As society progresses into the 21st Century, online dating has been more and more prevalent. To protect their “intellectual property”, some dating websites have gone as far as to patent their online match making systems. A recent Southern District of New York case, FindTheBest.com, Inc. v. Lumen View Technology, LLC, has addressed the validity of […]
In May of 2013 the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) initiated a new program known as the After Final Consideration Pilot 2.0 (AFCP). The AFCP authorizes patent examiners to take additional time in considering responses to final patent rejections. During this process, the patent examiner will conduct an interview with the patent applicant […]
What exactly is obvious? Patent attorneys and independent inventors alike are aware of the standards of patentability; the invention must be (1) new, (2) useful, and (3) non-obvious. Common sense dictates the first two standards of patentability. To be new and useful, an invention must solve an existing problem in a manner which has not […]
This morning I went down to the studios of WBFO 88.7 radio station to record the next installment of the You & the Law radio series. This program is featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and will air on Friday, November 8 at 5:45 p.m. My interview host Mike Desmond met me at the radio […]
A federal jury in a patent-infringement trial, ruled Apple Inc. didn’t infringe Wi-Lan Inc patents. There were two patents at issue: no. RE37,802 that covers CDMA and HSPA data transmission, and no. 5,282,222 for a method for allowing a number of wireless transceivers to exchange information (data, voice or video) with each other. Wi-Lan Inc […]
The USPTO announced on Friday that it has upgraded the Patent Full Text and Image Database to PDF-file formatted images instead of TIFF images. All I can say is that it’s about time. For as long as I can remember the United States Patent and Trademark Office webpage was archaic and very difficult to work […]
As many of you already know, many internet search engines utilize a search system which attempts to predict what you are searching for after you have only typed a few letters. For example, after typing –intelle– into a Google search, a myriad of potential search options appear including intellectual property, intellectual ventures, and intellect. A […]
Due to a recent settlement agreement with the Minnesota Attorney General, patent troll MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC has stopped enforcing specific patents within the State of Minnesota. The patents in question taught a commonly used method of the using basic office equipment to scan documents into e-mail. “Patent trolls shake down small businesses to pay […]
Licensing out Intellectual property can turn into a bit of a headache for even the most experienced patent attorney, let alone an independent inventor. Richard Raysman, Seth Ostrow, Kenneth Adler and Edward Pisacreta tackled this issue in their book Intellectual Property Licensing: Forms and Analysis. When asked about the purpose behind writing the book, author […]
The landscape of American Patent law saw some major changes with the passage of the America Invents Act (AIA). In her newest book The America Invents Act Handbook: A Guide to the Patent Law Reform of 2011, Author and Patent Attorney, Dr. Mary Anthony Merchant condenses the seemingly overwhelming changes into an easily understandable format. […]