Monthly Archives: February 2014

Important upcoming industrial design events

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A number of recent developments have forced practitioners, even those who never thought that design patents were important, to pay attention to design patents.  The Apple v. Samsung litigation, in which a jury verdict of nearly a billion dollars was awarded to Apple, largely on its design patents.  The imminent accession of the US to the Hague Agreement, which will permit US filers to use the Hague process as a one-stop-shopping way to file for design protection in many countries at once.

Here are some important upcoming events in this area:

Those practitioners who wish to join in discussions with other practitioners about developments in industrial design protection may wish to subscribe to the Industrial Designs listserv.

PTAB speaks on 35 USC § 101 — or is it § 103? CRS v Frontline

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Well, we are starting to see the work product of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, whose goal for many of the new AIA proceedings is to dispose of them within a year.  Here’s the decision in CRS Advanced Technologies, Inc. v. Frontline Technologies, Inc. (Case CBM2012-00005), instituted January 23, 2013 and decided just under a year later on January 21, 2014.

CRS wanted to invalidate some of the claims of US Patent 6,675,151.  Doing so in court would likely have cost half a million dollars or more.  CRS picked the Covered Business Method approach and (I’d guess) probably spent well under a quarter million dollars.  And prevailed.

What I would have hoped is that the decision might help to clarify what practitioners need to do to draft patent applications that will survive post-grant review (whether before the PTAB or before the courts).  I don’t think I got my wish.  Here’s why I feel this way.  Continue reading →

when USPTO classifies an application incorrectly

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In our office we try to track pretty closely the status of the cases that we have put on the Patent Prosecution Highway.  It is a rare PPH case that reaches its first Office Action without at least one problem within USPTO that requires us to poke the USPTO.  Today one of our PPH cases presented a problem that we had not seen before — a big delay in examination because the USPTO misclassified the case. Continue reading →