Intellectual Property Law
Smucker’s is taking Trader Joe’s to court over PB&J sandwiches — and yes, it’s as wonderfully absurd as it sounds. The maker of Uncrustables says Trader Joe’s “crustless” version looks a little too familiar.
Imagine paying an annual tax just to keep your patent alive. That was the latest proposal out of Washington — one that could have hit small businesses hardest and stifled the very innovation patents are meant to protect.
I recently came across a headline that caught my attention: the Administration is turning up the heat on Harvard University, pushing it to adopt new policies around its patents. The Secretary of Commerce has told Harvard that the Federal Government wants a full accounting of all federal funds tied to the school’s extensive patent portfolio.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about whether the America Invents Act (AIA) changed the Patent On-Sale bar. The US Supreme Court answered this question in a short, unanimous opinion by Justice Thomas, with the answer being, no, the AIA did not change the Patent On-Sale bar. In its review of the case, the …
The US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) recently published an updated Examiner Guidance that applies to the examination of software patent applications (See 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50). The hope is that these new Guidelines will speed up the application review process and provide more predictability for the patenting …
The U.S Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month regarding whether the America Invents Act changed the definition of the on-sale bar for patents. Before the AIA, the on-sale bar meant that an applicant for a patent could not have sold or attempted to sell the claimed invention before the filing of a patent application. …
