Ant-Like Persistence

When I was first in practice, there were a dozen ways to get a US patent application made “special”.  Just to give a few examples, you could explain that a would-be investor needs to know whether a particular invention is patentable before constructing a factory.  You could explain that you have found someone who infringes a claim of a patent application.  You could point out that your subject matter would promote national security or fight terrorism or benefit the environment.  You could establish that one of the inventors is in such poor health that the inventor might not live long enough to assist in the prosecution of the application.  You could establish that one of the inventors is 65 years of age or older.

A few years ago the USPTO decided to pare down the list of ways to get a patent application made “special”.  The list of ways is now very short.  In this blog post I will talk about two of the remaining ways, namely:

• special based upon age of the inventor, and
• special based upon poor health of the inventor.

What might the practitioner charge for making a case special on either of these grounds?

Continue reading “What it costs to get a US patent fast by making it “special” (age or health of inventor)?”

Yesterday I blogged about what it might cost to get a US patent fast by means of Track I.  Today I offer a few thoughts about what it might cost to get a US patent fast by means of AE (Accelerated Examination).

Continue reading “What it costs to get a US patent fast by Accelerated Examination?”

A long-standing member of the EFS-Web listserv (the listserv for US patent practitioners) wondered what to charge for a Track I request.  (Track I is the program in which the US applicant can get his or her application moved to the front of the line for examination merely by paying a fee.)  I figured I might as well post a series of blog pieces with a few thoughts about professional fees for the various programs by which an applicant can get a US patent fast.

Continue reading “What it costs to get a US patent fast via Track I?”

Every time we file a US patent application we worry about getting the wrong answer when we figure out whether or not to “check the box”:

For anyone who has suppressed their memory of this unpleasantness, recall that you, the practitioner, are required to take a position on whether the correct law for the Examiner to use in deciding what is patentable and what is not patentable is the “old law” or the “new law”.  And it is a certainty that ten years from now when your patent is being tested in litigation, the adversary will try to convince the judge and the jury that you told the USPTO the wrong answer on this point.

Alert reader Wayne Keown has pointed out that it did not take ten years.  I learned from Wayne that there is now a pending federal court case in which an accused infringer has alleged that a patent applicant got the wrong answer on “checking the box.”

Continue reading ““Checking the box” now being litigated”