Posts Tagged: "patents"

The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet today held a hearing titled “IP and Strategic Competition with China: Part II – Prioritizing U.S. Innovation Over Assisting Foreign Adversaries,” which focused on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) agreement on a waiver of IP rights for COVID-19 vaccine technologies under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) last June. All of the panelists agreed that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency and that an extension of the waiver to diagnostics and therapeutics is likely unnecessary.

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is now a reality. The Court opens its doors tomorrow, June 1, 2023. In the past four articles, we have aimed to dispel myths about some of the key aspects of the UPC. Part 1 focused on the designated UPC judges, Part 2 on the timelines, Part 3 on the remedies that are available at the UPC and finally Part 4 on the financial aspects of the UPC. These articles illustrated that the UPC will become a success story, since there are simply no good reasons not to engage with the Court. This final installment to the series will provide five predictions about how the UPC will operate. We’ll review in 12 months where our peek into the crystal ball got it right, and where it missed the mark.

One of the most intriguing, and frankly long overdue, reforms the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) needs to consider is putting an end to the practice of for-profit entities like Unified Patents and RPX filing petitions challenging a patent. This practice has recently been called into question by the USPTO through an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) published in the Federal Register. The ANPRM, among many other things, raises the question whether the Office should discretionarily deny post grant proceedings filed by for-profit, non-competitive entities that in essence seek to shield actual real-parties-in-interest (RPIs) and privies from the statutory estoppel provisions contained within the America Invents Act (AIA). And two recent decisions from the Office of Patent Legal Administration (OPLA) provide even more hope that the USPTO will take a reasonable approach going forward when it comes to RPIs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled in a precedential decision today that Medtronic, Inc. failed to show the challenged claims of five patents covering catheter technology unpatentable. The CAFC specifically upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) finding that the primary prior art reference cited by Medtronic did not qualify as prior art under pre-America Invents Act (AIA) first-to-invent provisions. Judge Dyk dissented, arguing that the prior art reference had been shown to qualify as prior art, and thus could support a determination of anticipation or obviousness.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today published a request for comments (RFC) in the Federal Register seeking public input on the pilot program for motion to amend (MTA) practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The Office is considering whether to make the MTA pilot program permanent for patent validity trials under the America Invents Act (AIA) and seeks input on the PTAB’s authority to raise grounds sua sponte during the MTA process. The deadline for public comments in response to this RFC is currently set for July 24, 2023.

Earlier today, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Amgen, Inc. v. Sanofi et al. The Court held, as many feared they would, that the 26 antibody examples and detailed instructions for generating additional antibodies within the genus—which covered some 400 pages and included a CD Rom of the x-ray crystallography coordinates of Amgen’s “anchor” (or lead) antibodies 21B12 (Repatha) and 31H4—was insufficient to satisfy the enablement requirement. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not explain what level of detail would have been sufficient, nor did the Court provide direction to the industry on what more is expected to satisfy the enablement requirement. So, we simply learned today that the extraordinary disclosure and detail provided by Amgen was not enough.

On day one of IPWatchdog’s Patent Litigation Masters program yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied two patent eligibility cases that the U.S. Solicitor General had recommended granting. The denials make it fairly clear that the High Court is not interested in helping to resolve the current problems with U.S. patent eligibility law, which generally have to do with a lack of clarity, arguably fostered by many of the Court’s own precedents. Following the last panel of the day on Monday, in which speakers discussed ways to improve and streamline patent enforcement in America, retired U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel told IPWatchdog he thinks the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up patent eligibility is self-serving. “I think the Court doesn’t want to admit they messed up the law in the four decisions – Bilski, Myriad, Mayo and Alice. They don’t even admit that it’s a big problem, but it is a huge problem, and everybody in the patent world knows it’s a huge problem,” Michel said.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a Federal Register Notice today implementing the suggestions it received on expanding the patent bar following its October 18, 2022, request for public input on the topic. The USPTO last year requested public comment on two FRNs that attempted to expand opportunities to practice in front of the agency. The Office said at the time it planned to “expand the admission criteria of our patent bar to encourage broader participation and to keep up with the ever-evolving technology and related teachings that qualify someone to practice before the USPTO.”

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to the Federal Register that proposes a separate design patent practitioner bar. Design patent practitioners would only be able to participate in design patent proceedings. The USPTO is seeking public comments on the changes through August 14, 2023. Currently, there is only one patent bar that oversees those who practice in patent matters before the USPTO, including utility, plant, and design patents. Those already registered to practice in patent matters before the USPTO would not be impacted by the change.

The patent examination process is subject to the well-known issue of hindsight bias. Issues with hindsight bias come up when a patent examiner, without realizing it, uses their knowledge of the invention itself to reject a claim as being obvious. If left unchecked, these issues can lead to incorrect determinations of obviousness, which prolong prosecution, cause unnecessary ex parte appeals to be filed, and force unfair narrowing of independent claims. However, even when an examiner learns about an invention that seems straightforward, human emotions and subjectivity can make it difficult for that examiner to appreciate that the invention was not obvious based on prior art that existed before the invention.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal, Vice Chief Administrative Patent Judge (APJ) Michael Tierney of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and Lead APJ Amber Hagy presented a webinar Tuesday on the Office’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on PTAB practices, walking attendees through some of the key proposals, and repeatedly reassuring stakeholders that the ANPRM does not contain any proposed rules. The widespread confusion about the ANPRM was highlighted during Vidal’s recent oversight hearing by the House IP Subcommittee.

There is little doubt that the way patent rights are viewed and protected has transformed over the last 15 to 17 years. The patent system our government has enabled over that timeframe incentivizes stealing patent rights rather than engaging in an arm’s length negotiation. This is antithetical to basic, fundamental principles embedded throughout American law, and has caused dispute resolution, licensing and enforcement to emphatically derail.

CareDx, Inc. and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University earlier this week filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to review a 2022 decision holding certain claims of its patents directed to detection levels of donor cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the blood of an organ transplant patient patent ineligible.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) promises to improve information gathering and reduce costs in a myriad of economic processes. Since patent law is essentially about recording and accessing information, tools like ChatGPT are great candidates to ease the tasks of patent professionals. As of today, it is not possible to trust GAI tools with confidential information, since any prompt provided to these tools does not guarantee confidentiality and data protection, unless an entity creates its own sandbox with customized implementations that protect the data.