Posts Tagged: "USPTO"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision today vacating and remanding with instructions to dismiss as moot a district court final judgment that granted enhanced damages for willful infringement to Packet Intelligence LLC. The appeal was brought by NetScout Systems, Inc. against Packet and relates to a co-pending case in which the CAFC today affirmed several decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) holding all challenged claims of four of Packet’s patents unpatentable as obvious.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently released new guidance for practitioners using artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools. The guidance primarily serves as a reminder of longstanding requirements and best practices for patent and trademark practitioners. For example, patent practitioners have a duty of candor and good faith to the USPTO and a duty of confidentiality to their clients. The guidance does not announce any new law or rule regarding practicing before the Office;  rather, it provides some insight into how the Office expects practitioners to operate when incorporating AI-based tools into their practice.

The United States Patent and Trademark (USPTO) today announced a “National Strategy for Inclusive Innovation” in advance of a World IP Day event being held on Capitol Hill.  The Strategy was developed with support from the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2) and, according to a USPTO press release, “aims to lift communities, grow the economy, create quality jobs, and address global challenges by increasing participation in STEM, inventorship and innovation among youth and those from historically underrepresented and underresourced communities.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential trademark decision affirming a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) ruling that sustained Framboise Holdings, Inc.’s opposition and refused registration of Jalmar Araujo’s mark #TODECACHO. Framboise alleged ownership of the pictured design mark (left) based on prior use of the mark in the United States in connection with hair products, including shampoo, conditioner, hair mask treatments, hair cream, curly hair activator, hair jelly, etc. When Araujo applied to register U.S. Trademark Application Serial No. 88/712823 #TODECACHO as a standard character mark for hair combs, Framboise opposed.

President Biden issued an executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence on October 30, 2023,  announcing a series of agency directives for managing risks related to the use of AI technologies. Now, the Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced several new actions aimed at implementing that order. On Monday, April 29, the DOC said the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released four draft publications on improving safety and security of AI technologies and also launched a program that will help to distinguish between content produced by humans and content produced by AI. Additionally, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today published a request for comment (RFC) on “how AI could affect evaluations of how the level of ordinary skills in the arts are made to determine if an invention is patentable under U.S. law.”

A recent Post Grant Review (PGR) petition raises several interesting questions, including whether the crossing of two varieties of corn previously crossed and already owned by the patent owner results in a non-obvious claimed invention. See Inari Agriculture, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., PGR2024-00025. But as interesting as that obviousness question may be, and how easy it seems it is to get a utility plant patent issued, the question of greater concern for the system relates to which test for indefiniteness the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should be using, and why.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal on April 19 vacated a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that had denied institution of an inter partes review (IPR) for a lighting system patent owned by Rotolight Limited. Videndum Production Solutions challenged claims 1–19 of U.S. Patent No. 10,845,044 B2 via IPR and Rotolight argued the petition should be discretionarily denied under the factors set forth in General Plastic Industries Co., Ltd. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha.

As the hit sitcom Young Sheldon comes to an end next month, a look back at the series offers an opportunity for young inventors to learn about inventorship. The coming-of-age show centers around a boy genius, Sheldon, who has run the gamut of growing up in expedited fashion—experiencing high school, college dorm life, and even a first (failed) kiss (attempt), all before being eligible to drive. Another milestone in Sheldon’s life—his first inventorship dispute—shows that it doesn’t take a boy genius to become a young inventor.

Times are changing at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)! Not only are there rumors that the Senate IP Subcommittee may be a matter of several weeks away from marking up the PREVAIL Act and voting it out of committee, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has finally issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) relating to several changes to the Code of Federal Regulations as they pertain to patent challenges at the PTAB.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will be officially published in the Federal Register tomorrow and that addresses a subset of issues from the controversial April 2023 Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). USPTO Director Kathi Vidal received criticism following the ANPRM, most notably from Congress. In a House IP Subcommittee meeting held last year, members of the Subcommittee expressed confusion about the ANPRM and suggested Vidal may have been exceeding her authority with some of the proposals.

It was a slow week for new patent filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in the district courts. This week saw only 18 new filings at the PTAB—one of which was a Post Grant Review, while the remaining were inter partes reviews (IPRs). Texas Instruments, Inc. continued challenging Greenthread LLC patents, filing four IPRs against  four patents (bringing the total number of IPRs Texas Instruments has filed up to seven). Amazon filed two IPRs against one Nokia Technologies Oy [associated with Nokia Corporation] patents; Apple filed five IPRs against three Resonant Systems Inc. (d/b/a RevelHMI) patents; and Micron filed two IPRs against two Yangtze memory Technologies Company Ltd.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Monday rejected Timberland’s bid to protect its popular boot design. The court explained that the district court did not err in finding that the company failed to prove the design had acquired distinctive meaning…. According to Monday’s ruling, the boot’s design lacks “a distinctive meaning” that identifies them as Timberlands. While the brand’s distinct tree logo remains protected under the Lanham Act, the boot’s design falls short of being “distinguishable” enough to earn the same protection.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today that it will be publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) tomorrow aimed at formalizing the rules governing Director Review of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions under the America Invents Act (AIA). In July 2021, the USPTO announced that it would be implementing an interim rule at the agency in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s late June 2021 decision in Arthrex v. Smith & Nephew. In the Arthrex ruling, the Court found that the constitutional Appointments Clause violation created by the process for appointing administrative patent judges (APJs) to the PTAB was best cured by review of APJ decisions by the USPTO Director. The interim rule began the process of determining how that review process would play out during the day-to-day operations of the PTAB.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced guidance for practitioners and the public regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the preparation of filings for submission to the Office. The guidance comes two months after the Office issued a guidance memorandum for the Trademark and Patent Trial and Appeal Boards (TTAB and PTAB) on the misuse of AI tools before the Boards that clarified the application of existing rules to AI submissions.