All posts by: Adam Garson

About Adam Garson

Do you want to find out whether your better mousetrap is patentable?  For inventors and patent attorneys, Google Patent Search is a cheap (as in free) and easy way to perform a light-weight screening search.  Since 2006, Google Patent Search has allowed use of familiar word searching skills to search a database of U.S. patents […]

Whether an invention is the sort that can be patented is determined by §101 of the patent statute. That section states: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of […]

In April 2012, the The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued its “2012 Special 301 Report” (Report) in which it reviews the state of intellectual property rights protection and enforcement in trading partners around the world.  It’s an interesting document, which underscores the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) to world economy, […]

Inventors and patent attorneys know that creating any invention has two parts: (a) identifying a problem; and (b), solving that problem.  To protect the invention by patent, the invention must be ‘non-obvious.’  That is, if two or more prior art patents or other references when taken together teach all of the elements of a patent […]

The 1966 landmark Supreme Court case of Miranda v. Arizona gave us that famous TV cop phrase, “You have the right to remain silent…” This warning, called the Miranda Warning after the name of the criminal defendant in the case, is so common that many citizens can almost repeat it by heart. The holding of […]

On May 28th, Phillies versus the Mets, ace-pitcher Cole Hamels, allowed four runs in eight innings but got out of an eighth-inning jam by making the right pitches at the right time.  But it was first baseman Ty Wigginton’s game.  He saved the day by going 3-for-3 with a double, home run, two walks, and […]

A recent question posed to us by a law student in Rotterdam, Netherlands (yes, you read correctly) about the status of copyright protection for fashion designs in the United States motivated us to revisit a previous article we wrote in 2009 about proposed copyright legislation referred to then as the Design Piracy Prohibition Act (H.R. […]

The Economics and Statistics Administration, an arm of the U.S. government, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have issued a report on the importance of intellectual property (patents, trademarks and copyrights) to the U.S. economy.   According to the report, as of 2010 over 27 million people are employed directly in industries identified by the […]