All posts by: Robert Yarbrough

A question we hear often is, “Don’t I have to wait until my patent issues to_________?”  The blank is usually filled in with such items as “raise capital”, “license my invention”, or “disclose my invention to others.”  In each case, the answer is an emphatic “NO”.  And it’s a good thing, too, since the time […]

The PTO announced a pilot program to allow small entities with two or more patent applications to move to the front of the review line by dropping an existing patent application.   As a rule of thumb, a small entity is a business with fewer than five hundred employees.   The theory is that a small […]

There are more changes to the patent system to report, and we are hopeful. In our September newsletter, we told you about the ‘count’ system used by the PTO to measure the productivity of patent examiners.  In the bad old days (that is, during the last few years of the last administration), examiners had incentive […]

If you are tired of special .TIFF readers and downloading one page at a time from the PTO patent search website, you have two other free choices: Google Patent Search and Freepatentsonline.  Google Patent Search is a great resource to quickly screen an invention against issued U.S. patents and published applications using familiar Google searching. […]

David Kappos, the newly-sworn Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (‘PTO’), is moving quickly to place his mark upon the agency.  In one of his first acts, Director Kappos launched an internal PTO task force to change fundamentally the way that patent examiners review patent applications. At present, the PTO measures the productivity […]

David Kappos was sworn in as the new Administrator of the PTO this month. As Administrator, he will be the chief executive officer of the agency and in charge of the PTO’s several thousand employees, including patent and trademark examiners.  Mr. Kappos has spent his career as in-house patent counsel to IBM, the single largest […]

For several years, the U.S. has considered methods of doing business and computer software as proper subjects for patents, while the rest of the world generally does not. In October 2008, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals considered the issue of what processes can be patented in the case of In Re Bilski.  The Federal […]

Creative people are, well, creative.  The late Michael Jackson was an inventor as well as an entertainer.  He held U.S. Patent 5,255,452 issued October 26, 1993 for a “Method and Means for Creating Anti-Gravity Illusion.”  His invention was a dance shoe featuring a heel that he could secure to the floor while performing a dance […]

Why not skip the cost and uncertainty of the patent process and simply mark your product as patented or as ‘patent pending’ when you have no patent or no patent pending? The patent statute at 35 U.S.C. 292 provides that falsely labeling something as ‘patented’ or ‘patent pending’ is subject to a fine of up […]