Intellectual Property Primer
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Update on Discovery of Patent Prosecution Communications by Jeffrey Thomas, Anne Brody and Pamela Lee
Portfolio Media. Inc. | 111 West 19th Street, 5th Floor | New York, NY 10011 | www.law360.com Phone: +1 646 783 7100 | Fax: +1 646 783 7161 | [email protected] Update On Discovery Of Patent Prosecution Communications By Jeffrey Thomas, Anne Brody and Pamela Lee Law360, New York (June 20, 2017, 5:19 PM EDT) -- In general, communications between an attorney and his client relating to the filing and prosecution of a patent application are privileged. Last year, the Federal Circuit found that such communications between a patent agent and his client are also privileged.[1] But under the joint attorney-client privilege or the common interest doctrine, communications between attorneys and two or more clients may not be privileged in a later dispute between these clients. This article discusses the challenges that courts and companies continue to face in determining whether a party can access these patent prosecution communications in disputes: (1) between two joint owners; (2) between an employer-owner and an employee- inventor; and (3) with respect to a patent agent, in other Circuits and state courts. Jeffrey Thomas Do Joint Owners Share a Joint Attorney-Client Privilege During Patent Prosecution? When a dispute arises between two joint owners, one owner may seek to access the other owner’s communications with the patent attorney relating to the patent prosecution process. In that case, a court would look at a few factors to decide. One factor would be whether the patent prosecution process was handled by only one attorney (e.g., an in-house attorney), or by two attorneys separately representing the two owners. -
Patent Law: a Handbook for Congress
Patent Law: A Handbook for Congress September 16, 2020 Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov R46525 SUMMARY R46525 Patent Law: A Handbook for Congress September 16, 2020 A patent gives its owner the exclusive right to make, use, import, sell, or offer for sale the invention covered by the patent. The patent system has long been viewed as important to Kevin T. Richards encouraging American innovation by providing an incentive for inventors to create. Without a Legislative Attorney patent system, the reasoning goes, there would be little incentive for invention because anyone could freely copy the inventor’s innovation. Congressional action in recent years has underscored the importance of the patent system, including a major revision to the patent laws in 2011 in the form of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. Congress has also demonstrated an interest in patents and pharmaceutical pricing; the types of inventions that may be patented (also referred to as “patentable subject matter”); and the potential impact of patents on a vaccine for COVID-19. As patent law continues to be an area of congressional interest, this report provides background and descriptions of several key patent law doctrines. The report first describes the various parts of a patent, including the specification (which describes the invention) and the claims (which set out the legal boundaries of the patent owner’s exclusive rights). Next, the report provides detail on the basic doctrines governing patentability, enforcement, and patent validity. For patentability, the report details the various requirements that must be met before a patent is allowed to issue. -
Patent and Trademark Cases Stephen Mcjohn
Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property Volume 9 Article 1 Issue 4 January Spring 2011 Top Tens in 2010: Patent and Trademark Cases Stephen McJohn Recommended Citation Stephen McJohn, Top Tens in 2010: Patent and Trademark Cases, 9 Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 1 (2011). https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol9/iss4/1 This Perspective is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property by an authorized editor of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Scholarly Commons. NORTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Top Tens in 2010: Patent and Trademark Cases Stephen McJohn January 2011 VOL. 9, NO. 4 © 2011 by Northwestern University School of Law Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property Copyright 2011 by Northwestern University School of Law Volume 9, Number 4 (January 2011) Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property Top Tens in 2010: Patent and Trademark Cases By Stephen McJohn* ¶1 The following are notable intellectual property decisions for patent and trademark in 2010 in the United States. Notable copyright and trade secret cases will be examined in a subsequent article. Viewed across doctrinal lines, some interesting threads emerge involving the scope of protection, the amount of secondary liability, and ownership of the intellectual property rights. ¶2 The scope of protection was at issue in both areas. Bilski v. Kappos marked a shift from using technical tests for patent subject matter to relying on the basic exclusions against patents on laws of nature, physical phenomena, or abstract ideas.1 Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. -
Attorney-Client Privilege and the Patent Prosecution Process in the Post-Spalding World
