Posted on June 22, 2020
When you invent, getting "patent pending" status can be very helpful as a potential deterrent to infringers, an indication of credibility, or as a designation of potential value. Getting "patent pending" status also helps you avoid some of the most costly risks such as losing the right to exclusively protect your invention in foreign countries or, in some cases, even in the United States.Guest Article by Jeff HolmanYou can get "patent pending" status as soon as you file a patent application. And the scope of your "patent pending" status is as broad (or narrow) as the level of detail you ...
Continue reading
Posted on June 20, 2014
A basic rule of patents is that a known idea cannot be patented. In practice the US Patent and Trademark Office has made an exception to that rule by issuing patents for known ideas that are implemented with a computer. Yesterday, the Supreme Court, with Clarence Thomas writing the opinion, said that merely using a computer to perform a known idea is not patentable. The decision helps to bring back logic, consistency and fairness to the patent system. This ruling should take some of the wind out of the sails of those who've been arguing that the patent system should ...
Continue reading
Posted on June 05, 2014
June 4, 2014 - In today's NYTimes the Editors write that two recent rulings by the US Supreme Court have made it easier for people to understand how patents should be written and interpreted. "In Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments Inc., the court ruled that for a patent to be valid, its creators had to describe the essential elements of their invention and how it can be used clearly enough that a person skilled in the field could understand it with 'reasonable certainty.' ...The Government Accountability Office and legal experts have said that the Patent and Trademark Office has granted ...
Continue reading
Posted on April 12, 2014
Patents Are Complicated. Here Are Six Things Every Inventor Should Know.by Mike MarksFounder of Invention CityNOTE: The following is a business perspective on patents and should not be taken as legal advice.Gator Grip's patents have expired and knockoffs have appeared. But for 20 years the patents did their work."Meaningful patent" is a term we use a lot at Invention City. Getting a patent of some sort isn't especially hard. Having patent claims with real value is something else altogether. A great example of this is the Gator-Grip® universal socket invented by Joel Marks (my brother) of WorkTools, Inc. (I'm ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 25, 2012
Apple wins $1 billion+ in patent infringement case against Samsung Even before the trial began it was clear that Samung had been inspired by Apple's concepts. The question was whether or not Samsung had crossed the legal line that distinguishes inspiration from theft. Last Friday a jury decided that Samsung had crossed that line on six patents and awarded Apple $1.05 billion as compensation for actual losses. The jury further determined that Samsung knew it was violating the patents and proceeded to make and sell knockoff products anyway - this means the judge could punish Samsung for its willful patent ...
Continue reading
Posted on September 13, 2011
September 13, 2011 - Last Thursday, just before President Obama's speech on jobs, the House of Representatives passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The new law is considered the biggest change to the U.S. patent system in decades. The US will now join the rest of the industrial world with a system that gives priority to the first to file rather than the first to invent. The legislation allows challenges to patents after they have been allowed for a set period of time — so-called post-grant review — a process similar to that of trademarks. Further, a re-examination of an ...
Continue reading
Posted on June 25, 2011
On June 23, 2011 the House of Representatives passed the "America Invents Act." A similar Bill passed in the Senate last March. Both Senate and House passed their Bills by large majorities. They will now merge the two Bills into one (a process called "reconciliation") and pass it on to President Obama. The President has said he will sign it. The law will switch America from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. The law will also expand the type of ‘prior art’ that can be considered for patentability and sets up a new process for challenging patents at ...
Continue reading
Posted on February 22, 2011
New director wants faster invention patents.The Internet era has been raging for over a decade but only in the last three years has the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) begun to accept a majority of its applications in digital form. David J. Kappos is the new head of the USPTO and his goal is to quickly bring the office into the 21st century. At the moment the patent office’s pipeline is so clogged it takes two years for an inventor to get an initial ruling, and an additional year or more wrangling with examiner objections, for a patent to ...
Continue reading
Posted on February 15, 2011
Hugh Bradner was an American physicist at the University of California whose invention of the wetsuit first revolutionized scuna diving then surfing and other water sports. Bradner took a position studying high-energy physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1946 under Luis Alvarez, whom he had worked with at the Manhattan Project. Bradner's job at UC Berkeley required him to do a number of underwater dives. He had previously talked to United States Navy frogmen during World War II concerning the problems of staying in cold water for long periods of time, which causes the diver to lose large ...
Continue reading
Posted on January 13, 2011
T.A. Sciences Announces the First U.S. Patent for Compositions and Methods for Increasing Telomerase Activity from a Natural Source. NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Telomerase Activation Sciences, Inc. (T.A. Sciences) today announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 7,846,904 to the Geron Corporation. The patent covers the use of certain compounds to upregulate telomerase expression in cells. T.A. Sciences has exclusive worldwide rights to technology under this patent for nutraceutical and cosmetic applications. "This foundational patent is a validation of the millions of dollars and more than 8 years of effort we have invested to bring TA-65, the ...
Continue reading
Posted on January 11, 2011
Staples Found Guilty in PaperPro® Patent Case PaperPro® stapler manufacturer wins patent infringement case against Staples NEWTOWN, Pa., Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In Los Angeles Federal District Court, a jury delivered a unanimous guilty verdict on all claims against office products retailer Staples (SPLS) in a patent infringement case filed by Accentra, Inc., makers of the PaperPro® stapler and its partner WorkTools, Inc.. At issue were three patents for Accentra's innovative spring-powered staplers - which convert the light touch of a finger into staple-driving power. The jury found that Accentra's patents were valid, and that Staples willfully infringed on ...
