By: Dan Pierron Yet another part of the America Invents Act are Third Party Submission of Prior Art. This presents the opportunity for ex parte participation in the form of introducing prior art to be considered by the examiner in a pending application. This adds another tool in the arsenal of options for a party considering an […]
By: Mark R. Malek My previous articles (see them here, here and here) have provided information on the requirements of disclosing prior art and about how to do some prior art searching. Many times, I am asked by a client to provide them a “complete” patent search that locates every piece of related prior art […]
By: Dan Pierron Receiving a notice of allowance is the patent equivalence of reaching the promised land. After years of effort and expense, the Patent Office has deemed your application worthy of becoming a patent, and issued a Notice of Allowance accordingly. However, this does not necessarily mean the end of the road as far as […]
By: Mark R. Malek The first article I posted about this series was directed to the duty to disclose prior art to the Patent Office during the patent prosecution process. The next article tried to give some information about what constituted prior art. Now that we know what prior art is, let’s go over some good […]
By: Mark R. Malek In my last article, I noted that an inventor has a duty to disclose prior art that they know of when filing a patent application. But what is prior art? The answer to this question is extraordinarily important in determining not only patentability of an invention, but also in determining whether or […]
By: Mark R. Malek Generally speaking, the patent application process is not an adversarial one. In other words, it is not like Business Litigation where there is a plaintiff and a defendant with opposing views that are generally not aligned. Instead, the patent application process is one in which the patent applicant (inventor) works hand […]
The answer to that question is “yes”. However it is a lot more complicated than moving in and staying there. With the massive number of houses in foreclosure, many of them are sitting empty for long periods. There have been cases where people have gone into these homes and stayed in them for a few […]
In many civil cases, a judge will order mediation before the case goes to trial. Is this a useful tool? Or is it a waste of time and money? It all depends on the case whether mediation is going to help or not. Many times a case is an “all or nothing” kind of […]
By Ken Datzman, Brevard Business News 05/28/2012
There are few government entities like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Beyond Wall Street, it is the rooted center of the universe of American capitalism. The office receives patent applications from entrepreneurs and businesses at the rate of more than 450,000 a year, with the majority filed electronically.
Some 6,000 examiners, generally scientists and engineers, review the applications, of which more than 150,000 a year are approved for patents.
As far as who can file to protect their invention, the patient office specifies only that the subject must be “useful.” The USPTO has granted more than 8 million patents since 1790.
These patented inventions help power the economy, in a big, sweeping way. Intellectual–property–intensive industries today support at least 40 million jobs and contribute more that $5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce report
