All posts by: Robert Yarbrough

June 28, 2010 — In an a unanimous opinion on the result, though fractured on the reasoning, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision today on patentable subject matter.  The Bilski v Kappos decision is important for inventors and owners of software, Internet and particularly business method patents. Under the law, even if an invention […]

The delay between the filing of a utility patent application to the first office action by the PTO averages three years.  The PTO is considering whether to offer multiple options for patent application review in an effort to reduce the delay.  The proposal would allow the applicant to select fast, medium or slow review.  For […]

Our economy is global and an invention that is valuable in the U.S. likely is valuable in other countries as well.  The Patent Prosecution Highway allows for expedited review of corresponding foreign patent applications upon the allowance of a U.S. patent application. If a patent applicant receives a decision from the U.S. PTO that at […]

Reps. John Conyers (D – Michigan) and Lamar Smith (R – Texas), the chairman and ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, are trying to resolve the problems of patent pendency and the current revenue shortfall at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”).  “Pendency” is the time from filing a patent application until […]

The reports of the death of patent reform have been greatly exaggerated. A bill labeled ‘patent reform’ has been proposed for each of the last several years, but has never been able to garner the votes necessary to pass both the House and Senate. The reason is that the various patent constituencies have very different […]

The PTO needs more examiners and better information technology infrastructure to bring down pendency of applications and improve the quality of issued patents, but does not have the money to pay for them.  For years, Congress has taken the fees paid by applicants for patents and trademarks and used those funds for other purposes, leaving […]

Under U.S. law, a patent owner can sue an infringer in U.S. Federal court if the infringer “without authority makes, uses, offers to sell or sells any patented invention in the United States. .” But what if the invention is sold by a business located outside the U.S. and shipped to a customer located in […]

One of the requirements for obtaining a patent is to provide an application that contains a very specific description of the invention, or in the words of the patent statute: “The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, […]

The PTO announced a pilot program to speed review of patent applications for green technologies.  A pending application can be advanced in the review queue if the application falls within any of several pre-approved technologies and if the applicant submits a petition to ‘make the application special.’  The PTO is waiving petition fees for the […]

Global Findability, which alleged in a lawsuit that Nicholas Cage’s character in the new film “Knowing”  infringed Global Findability’s patent 7,107,286.  The patent addresses storing global position and altitude information “into a single discrete all-natural number geospatial coordinate measurement representation for identification of a geospatial positional location. . .”  In the movie, Cage’s character perceives […]