Author: Carl

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Is it copending if you filed it on the day the parent issued?

[As noted in the comments below, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed.  Same-day filers are safe.]

I’ve always assumed that if I manage to get my continuation or divisional application filed on the very day that the parent application issues, that’s good enough.  The domestic benefit under 35 USC § 120 will work.  Right?

Alert reader David Berry drew my attention to a February 11, 2015 ruling by Judge Richard G. Andrews in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in a summary judgment motion in the case of Immersion Corp. v. HTC Corp. civil action 12-259.  The ruling suggests that when the USPTO grants a patent, it does so at about 12:01 AM on the Tuesday, and that a would-be continuation or divisional application filed after 12:01 AM on that Tuesday would lack copendency under 35 USC § 120.

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What it costs to prepare a US provisional patent application?

A potential client will sometimes ask:

what’s your fee for filing a provisional patent application?

or sometimes the question will be:

what does it cost to apply for a provisional patent?

Or, by far the worst telephone call to receive in this general category is the potential client who cheerfully explains that he or she has prepared a draft provisional patent application, that the subject matter is “simple” and so the document should not require very long to review, and can I please just “touch it up” and file it with the USPTO?  The caller makes clear that whatever bargain-basement price I would have charged to draft a provisional patent application, the caller expects me to quote a still smaller price to merely “touch up” the document.

When this happens, generally I politely refer the potential client elsewhere, but when pressed I will sometimes answer along these lines …

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Speaking at AIPLA’s Patent Prosecution Boot Camp

I’ll be speaking this April at the AIPLA Patent Prosecution Boot Camp.  This two-day seminar is tailored to new practitioners (those having less than two years of experience), or others who want to learn the basics of patent application preparation and prosecution. This seminar includes instructional sessions and hands-on claim drafting workshops.

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How to minimize service disruption with a notebook computer

(See followup article here.)

These days my notebook computer is absolutely mission critical for me.  If my notebook computer were to fail and if it were to take some days to get it repaired, the loss of use of the computer for those days would be a really big problem.  Fortunately, a few years ago I figured out how to reduce any service disruption due to a computer failure to just about zero.

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What “MP3” means

mp3-image-2I checked into a hotel recently where the clock radio in the guest room had a conventional 3½-millimeter plug (see photo) which could be plugged into the guest’s smart phone or music player.  This would permit playing music through the speaker of the clock radio.  What I found amusing is what the manufacturer chose to write on the clock to let the user know about this feature — “MP3”.  This is silly.

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