Posts Tagged: "Kathi Vidal"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yesterday denied a request for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal of a February CAFC decision that held the Office’s application of Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act to reject the mark TRUMP TOO SMALL was unconstitutional. In its February decision, the CAFC held that “applying section 2(c) to bar registration of [Steve] Elster’s mark unconstitutionally restricts free speech in violation of the First Amendment.” Elster attempted to register the trademark TRUMP TOO SMALL for use on T-shirts, but an examiner refused the application, saying that section 2(c) bars registration of a mark that “[c]onsists of or comprises a name . . . identifying a particular living individual” without the individual’s “written consent.”

Following U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal’s blog post in July explaining that she will be revisiting the Office’s 2019 subject matter eligibility guidance, the USPTO today announce a September 1 Federal Register Notice requesting public comments on the existing guidance. The Notice explained that “given the overwhelming interest in the guidance, the USPTO will now accept feedback via the Federal eRulemaking Portal until October 15, 2022.”

Late last week, the parties to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Review of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) institution decisions in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01064 and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01229, filed their opening briefs. While OpenSky vehemently denied any abuse of the PTAB system, VLSI said the cases force the USPTO to answer the question “whether the Office should allow itself to be used to facilitate extortion.”

In a Director’s Forum blog post published earlier today, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal recounted the Office’s efforts over the last several years to make U.S. patent eligibility standards clearer for applicants and said that the agency will be revisiting the 2019 subject matter eligibility guidance issued by the previous administration in an effort to bring further clarity to the examination process.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) yesterday announced and today published an official Request for Comments on the interim process for Director Review of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions, the Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) process and the interim process for PTAB decision circulation and internal PTAB review. USPTO Director Kathi Vidal released updated interim guidance on Director Review and PTAB decision circulation/internal review soon after taking office in April and has been accepting preliminary feedback via a dedicated email address, but the comments received in response to this request will officially  inform upcoming notice-and-comment rulemaking to formalize these processes, as well as any modifications to the interim processes prior to formalization. Comments are due by September 19, 2022.

Starting August 6, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will require all trademark filers to verify their identities in order to file electronic trademark forms. The move comes as an attempt to stop trademark scam entities and was announced in a blog post penned by USPTO Director Kathi Vidal and Commissioner for Trademarks David Gooder last week. According to the post, the identity verification process started as a voluntary option in January 2022 “to better serve our legitimate customers and help prevent bad actors from violating our USPTO Rules of Practice and website terms of use.” The Office has seen a sharp increase in fraudulent trademark filings over the last six years, as well as a rise in foreign scammers from China, Pakistan, and elsewhere outside the U.S.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal has issued a memorandum on the “Interim Procedure for Discretionary Denials in AIA Post-Grant Proceedings with Parallel District Court Litigation” clarifying current Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) practice on discretionary denials of inter partes review (IPR) and post grant review (PGR) proceeding institutions. The memo and corresponding press release explain that the PTAB “will not deny institution of an IPR or PGR under Fintiv (i) when a petition presents compelling evidence of unpatentability; (ii) when a request for denial under Fintiv is based on a parallel ITC proceeding; or (iii) where a petitioner stipulates not to pursue in a parallel district court proceeding the same grounds as in the petition or any grounds that could have reasonably been raised in the petition.”

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal and outgoing Acting Deputy Director Drew Hirshfeld joined IPWatchdog’s CEO and Founder Gene Quinn today to discuss Hirshfeld’s nearly 30-year career with the Office, as well as Vidal’s philosophy as she embarks on her journey as the new Director. Vidal emphasized the importance of dialogue in shaping USPTO practices and processes but said she also will not wait around indefinitely on input over doing “what’s right for the country.” She said: “We will get feedback [but] that’s not going to stop us from acting.” Hirshfeld, who spoke with Quinn on his last day in office, joined the USPTO in 1994.

On June 8, a letter signed by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators was sent to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal voicing concerns over the anti-competitive impacts of so-called “patent thickets,” especially in the drug industry. The senators’ letter urged Director Vidal to address issues of large numbers of patents granted to cover various aspects of a single pharmaceutical treatment, “primarily made up of continuation patents.” The letter, signed by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Braun (R-IL), advances a few claims about continuation filings that don’t come from any clear source.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Deputy Director, Drew Hirshfeld, will step down from a nearly 30-year career with the Office on June 21, 2022. That very same day, Drew Hirshfeld will join Gene Quinn, President & CEO of IPWatchdog, Inc., for a conversation to take a look back at…

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal has intervened in two Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) cases that have caused much controversy in the patent world. Vidal yesterday granted Director Review in both OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01064 and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01229, both of which have been the subject of scrutiny by members of Congress and patent practitioners, since the petitioners involved were incorporated after Intel was found to have infringed VLSI’s patents in district court and have no discernable business operations beyond challenging VLSI’s patent claims. The two entities’ petitions were also nearly identical to inter partes review (IPR) petitions previously filed by Intel that had been rejected by the USPTO.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Deputy Director Drew Hirshfeld will step down from a nearly 30-year career with the Office on June 21, the USPTO announced today. Hirshfeld became Commissioner for Patents with the USPTO in 2015. He was appointed to a second five-year term in that role in July 2020. Before that, he served as Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, and for two years as the USPTO Chief of Staff for David Kappos. He also served as a Supervisory Patent Examiner, as well as a Group Director of Technology Center 2100, overseeing Computer Networking and Database workgroups. Hirshfeld first joined the agency in 1994 as a patent examiner.

On Wednesday, May 25, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal and a panel of academics from Silicon Valley participated in a 90-minute, live Q&A webinar regarding the state of the USPTO. I attended virtually. I am a five-time world jump rope champion and the only jump roper to design and patent a jump rope handle technology. I was granted my two patents (US 7,789,809 B2 and US 8,136.208 B2) in 2010/2012. I started my jump rope manufacturing business, JumpNrope, in 2010 here in Louisville, Colorado. I am proud to also say that I source all my jump rope parts and pieces from U.S. vendors. We make all our jump ropes by hand in Colorado. My technology not only changed the sport of jump rope by offering a precision speed jump rope handle, but it also changed the fitness industry. To date, hundreds of companies have infringed on my patent, including Rogue Fitness, the largest fitness distributor for CrossFit and Strongman. As detailed in my case, I believe that Rogue has willfully infringed on my patent since 2012 by selling tens of millions of dollars’ worth of infringing jump ropes per year.

Following a late April request by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI)  to then newly-confirmed United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal asking her to respond to a number of questions surrounding abuse of the inter partes review (IPR) system, Vidal last week sent a letter explaining she is working on the problem. The senators’ April letter had expressed concern over Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions to institute inter partes review (IPR) proceedings in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC. “The facts and circumstances around these proceedings suggest petitioners OpenSky Industries, LLC (OpenSky) and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC (PQA) brought the proceedings to manipulate the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for their own financial gain,” explained the letter.