Patent

Donald Trump USPTO

Long before COVID 19 and remote work, there was the USPTO ‘hoteling’ system. It started in 1997 with 18 employees, and expanded to 500 employees in 2005 and 2006, as the USPTO moved to its shiny new offices in Alexandria.  Over the years, the program has expanded to include pretty much any examiner with more than a year of […]

unitary patent

Long, long ago (as in last year), if an invention owner wanted to protect an invention in Europe, the owner had to either (a) apply for separate patents in one or more of the countries of Europe, or (b) submit a patent application to the European Patent Office (‘EPO’) and, after approval, register the patent […]

GE Financial

Around the turn of the century, several financial analyst types came up with a way to analyze the pricing of financial services to account for all the costs of selling the service.  The basic invention allows a provider (say, an insurance company) to determine the transactional costs at each step of the transaction, such as […]

pig brain

Consider this: You’re a domestic pig, a Sus domesticus.  You’ve spent your entire life in a spotless pen, cared for by nice people in white coats. They feed you, they clean your pen. It’s not a bad life. Sure, you’d be better off rooting around in the mud, but the pen is all you’ve ever known. […]

joseph story

Cast your mind back to your earliest memory.  Mine is of little green bottles of Coca-Cola on the back seat of our Plymouth, out of gas, somewhere in southern Indiana.  Now think about your grandfather’s earliest memory.  I’m not sure what my grandfather’s first memory was, but Grover Cleveland was President and the Wright brothers […]

Bullet Vending Machine

Your team created a new invention, say, for a vending machine that dispenses bullets.* The patent law requires that the name of each “inventor” be listed in the patent application and the inventors’ names are included on the issued patent.  Being an inventor on a patent can be a huge feather in the cap of an employee.   […]

Psychedelic Mushrooms

The past few years have witnessed astonishing growth in commercial interest in the use of psychedelics for treatment of a variety of unmet medical needs, particularly mental health disorders.  With that growth has come an increase in patent filings as companies seek to protect their investments.  IP protection for psychedelics and psychedelic-related compounds shares many […]

LKQ v GM image

Did You Feel It? The Earth Just Shifted Under Every Designer and Design Patent Owner. In March and April, we reminded you that there are two types of patents – utility and design.  Utility patents address how the better mousetrap catches mice.  Design patents address the ornamental appearance of the mousetrap.  Our topic this month is again design patents. […]