Washington University Law Review Volume 81 Issue 1 2003 Attorney-Client Privilege and the Patent Prosecution Process in the Post-Spalding World Jonathan G. Musch Washington University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview Part of the Evidence Commons, Intellectual Property Law Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, and the Legal Profession Commons Recommended Citation Jonathan G. Musch, Attorney-Client Privilege and the Patent Prosecution Process in the Post-Spalding World, 81 WASH. U. L. Q. 175 (2003). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol81/iss1/5 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE AND THE PATENT PROSECUTION PROCESS IN THE POST- SPALDING WORLD I. INTRODUCTION One of the oldest traditions of the Anglo-American judicial system is the concept of attorney-client privilege.1 This privilege and its much younger sibling, the work-product doctrine,2 limit the discoverability of private communications between attorney and client.3 Private communications4 between a patent attorney and a client, however, have not always enjoyed this protection.5 Due to a misconception of the role of a patent attorney within the patent prosecution process, courts denied attorney-client privilege first to all patent prosecution documents, and later to documents containing technical information. This effectively denied the privilege to most documents generated during a prosecution.6 More recently, courts afforded certain documents containing technical information protection, but under a patchwork of different standards.7 Frequently, a disagreement existed between different district courts within a circuit,8 as well as among different circuits.9 The exponential technology 1. -
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS in PLANT VARIETIES: an OVERVIEW with OPTIONS for NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS By
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN PLANT VARIETIES: AN OVERVIEW WITH OPTIONS FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS by Laurence R. Helfer Legal Consultant FAO LEGAL PAPERS ONLINE #31 July 2002 FAO Legal Papers Online is a series of articles and reports on legal issues of contemporary interest in the areas of food policy, agriculture, rural development, biodiversity, environment and natural resource management. Legal Papers Online are available at http://www.fao.org/Legal/pub-e.htm, or by opening the FAO homepage at http://www.fao.org/, and following the links to the FAO Legal Office Legal Studies page. For those without web access, email or paper copies of Legal Papers Online may be requested from the FAO Legal Office, FAO, 00100, Rome, Italy, dev- [email protected]. Readers are encouraged to send any comments or reactions they may have regarding a Legal Paper Online to the same address. The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this document do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations or the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The positions and opinions presented are those of the author, and do not necessarily, and are not intended to, represent the views of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. © FAO 2002 FAO Legal Papers Online July 2002 Table of Contents PART I: LEGAL CONCEPTS RELATING TO THE -
The Integration of International and Domestic Intellectual Property Lawmaking
Essay: The Integration of International and Domestic Intellectual Property Lawmaking by Graeme B. Dinwoodie* It is increasingly impossible to analyze intellectual property law and policy without reference to international lawmaking. That is not, however, merely because several recent domestic reforms have been prompted by international developments.1 Indeed, because of significant U.S. influence in the formation of contemporary intellectual property treaties, U.S. law has undergone less change than most in order to comply with newly-assumed international obligations. Nor is it simply because, in an era of global trade and technological advances, a state is unable effectively to regulate economic activity on its own. Rather, the need for a broader awareness flows most directly from the integration of the international and domestic lawmaking processes. Consider this historical example. As nations met in Berlin in 1908 to revise the Berne Convention, the United States received an invitation to attend with “full free- dom of action.”2 Instead, the Register of Copyrights attended only as an observer.3 The reason might now seem unduly quaint. Thorvald Solberg, the Register of Copyrights explained to the Conference that the United States found it impracticable to send a delegate authorized to commit it to actual adhesion to the Berne Convention since some of the questions to be discussed there were pending before the Congress and premature action at the Convention might embarrass the legislative branch of the Government.4 Today, in contrast, there is a conscious blending of domestic and international lawmaking. International lawmaking demands attention to Washington; and domestic lawmaking cannot be conducted without regard for what is going on in Brussels, * Associate Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law; LL.B., Glasgow University, 1987; LL.M., Harvard Law School, 1988. -
The Impacts of Technological Invention on Economic Growth – a Review of the Literature Andrew Reamer1 February 28, 2014
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC POLICY The Impacts of Technological Invention on Economic Growth – A Review of the Literature Andrew Reamer1 February 28, 2014 I. Introduction In their recently published book, The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee rely on economist Paul Krugman to explain the connection between invention and growth: Paul Krugman speaks for many, if not most, economists when he says, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it’s almost everything.” Why? Because, he explains, “A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker”—in other words, the number of hours of labor it takes to produce everything, from automobiles to zippers, that we produce. Most countries don’t have extensive mineral wealth or oil reserves, and thus can’t get rich by exporting them. So the only viable way for societies to become wealthier—to improve the standard of living available to its people—is for their companies and workers to keep getting more output from the same number of inputs, in other words more goods and services from the same number of people. Innovation is how this productivity growth happens.2 For decades, economists and economic historians have sought to improve their understanding of the role of technological invention in economic growth. As in many fields of inventive endeavor, their efforts required time to develop and mature. In the last five years, these efforts have reached a point where they are generating robust, substantive, and intellectually interesting findings, to the benefit of those interested in promoting growth-enhancing invention in the U.S. -
Can I Challenge My Competitor's Patent?
