Continued Obligation to Monitor Small Entity Status in the Patent Office

By: Mark R. Malek As you may recall, my last couple of articles have been about the different statuses that an inventor can claim when paying fees to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  The first of these series of articles was an introduction to the micro-entity status, which allows inventors that qualify as […]

By: Mark R. Malek In my last article, I outlined the new filing status in the Patent Office that can save inventors even more money in the patent process – that of the micro-entity.  As you may recall from that article, when filing a patent application (and throughout the patent prosecution process), you must pay […]

By: Mark R. Malek As many of you may know, the United States Patent System recently went through a little transformation on March 15, 2013.  The biggest and most public of these transformations was the transition from a first to invent system to a first to file system (more on that later).  One thing that […]

By: Mark R. Malek As has often been the case with some of my articles in the past, I like to introduce little practice tips as something interesting happens in my day to day life of prosecuting patent applications here at Widerman & Malek.  I recently received a call from an Examiner on a case […]

By: Mark R. Malek You may recall that my last article was directed to the requirement to pay maintenance fees in order to keep your patent alive.  As was discussed in that article, maintenance fees must be paid at 3.5 years, 7.5 years and 11.5 years after the patent has issued. When someone has not paid […]

By: Mark R. Malek If you haven’t noticed, many of my posts lately have revolved around the questions that I get from various clients.  This one was a tough one. Not necessarily from the perspective of not knowing what to do, but having to hear the horror story from this client.  Unfortunately, it is a […]

By: Mark R. Malek So you have just received your Notice of Allowance for your patent application.  In the Notice of Allowance, there is a requirement for you to pay an issue fee and a publication fee.  You may have paid the publication fee early pursuant to a request for early publication.  Section 1129 of […]

Irreparable Injury: Lost Market Share

  By: Tyler Hampy Pursuant to the well-established principles of equity, a patentee seeking an injunction against an infringer must satisfy a four-factor test before a court may grant such relief. The patentee must demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate […]

By: Dan Pierron As mentioned in my previous post, one strategy in enforcing your patent is to send an entity that is potentially infringing your patent what is called a “Cease and Desist” letter.  The letter has a few core purposes. First, it provides “actual notice,” which is notifying the allegedly infringing party that you believe […]

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