Pardon the quote of the Bard, but there is one area of patent law that, indeed, ponders “that is the question.” Bear with us for a moment while we try to set the stage. To qualify for a patent, the patent law statute passed by Congress states that an invention must meet three criteria: it […]
Dear Doc: I used to have “rabbit ears” on my TV. On stormy nights, I had to stand “just so” near the left ear to see channel 17, but other than that, it worked just fine. Then the electronics companies and the gub’ment told me that I needed “digital” TV or cable. Now, I like […]
So, do you know what an “appropriation artist” is? It’s an artist who uses preexisting objects or images to create new works of art. While you might guess that appropriation artists keep many a copyright lawyer employed they also sell their works for large sums of money. Take for example, Richard Prince, perhaps, the most […]
You have conceived of a wonderful new invention and you want tell everyone, but you are not ready for the expense of a patent application. Should you open your mouth? Every inventor feels the tension between the need to maintain secrecy and the need to disclose the invention. If you are a regular reader of […]
As of March 16, 2013 the PTO stopped accepting or reviewing applications for SIRs. Before March 16, the SIR was a technique to notify the world of an invention that the invention owner did not wish to patent. The effect of the SIR was to dedicate the invention to the public so that anyone could […]
Dear Doc: I’ve been listening to NPR, and when they talk about Supreme Court cases, they talk about someone standing around, and how much that matters to all them old folks on the Court. Then they complain that folks lack standing (I guess they never heard of those tall desks like old Tom Jefferson used.) […]
If you’re a regular reader of our newsletter, you may recall in 2011 our writing about Supap Kirtsaeng’s legal problems when he was sued by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (“Wiley”) for selling text books on e-bay. Kirtsaeng, a Thai national, opened a used textbook business in 2009 to support his educational studies in the […]
According to a chart released by the U.S. PTO, about 26,500 provisional and non-provisional patent applications were filed on March 15, up from the about 2,500 applications that are filed on a typical day. The reason: inventors and their patent lawyers (including us) were racing to beat the March 16 deadline. As we have said […]
If you thought reading privacy policies was a was a waste of time you were right. The Carnegie Mellon Institute calculated that it would take 10 minutes to read the privacy policies of the 75 most popular websites at the standard reading rate of 250 words per minute. The medium length of privacy policies from […]
We’ve said it before, but there is an absolutely crucial patent deadline coming up on March 17, 2013 due to a change in U.S. patent law. Contact us immediately to avoid complete and permanent loss of your patent rights if (a) you have an invention for which you have not yet filed a patent application, […]