Check out Derek Fahey's new firm's website! CLICK HERE Can I Challenge My Competitor’s Patent? Yes, you can challenge a patent or patent publication. Before challenging a patent or patent publication, an analysis should be conducted by a registered patent attorney to determine if challenging a patent or patent publication is necessary, and to evaluate the legal grounds for challenging the patent or patent publication. As a registered patent attorney, I evaluate patents and patent applications to determine the risk of developing competing goods. Below are three important questions that must be answered by a registered patent attorney to evaluate the risk of competing against a patented good. 1. Does a particular good infringe on a patent? Typically, a registered patent attorney will conduct a “freedom to operate” opinion to determine if a business owner can commercialize a particular good without infringing on another’s patent. First, a patent attorney will determine if the patent is enforceable. Next, a patent attorney will perform an infringement analysis to determine if a particular good infringes on any of a patent’s claims. To perform an infringement analysis of a patent and a possibly infringing product, first, the patent’s scope must be analyzed. Second, the patent’s claim terms must be interrupted using the specification, prosecution history and extrinsic evidence to understand and construe the meaning of the claim terms. After the claim terms have been construed, then the elements of a particular good must be analyzed to determine if the particular good practices each and every claim element taught by a patent’s claim. -
The Basics of Patents
Patent Webinar Series The Basics of Patents March 25, 2021 Meet The Speakers Indranil Sarkar Sushil Iyer Principal Principal fr.com | 2 Overview • Topics – What is a patent? – How to get one? – Some practice tips • Housekeeping – CLE – Questions – Materials • http://www.fr.com/webinars fr.com | 3 Agenda • Background • Patent FAQs • Types of US Patent Applications • Anatomy of a Patent Application • Claims • Requirements for Patentability in US • Prosecution in the US fr.com | 4 Background Introduction The Congress shall have power . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8 fr.com | 6 What is Intellectual Property? • Intellectual Property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions; literary and artistic works; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. • Patents – protect inventions. • Copyrights – protect written or recorded expressive content. • Trademarks – protect words, symbols, logos, designs, and slogans that identify & distinguish products or services. • Trade Secrets – protect confidential business information. fr.com | 7 What is a Patent? • A grant from the government of the right to prevent others from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing the invention(s) claimed in the patent. • Personal property – can be bought, sold, licensed, bequeathed, mortgaged, assigned. • Limited Term – 20 years for utility and plant patents; 14 years for design patents. • Territorial – must obtain patent in every country where protection is desired. • United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – tasked with examining US patent applications and granting US patents. -
Approaches to Patenting Alloys Before the Russian and the Eurasian Patent Offices
The GLOBAL REACH, LOCAL KNOWLEDGE www.patentlawyermagazine.com January / February 2021 Approaches to patenting alloys before the Russian and the Eurasian patent offices DLE ID EA M S T Law firm RANKINGS A N D A A F R I C Anatoly Nistuk and Mikhail Samsonov, of Gorodissky & Partners, examine the patenting of alloys through history and give an evaluation of both the RUPTO and the EAPO approach to patenting. Pharmaceutical Ben Hoopes, HP Women patent Page 20 in IP litigation Leadership Page 15 Page 35 S TURING FEA LAWYER THE LIFE SCIENCEPG 45 IPC Renew - Preparing for Launch 2 - 240x340.pdf 3 23/06/2019 12:07:44 EDITOR’S WELCOME The AL KNOWLEDGE GLOBALGLOBAL REACH,REACH, LOCALLOC KNOWLEDGE January / February 2021 www.patentlawyermagazine.com Approaches to