All posts by: Robert Yarbrough

About Robert Yarbrough

If Artificial Intelligence is the Inventor, Who Gets the Patent?

October 14, 2021 Patent

Artificial intelligence (‘AI’) can be pretty smart – smart enough to create new, useful and non-obvious inventions. Take, for example, Dr. Stephen Thaler’s AI tool ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’ (‘DABUS’).  DABUS created two inventions, a light beacon and a food container.  Dr. Thaler applied for patents for those inventions around the world, […]

When is a Design Obvious?

September 2, 2021 Patent

When most inventors think of a patent, they think of a better-mousetrap type patent, known as a utility patent.  A utility patent protects what an invention is and how it works.  U.S. Patent 269,766 for a mousetrap that plugs a mouse with  a bullet from  a  .44 is an example of a utility patent.  Our […]

I’m as Mad as Hell and I’m Not Gonna Take it Anymore!*

August 12, 2021 Patent

‘It’ being the nonsensical state of U.S. patent eligibility, that is.   Over the last decade or so the U.S. Supreme Court has restricted the patentability of numerous inventions as ‘abstract’ or ‘laws of nature,’ including business techniques (Bilski v Kappos), medical inventions (Mayo v Prometheus), biotech inventions (Myriad Genetics), and computer software (Alice v […]

Patent Death Squads? Who Cares?

July 8, 2021 Patent

Patent and invention owners should care.  You should care. Barely a decade ago, Congress created the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and gave it the power of life and death over patents.  In the years since, the PTAB has done exactly what Congress intended – reduce the cost to challenge and kill patents and […]

Who Can Challenge a Patent before the USPTO?

May 20, 2021 Patent

The story today demonstrates that even experienced and sophisticated patent owners, like Apple, can trip over the fundamentals. ‘Inter partes review’ is a way* for a person or company to challenge someone else’s patent before the USPTO.  A person who wants to challenge a patent can petition the USPTO and submit prior patents, applications or other […]

Is There Light on the Horizon?

April 15, 2021 Patent

The horizon of which inventions are patentable, that is.  For the last decade or so, the Supreme Court has been steadily excluding one technology after another from patent protection.  The recent series of cases started in 2010 with Bilski v Kappos, which determined that a method of hedging utility fuel prices was not patentable.  Then the […]

The Half-Billion Dollar Family Business

March 11, 2021 Patent

VirnetX Holding Corporation is a 20-employee, publicly-traded (NYSE: VHC) corporation with a market capitalization of $505 million and with unusual family compensation.  VirnetX owns 190 patents for some of the key technologies of the last fifteen years, including technologies used for Skype, iMessage, FaceTime and virtual private networks. VirnetX is in the business of licensing those patent […]

It’s Official – Patent Examiner Interviews are Effective

February 18, 2021 Patent

After the patent examiner issues a decision (an ‘office action’) on a patent application, the applicant has the right to an ‘interview’ with the examiner.  The interview can be in person, by video or by telephone.  During Covid-19, in-person interviews are out, but video and telephone interviews are available.  In the interview, the applicant can […]

Bling and the Ordinary Observer Test

January 21, 2021 Patent

Utility patents protect what things are, how they work, or ways of doing things.  An example is the guillotine mousetrap that works by, well, the name says it all.  Design patents protect the ornamental design of a product, for example this mousetrap that looks like a demented cat.  The topic this month is design patents. Let’s say that […]

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