, or even capable of delivering for the company? Too often…

On April 27, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), both members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, wrote to Kathi Vidal, the newly confirmed Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to inquire as to why the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is allowing itself to become weaponized. “We write to express our concern about the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) recent decisions to institute inter partes reviews (IPRs) in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC,” wrote Hirono and Tillis, who would go on to point out that the “facts and circumstances” suggest that the challengers “brought the proceedings to manipulate the [USPTO] for their own financial gain.”

In this special 90-minute webinar, we will speak to in-house lawyers from some of the most innovative companies in the world. The panelists were chosen from companies identified in the “Innovation Momentum 2022: The Global Top 100” report by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. The report uncovers forward-thinking innovative companies that leverage the patent system to realize innovation momentum. The unique…

Last night, the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property published an op-ed in The Hill on the important role the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) plays in the U.S. patent ecosystem, and expressed their commitment to strong patent rights as a necessity for American innovation to flourish. “In order to ensure America’s continued dominance in all areas of innovation, we must have strong patent rights,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) wrote. “However, for our patent rights to truly be strong, they have to be based on high-quality patents… The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) plays a critical role in this process and is a necessary backstop to invalidate truly low-quality patents that do not represent true innovation and never should have been issued.”

Over the past 80 years, approximately 40% of all FDA-approved pharmaceutical products have been in the form of pharmaceutical salts. The typical route for claiming such salts in patents involves claim cascades beginning with the ubiquitous “and pharmaceutically acceptable salts thereof” and often ends by naming the salt species of interest. Examples of such salts include sodium or hydrochloride salts…

The story of hold-up has seduced many who believe patents stand in the way of innovation, but what product or service has ever been held up by patent owners, or patent wars? Even in the area of smartphones or telecommunications, we can reliably predict that next year’s technology will be superior to this year’s technology, as devices and the services…

Online marketplaces, such as Amazon.com, provide brands unprecedented growth opportunities, but also give a similar advantage to brand competitors by offering an inexpensive and easy forum to market copycat, counterfeit, or infringing products. U.S. patent rights are traditionally enforced in federal courts or through International Trade Commission investigations, but these enforcement strategies can be slow and expensive, and deploying them…

Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate officially confirmed Judge Leonard P. Stark to serve as a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit bench has great importance to the world of patent law as this is the U.S. federal court of appeal with specialized subject matter jurisdiction over all patent cases arising in U.S. district court and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Judge Stark was confirmed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 61-35 vote, reported to be one of the most bipartisan confirmation votes thus far into the Biden Administration. Perhaps chief among Judge Stark’s qualifications that inspired such confidence in his nomination at the Senate was his previous position as U.S. District Judge for the District of Delaware. Serving as the Chief Judge of that district court since 2014, Judge Stark’s docket has seen more than 2,400 patent cases filed since he joined the District of Delaware back in 2010.

One of the major challenges when licensing, transacting, or managing Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) is that there is no public database that provides information about verified SEPs. Standard-setting organizations (SSOs) such as ETSI (4G / 5G), IEEE (Wi-Fi), or ITUT (HEVC/VVC) maintain databases of so-called self-declared patents that are required to be licensed pursuant to a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory…

Is the Supreme Court competent to handle issues dealing with technology? The question is often discussed in private among patent attorneys who find themselves completely befuddled by the wanton disregard and open duplicitous handling of patent laws by the Nation’s High Court. In one decision, the Supreme Court will wax poetically about the need to adhere to precedent, and citing stare decisis, and then overrule well-established, 30-year-old Supreme Court precedent. The whim and fancy – and intellectual dishonesty – of the Supreme Court knows no bounds when it comes to patent law. But now, just how little at least some of the Justices know about basic science – and logic — has become glaringly and unmistakably obvious to everyone, thanks to the recent oral argument held regarding vaccine mandates.

Over the past 80 years, about 40% of all FDA-approved pharmaceutical products have been in the form of pharmaceutical salts. The typical route for claiming such salts in patents involves claim cascades beginning with the ubiquitous “and pharmaceutically acceptable salts thereof” and often ends by naming the particular salt species of interest. Examples of such salts include sodium or hydrochloride…

The value of intangible assets has reached staggering levels. By some estimates, as much as 90% of S&P valuation is attributed to intangible assets. With this increase in intangible assets valuation, companies and employees have become mindful of the need to extract value wherever possible. Still, for a variety of reasons the role of IP Manager can be difficult, with…

With legal processes undergoing profound transformation, freedom-to-operate is ripe for modernization. Patent data has become unwieldy and it is no longer feasible to maintain analysis in spreadsheets as new purpose-built models are available to instinctively guide processes, integrate patent data, and capture decisions. In our last webinar, we covered common FTO issues and best practices from both in-house and outside…

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), created by the America Invents Act (AIA) just over 10 years ago, is the most electrifying lightning rod in the industry. As explained repeatedly by Members of Congress at the time the AIA was enacted, the purpose was to create a streamlined, less expensive, alternative administrative means to challenge the invalidity of issued patents. Sadly, with that being the stated purpose, the creation of the PTAB can be objectively characterized as nothing other than an abysmal failure. What has evolved is anything but streamlined, and certainly not inexpensive, even compared with district court litigation.

Yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member on the Senate IP Subcommittee, wrote to Ambassador Katherine Tai, the United States Trade Representative who is responsible for negotiating an IP Waiver to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO). This TRIPS IP Waiver is generated by proposals submitted by South Africa and India and seeks the waiver patent and trade secret protections relating to COVID-19 innovations. This is the fifth such letter Tillis has sent Tai. As noted by Senator Tillis and many commentators, including here on IPWatchdog, the proposed TRIPS IP Waiver is nothing more than an attempt to steal intellectual property rights covering important innovations that took nearly a generation to bring to fruition. And now we have definitive proof.