All posts by: Robert Yarbrough

About Robert Yarbrough

New Patent Legislation Pending 2015

May 29, 2015 Patent

“They’re baaack…”* *Heather Michele O’Rourke, ‘Poltergeist II,’ 1986 Congress, that is.  Several patent bills are pending, most of which will make it more risky and expensive to enforce a patent or defend against a patent infringement action in court.  These bills represent the second half of the America Invents Act, which changed the patent landscape […]

Want to sell your patent?

April 30, 2015 Patent

Google is running what it calls a ‘patent purchase promotion.’  From May 8 through May 22, 2015, you can offer to sell your issued U.S. patent to Google.  You must provide the patent number, contact information and a take-it-or-leave-it price along with the submission contract.  Google will let you know if it is interested by […]

PTO Axes the SAWS Program

March 30, 2015 Patent

The PTO intended that its secret Sensitive Application Warning System (‘SAWS’) program would avoid embarrassment to the agency by requiring additional layers of review for potentially controversial patent applications.  The program had exactly the opposite effect and the patent community harshly criticized the PTO for the secret and arbitrary nature of the program.  The PTO […]

The Bride of Patent Reform II Returns, Again

March 30, 2015 Patent

It’s Spring, so the thoughts of the lobbyists representing high-tech heavy weights turn to crippling the U.S. patent system.  Competing bills are already pending in Congress.  Why do the giant high-tech companies do it? The sound-bite reason given is to stop the depredations of patent ‘trolls;’ that is, entities that own patents but that do […]

Changes in U.S. Design Patent Law

February 27, 2015 Patent

  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues both ‘utility’ and ‘design’ patents.  A ‘utility’ patent protects how something works (e.g., the better mousetrap).  A ‘design’ patent protects the appearance of the thing (e.g., a mousetrap bait that resembles cheese).  Design patent law in the U.S. is about to change.  The U.S. has taken the […]

PTO’s Secret SAWS Program

February 27, 2015 Patent

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has a secret Sensitive Application Warning System (‘SAWS’) program for extra review of patent applications where action might embarrass the agency.  The problem is how the program functions and which applicants and applications are subject to SAWS are all secret.  We know only the broadest guidelines for the program […]

Secrecy and Grapes: The ‘Public Use” Concept Under Patent Law

January 30, 2015 Patent

We’ll start with the conclusion: don’t use your invention in public until AFTER you file a patent application. Back to the beginning:  Under the patent statute, a ‘public use’ of an invention prior to filing a patent application will destroy U.S. patent rights to the invention.  Before March 16, 2013, the inventor had one year […]

Death Spiral of Software Patents

October 30, 2014 Patent

In the not-so-slow death spiral of software patents in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Alice v CLS Bank, another trial court has determined that a patent for software should not have been issued because the software addressed by the patent is not the kind of invention eligible for patenting.  In the case of […]

See the Amazing Shrinking Software Patent (Before It’s Gone)

September 30, 2014 Patent

As discussed above, the Alice v CLS Bank decision of the United States Supreme Court has the potential to preclude patent protection for many software and computer-implemented inventions and to invalidate many issued patents for those inventions.  The Court gave only the sketchiest guidance on how to determine when a claimed invention is too abstract. […]

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