Patent

Designs for patents

Are you an inventor or an invention owner?  Do you intend to do business with the Federal government?  Listen up, because we have crucial information for you. A non-disclosure agreement (‘NDA’) is a contract not to disclose an invention to other people.  If an inventor or owner discloses an invention under an NDA and the […]

Designs for patents

Before an inventor will build 10,000 units of a new invention, he or she will first build a prototype – or many prototypes – to make sure that the invention works as it should.  For many inventions, the inventor does not have the resources to build the prototype and will farm out prototype production to […]

gavel of justice

for the Supreme Court to restore some balance to the patent system. The power of patents has eroded over the last decade, with the Supreme Court concluding that an infringer can only be enjoined from infringing in rare circumstances (Ebay v MercExchange) that pretty much any process that does not require a machine is not patentable […]

Designs for patents

  If you have patents or have been involved in patenting, then you have heard about the  difference between design and utility patents.  The explanation probably went something like this: A utility patent protects how a thing does what it does.  A design patent protects the appearance of the thing. And: A design patent cannot […]

Designs for patents

Entire industries are built around the business model of a cheap product and expensive consumables for that product – think ink jet printers, electric toothbrushes and shaving razors.   Controlling replacement parts also is a lucrative sideline for manufacturers of big-ticket items – prime examples are automobile fenders and other collision repair parts. So why don’t […]

scales of justice

In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Joe Nocera discussed “patent trolls” and the concept of efficient infringement of patent rights.  Briefly, this idea is that large companies just ignore patents completely, taking a “so sue me” attitude, knowing that they have legions of lawyers who can wear down patent owners, and that […]

Designs for patents

Apple and Samsung have been fighting for years over copying by Samsung of patented features of Apple’s iPhone and iPad.  The features at issue in a recent Apple v Samsung case before the Federal Circuit Court were swipe-to-unlock, telephone number recognition, and spelling correction.  A jury found that Samsung actively copied these features and infringed the patents […]

Designs for patents

In Alice v CLS Bank, the Supreme Court determined that an abstract business method implemented by software entirely within a computer was not ‘patentable subject matter,’ meaning that the invention could not be protected by patent even though it met all of the requirements for a patent; namely, the process was novel, unobvious and had […]

Designs for patents

‘Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead!’* At least insofar as patent licensing goes.  On June 22 the Supreme Court decided yet another patent case – this one relating to patent royalties after the patent expires.  In 1964, the Supreme Court in the Brulotte case determined that even with a contract, a patent owner cannot collect royalties for […]