Posts Tagged: "Patent Reform"

I guess I have finally made the big time!  Earlier today Hal Wegner’s e-mail newsletter was passed along to me by someone who is a subscriber to his list.  If what I was sent was in fact his entire newsletter for September 12, 2009, I should be expecting a royalty check in the mail.  It would seem that Hal’s newsletter,…

Mike Drummond, the Editor-in-Chief of Inventors Digest Magazine and a decorated journalist, has just  joined the Board of Directors of American Innovators for Patent Reform (AIPR).  AIPR, headquartered in New York, represents a broad constituency of American innovators and innovation stakeholders, including inventors, engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs, patent owners, investors, small businesses, and intellectual property professionals such as patent attorneys, patent…

In order to jump start a constructive debate I throw out the following nine suggestions that would, in my view, assist in solving the patent crisis that we are in; a crisis that could easily lead to the irrelevance of the US patent system as a whole. 1. Revise the Examiner Quota System This is not the first time I…

About 18 months ago while I was at PLI headquarters in New York City teaching a Patent Bar Review Course, my friend Bob Spar suggested that my view of Patent Office rulemaking was not helpful and in fact was part of the problem and that patent attorneys are at least as responsible for the state of the patent system as…

Once upon a time I used to not get worked up at all about proposals for patent reform, because after all they almost always didn’t seem to go through, or even if they did what was passed was hardly what was suggested. Then, my good friend John White told me several years ago that this time patent reform was going to…

Today I am in San Diego, California at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Patent Practitioners. I will be speaking later this afternoon regarding the status of Patent Office rulemaking and providing an update of Patent Rules that were implemented over the last year, so I have patent rulemaking and patent reform on the mind. Thus, when I…

Last week, on July 8, 2009, former Presidential Candidate, former Vermont Governor and former Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean stepped into the health reform debate, discussing in an Op-ed piece published by TheHill.com. It is not surprising that Dean, who is a Medical Doctor and politician, would attempt to let his positions on health reform be known.…

Recently I saw one of Intel’s new TV commercials, oddly enough as I was standing in line at Dunkin Donuts waiting for a coffee. It was playing on the TV positioned perfectly for everyone in line to see, no doubt taking your mind off the wait. I thought this commercial was so awesome I grabbed my cell phone and called…

Last week an IBM patent application covering an allegedly unique system and method for enhancing productivity.  I typically do not get interested in the bizarre, wacky, ridiculous patent applications that are published because all that is required to have a patent application published is the filing of something, no matter how ridiculous, and the payment of the filing fee.  My…

I love to write about patents and intellectual property in general, and I love to read about all things intellectual property as well.  As any writer will undoubtedly tell you, researching and writing takes a lot of time.  It seems that I am increasingly finding interesting things to write about and expand upon, but there are only so many hours…

It would appear as if the swine flu virus, known in the scientific community as the H1N1 virus (so named because of the surface proteins), is not going to be as virulent as some feared it could be. According to Peter Palese, the Chairman of the Department of Microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who wrote an article in…

Talk about turn of events.  Earlier today I posted an article regarding how patent reform legislation is not certain because it is conceivable that there will not be enough votes for the bill on the floor of the Senate.  As I was writing that post the House Judiciary Committee was holding hearings on patent reform, and the hearing did not…

As of today, legislative patent reform efforts are working their way through Congress. We are further along the road to legislative reform than at any point in time over the last 4 years, but the ultimate outcome is still not certain. The Senate Judiciary Committee has reported out a version of patent reform, so there is a real expectation that…

Dr. Chris Mammen focuses his practice on patent and related intellectual property litigation and appeals. Twenty years ago, in the 1988 Burlington case, the Federal Circuit expressed its displeasure with the frequent assertion of the inequitable conduct defense in patent litigation, famously calling it a “plague.” Later that year, in the en banc portion of the Kingsdown case, the Federal…

I recently received an e-mail from Ron Katznelson, who is the Founder and President of Bi-Level Technologies in Encinitas, CA.  Dr. Katznelson is a named inventor in more than 25 U.S. patents and his research and development interests include optimal signal design, digital RF signal processing, digital television, signal representation & sampling theory, intellectual property management and patent law.  Over…