patenting alloys before the Russian and the Eurasian patent offices Editor’s LE DD EA I S M T Law firm RANKINGS A N D A A F R I C welcome Anatoly Nistuk and Mikhail Samsonov, of Gorodissky & Partners, examine the patenting of alloys through history and give an evaluation of both the RUPTO and the EAPO approach to patenting. Ben Hoopes, HP Women in IP Pharmaceutical Page 20 Leadership patent Page 35 hat features should define the patentability of a solution? litigation Page 15 A question Gorodissky & Partners experts examine in FEATURING LAWYER THE LIFE SCIENCESPG 45 23/02/2021 11:56 relation to alloys in our cover story this issue, with close dd 1 W examination of the treatment of alloys through time and what is THE PATENT LAWYER needed to successfully patent an alloy at both the RUPTO and EAPO. -
DEMOPOLIS Democracy Before Liberalism in Theory and Practice
Trim: 228mm 152mm Top: 11.774mm Gutter: 18.98mm × CUUK3282-FM CUUK3282/Ober ISBN: 978 1 316 51036 0 April 18, 2017 12:53 DEMOPOLIS Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice JOSIAH OBER Stanford University, California v Trim: 228mm 152mm Top: 11.774mm Gutter: 18.98mm × CUUK3282-FM CUUK3282/Ober ISBN: 978 1 316 51036 0 April 18, 2017 12:53 Contents List of Figures page xi List of Tables xii Preface: Democracy before Liberalism xiii Acknowledgments xvii Note on the Text xix 1 Basic Democracy 1 1.1 Political Theory 1 1.2 Why before Liberalism? 5 1.3 Normative Theory, Positive Theory, History 11 1.4 Sketch of the Argument 14 2 The Meaning of Democracy in Classical Athens 18 2.1 Athenian Political History 19 2.2 Original Greek Defnition 22 2.3 Mature Greek Defnition 29 3 Founding Demopolis 34 3.1 Founders and the Ends of the State 36 3.2 Authority and Citizenship 44 3.3 Participation 48 3.4 Legislation 50 3.5 Entrenchment 52 3.6 Exit, Entrance, Assent 54 3.7 Naming the Regime 57 4 Legitimacy and Civic Education 59 4.1 Material Goods and Democratic Goods 60 4.2 Limited-Access States 63 4.3 Hobbes’s Challenge 64 4.4 Civic Education 71 ix Trim: 228mm 152mm Top: 11.774mm Gutter: 18.98mm × CUUK3282-FM CUUK3282/Ober ISBN: 978 1 316 51036 0 April 18, 2017 12:53 x Contents 5 Human Capacities and Civic Participation 77 5.1 Sociability 79 5.2 Rationality 83 5.3 Communication 87 5.4 Exercise of Capacities as a Democratic Good 88 5.5 Free Exercise and Participatory Citizenship 93 5.6 From Capacities to Security and Prosperity 98 6 Civic Dignity -
A Design for Protection
WTR_38 Paginated - 1_WTR 22/06/2012 14:54 Page 102 Co-published editorial Uhthoff, Gomez Vega & Uhthoff A design for protection Mexican legislation does not prohibit the accumulation of rights; thus, a rights holder should seek to protect all elements contained in its trade dress in order to cover as much as possible A ‘design’ is defined as a combination of distinctive as they merely described the which it identifies and distinguishes its lines, colours and/or patterns brought nature and purpose of the goods seeking goods or services and the way in which it together to create a new design or three- protection. wishes consumers to identify them. dimensional form (3D). In Mexico, designs Bearing in mind that it is obvious that a Unlike designs, trade dress cannot be are covered by various pieces of legislation, design must contain similar features to protected through copyright, since trade and can be protected under the laws relating others of the same type or category in the dress comprises a combination of various to industrial designs, copyright or market to assist in its functionality, this elements. Therefore, if a rights holder trademarks. approach cannot be justified. Therefore, it wishes to apply for a copyright in order to The Patent Law establishes that designs has become unreasonable for the Mexican protect its trade dress or the elements can be protected through industrial design Trademark Office to consider that the therewith, it must request protection for registrations and may be eligible for distinctive elements of most 3D forms that each individual element and not the item as protection as industrial blueprints, provided have sought registration are insufficient to a whole.