13 January

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This Week in Washington IP: Increasing Inventor Diversity, USCMA Implementation and EU Investments Into R&D

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This week in Washington-based IP events, the Senate will host a series of committee hearings to explore the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) implementation bill recently passed by the House of Representatives, although political turmoil in D.C. is expected to delay the Senate’s passage of that legislation. The Senate Commerce Committee will also convene a hearing this week to focus on how the U.S. can maintain a competitive edge in several areas of innovation. Over in the House, the Small Business Committee will discuss findings on minority and women patenting rates in the recent SUCCESS Act study. Other House committees will focus...

13 January

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It’s Official: SCOTUS Will Not Unravel Section 101 Web

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The Supreme Court this morning released its orders list, in which it denied all pending petitions for certiorari on cases concerning patent eligibility. The Court has now made it fully clear that it does not plan to wade back into the Section 101 debate, leaving it up to Congress to clarify the law. Thus—with an impeachment trial and presidential election looming this year—a quick 101 fix seems increasingly unlikely. The Court considered a number of petitions concerning Section 101 on Friday. Of them, Athena Diagnostics v. Mayo Collaborative Services was thought to have the best chance of being granted. In December, the United States...

13 January

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Three Key Strategies for Adapting Patent Departments to Agile Innovation Settings

Posted by COFFYLAW, LLC

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As companies grow their digital business, many R&D organizations transition to Agile innovation practices*, both in software and hardware development. Any implementation of Agile leads to key changes in how firms innovate. Changes include how R&D objectives are set, how resource prioritizations are made, and how fast development cycles are run. Instead of the traditional approach of setting goals early on and seeing changes as unwanted deviations from plan, Agile brings a state of constant evolution, as Agile teams find, solve and reformulate problems to create as much customer value as possible. Resource prioritization is more active and selective as...

12 January

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Rules Governing Admission to the Bar for In-House Counsel

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The issue of unauthorized practice of law is a concern for all attorneys, and something that periodically does catch up with patent attorneys. The typical scenario where this issue arises is when patent attorneys are admitted in one state and have an office in another state but provide more than patent related services. See e.g. In the Matter of Michael W. Starkweather, Proceeding No. D2012-31 (2013) (Starkweather issued reprimand via reciprocal discipline. In 2019, Starkweather was suspended for a period of three years for violating multiple disciplinary rules. He was caught up in the World Patent Marketing investigation spearheaded by the Federal...

11 January

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What Brand Owners and Small Businesses Can Learn from Backcountry.com’s Trademark Enforcement Campaign

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U.S.-based online outdoor goods retailer, Backcountry.com, has faced a significant social media backlash over the past month, with both customers and competitors publicly reacting to its aggressive trademark enforcement campaign. It all started when news broke that the brand had taken action against a huge number of smaller companies that happened to use the term “backcountry” in their names. Public documents revealed that Backcountry.com had been attempting to cancel trademarks against businesses using the term, filing lawsuits against a multitude of smaller companies over the past two years. The impact was far ranging, with disputed trademarks, product and business names including American Backcountry, Backcountry...

16 December

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Eight Tips to Protect Your Trade Secrets with Effective Restrictive Covenant Agreements

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Trade secret theft is often an inside job. Employees who know they’re about to leave for a competitor or start their own competing business will sometimes try and get an unfair head start by taking their employer’s confidential information—customer lists, strategic plans, etc.—as they head out the door. A necessary tool for preventing the misappropriation and use of a company’s valuable trade secrets is a well-crafted employee restrictive covenant agreement. Having employees under at least some form of such an agreement is important for two reasons. First, both state and federal trade secret statutes require employers to take reasonable steps to...

16 December

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Latest IFI CLAIMS Report Shows U.S. Patent Grants Are Up 15% Over 2018

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On November 25, former Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that chastised the Department of Energy for filing an amicus brief on behalf of Qualcomm in a case that can only be properly described as the ongoing persecution of Qualcomm at the hands of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). What Chertoff fails to state, however, is that not only has the Department of Energy come out in support of Qualcomm, but so too has the Department of Justice, as well as many others, including former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel. Chertoff also conveniently...

15 December

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Five Years Later, the U.S. Patent System is Still Turning Gold to Lead

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Five years after the last of the four decisions in patent eligibility doctrine by the Supreme Court—creating what is now referred to as the Alice-Mayo framework—the impact of this upheaval in the patent system has become even more clear. Ongoing court decisions and new data confirm that the Alice-Mayo framework has wrought an unsettling revolution and sowed uncertainty in what former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director David Kappos has referred to as the “the greatest innovation engine the world has ever known.” As policy debates on subject matter eligibility ramped up this past year, it is time to return back to the original dataset...

14 December

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Federal Circuit Reverses PTAB’s Invalidity Decision Regarding a Wireless Communications Patent

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In November, the Federal Circuit issued an opinion reversing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (the PTAB or the Board) decision that claim 8 of IPR Licensing Inc.’s (IPRL) wireless communications patent—U.S. Patent No. 8,380,244 (the ‘244 Patent)—was unpatentable as obvious. The Board’s obviousness finding as to claim 8 was erroneous as it relied on a prior art reference that IPRL could neither anticipate nor rebut. Furthermore, its finding was, for the second time, unsupported by substantial evidence. See In re IPR Licensing, Inc. (Fed Cir. Nov. 22, 2019) (Before Newman, O’Malley, and Taranto, Circuit Judges) (Opinion for the Court, O’Malley, Circuit Judge). The ’244 patent...

13 December

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IBM Inventor Chieko Asakawa Named Inventor of the Year at IPO Education Foundation 2019 Awards Dinner

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Last night at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, the old home of the original Patent and Trademark Office, the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation (IPOEF) held its annual Awards Dinner. The IPOEF Awards Dinner is one of the great industry events; an unapologetic celebration of innovation. Each year, this Awards Dinner recognizes the Inventor of the Year, as well as recognizing an IP Champion, Executive of the Year and youth winners of the IP Video Contest. Manny Schecter, Chief Patent Counsel for IBM and president of the IPOEF, began the awards program segment of the evening by...