Continue reading
Posted on December 04, 2010
On November 30th Apple was issued US patent #7,843,449 for a "Three-dimensional display system." The patented technology enables different people at different places in a room to view a screen with images in 3D without special glasses. As each viewer moves from one position to another, a sensor tracks their location and projects a custom view by beaming a split image onto a textured, reflective screen. The separate images are then reflected back into the targeted eyeball to create an un-altered 3D image in any location at any angle. Read a more detailed description from Kevin Parrish at Tom's Guide.
...
Continue reading
Posted on November 22, 2010
On November 10, 2010, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) announced extension of its Green Technology Pilot Program for fast review of Green Tech patents to include applications filed on or after December 8, 2009 through December 31, 2011. The program had been scheduled to expire on December 8, 2010. The program remains limited to 3,000 applications in all.The Green Tech prrogram expedites its review of patent applications for “green technologies” ahead of other applications and also waives the $130 fee for expedited review. The goal is to get green technology market faster by jumping the line for ...
Continue reading
Posted on October 30, 2010
Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry. Full story from Andrew Pollack NYTimes. ...
Continue reading
Posted on October 28, 2010
The 15th Annual Independent Inventors Conference, co-sponsored by the United States Patent Trademark Office (USPTO), and Invent Now® will be held in Alexandria, VA at the US Patent and Trademark Office campus on November 4 - 5, 2010. A pre-conference workshop (November 3, 2010 from 5pm – 7pm) is included with your registration for anyone interested in learning patent basics and how they protect inventions. This workshop is for beginners and is a good foundation for the conference. Presenters will include the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, David ...
Continue reading
Posted on October 17, 2010
Lawyers have found a new gold mine - digging for products marked with expired, erroneous and false patent numbers. It used to be that if a company had a wrong patent number on a product it would be subject to a $500 fine for all of the products it had mismarked. Now it may be subject to $500 for EVERY product that has been mistakenly marked. If a company sold a 1,000,000 units of an item with a wrong patent number on it that could mean a liability of up to $500,000,000. Half a billion dollars for what might have ...
Continue reading
Posted on September 14, 2010
September 14, 2010 - Schutt Sports, an Illinois-based maker of football helmets and other sports gear filed for bankruptcy on Labor Day, a month after it was hit with more than $29 million in damages for violating a patent on helmets held by arch-competitor Riddell. Schutt was struggling prior to losing the patent case. Riddell will now have the field entirely to itself. Here's more from Ameet Sachdev Chicago Tribune. ...
Continue reading
Posted on September 01, 2010
September 1, 2010 - Last Friday Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen filed lawsuits against 11 major internet search and e-commerce companies alleging that they have infringed on four patents held by Interval Licensing, a company that he owns. The eleven defendants are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube. Microsoft was not named. Interval Licensing holds patents of Interval Research, the former company founded by Allen and David Liddle in 1992 to perform advanced research and development in the areas of information systems, communications, and computer science. The patents in the lawsuit cover fundamental ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 26, 2010
August 26, 2010 - The patent system is messy, far messier than most inventors realize. Here's some perspective from Attorney Erik J. Heels. Written prior to the Bilski decision (which he feels was worthless) it's especially relevant for software and business method patents: Patent law is currently broken. Especially software patent law. A pending Supreme Court case (Google Bilski for more info) may fix it or make further break it. In short, you can expect to pay more for, wait longer for, and get less from your patents than you would have 5 or 10 years ago. Cost – At ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 24, 2010
August 24, 2010 - Last June the Supreme Court upheld a business method patent in the specific case of Bilski. The ruling gave hope to holders of business method patents who had feared that all such patents would be found invalid. Their worries are not over. On August 13, the first patent lawsuit to be decided in the wake of the Bilski decision ended decisively in favor of the defendants when a Los Angeles federal district court judge invalidated a patent on a method of online advertising held by Ultramercial LLC. The judge's dismissal of the patent—before claim construction had ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 22, 2010
August 22, 2010 - Anthony Fejes recently received a software/algorithm patent. He has mixed feelings about it but does not believe that the entire patent system should be trashed. Here's a snippet:Ultimately, My own patent: I have seriously mixed feelings about the patents filed during my time at Zymeworks. In fact, they were filed slightly after I left, though I had put a lot of work into them before leaving, I was not the one to finish and file them. They may have even been a contributing part of my departure, as the investors probably perceived my distaste for software/algorithm ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 19, 2010
August 19, 2010 - There is a growing movement against patents in general and software and technology patents in particular. The recent move by Oracle to sue Google is a case in point. Mike Masnick at TechDirt.com presents background for the prosecution, citing the story of how IBM sued Sun Microsystems for patent infringement long ago. In response to Sun's engineers saying that their patent claims were ridiculous, IBM's lawyers said: "OK, maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 18, 2010
August 18, 2010 - President Barack Obama has signed legislation that will enable the the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to keep more of the revenue it generates from patent-filing fees. For years, the USPTO has been overwhelmed by a gargantuan backlog of unexamined patents, many of them for technology innovations. The under-funded agency currently has 1.2 million applications pending, of which more than 700,000 have not even been opened for preliminary examination. Cash generated by filing fees has previously disappeared into Federal funds and has not been kept by the USPTO. The new law gives the USPTO the ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 12, 2010
August 12, 2010 - After you beat a game like Mass Effect 2, Apple wants to send you a comic book that re-tells your unique videogame story... and they've applied for a patent on the process. Here's more from Tom Goldman at EscapistMagazine. ...
Continue reading
Posted on August 05, 2010
August 5, 2010 - One of the more interesting developments in the world of patents has been the emergence of a class of patents known as business method patents. these patents do not describe a mechanism of a machine or a process of manufacturing, they describe a series of steps used in conducting business. The most infamous of these patents is the patent held by Amazon.com for "1-click" buying which essentially patents the use of a shopping cart for buying things from a website. Amazon sued Barnes and Noble with this patent and licensed it to Apple. The incredibly broad ...
Continue reading