Tag Archives: patent

The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) is not a Federal court – in many ways, it’s better than a Federal court where U.S. patents are concerned.   The USITC is a U.S. administrative agency charged with, among other things, handling claims by a U.S. patent owner that imported products infringe a U.S. patent.  To trigger USITC […]

There are some great inventions that cannot be protected by patent.  Laws of nature, such as electromagnetism , cannot be patented.  Abstract ideas, such as mathematical formulae , cannot be patented.  Natural phenomena, such as a naturally occurring bacteria, cannot be patented.  These judge-made exceptions to ‘patentable subject matter’ do not appear in the statute.*   In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued decisions that […]

Smart Lady

December 21, 2017 Patent

Last week Zeitgeist Films released a biopic of Hedy Kiesler Markey, an inventor of U.S. Patent 2,292,387.  This WWII patent envisioned that jumping between radio frequencies would avoid jamming of radio-guided torpedoes.  The U.S. Navy rejected the frequency-hopping invention at the time and did not adopt the technology until much later.  Frequency hopping is now widely […]

The answer is ‘yes.’ But why should we care? “Inter Partes Review” or “IPR” is a recent process by which a person infringing a patent can challenge the patent before a panel of USPTO employees.  The USPTO employees are members of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  The person challenging the patent will present […]

The Eastern District of Texas is a large rural Federal judicial district.  The biggest city is about the size of Allentown, Pennsylvania.  Not what you would expect of a hotbed of patent litigation.  Nonetheless, the Eastern District of Texas has dominated patent infringement litigation for years.  In the first quarter of 2017, patent plaintiffs filed […]

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 […]

“They’re baaack…”* *Heather Michele O’Rourke, ‘Poltergeist II,’ 1986 Congress, that is.  Several patent bills are pending, most of which will make it more risky and expensive to enforce a patent or defend against a patent infringement action in court.  These bills represent the second half of the America Invents Act, which changed the patent landscape […]

Dear Doc: Last month, you promised that you’d continue your explanation of patents and copyrights with a rant about patents and trolls. So…? What, exactly, do you have against trolls, other than the fact that they live under bridges and threaten goats? Signed, Been Waiting a Month Dear BWaM: OK. So as not to disappoint, […]

A popular method for protecting and managing intellectual property (“IP”) assets — high valued assets, in particular — is to transfer them to a special company created for the purpose of creating, protecting, licensing, and monitoring, IP. Typically, a corporation may create a subsidiary to hold its IP, which it may license back to the […]

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