Patent Baristas

In a letter to Stephen S. McMillin, Deputy Director at the Office of Management and Budget, David Boundy of Cantor Fitzgerald expressed concerns of industry groups about the budget effects of the USPTO’s proposed rules on continuations and claims. The proposed regulations would limit an applicant’s ability to file no more than one continuation application. This […]

Well, it seems that the reason my Feedburner RSS feed subscribers has remained at zero is that the feed link listed on the side of the Patent Baristas site listed the wrong feed address, i.e., there were some extraneous characters on the end of the address. The proper Feedburner address for subscribing to the Barista […]

In a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, the Department of Justice waded into the cesspool of patent reform throwing out its opinion on the provisions of the Patent Reform Act of 2007, S. 1145 and H.R. 1908. Among other critiques having to do with venue and appeals of Markman […]

In Takeda v. Alphapharm and Genpharm (06-1329), The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld an earlier decision in the district court finding that U.S. Patent 4,687,777 was not invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Takeda Chem. Indus., Ltd. v. Mylan Labs., 417 F. Supp. 2d 341 (S.D.N.Y. 2006). Earlier, Takeda invented certain […]

In a long-awaited — and some would say long-feared — update in the regulatory pathway for FDA approval of follow-on biologics, the Senate’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions HELP Committee gave the thumbs up to the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2007 (S. 1695), which will address the scientific, regulatory and legal […]

David Boundy of Cantor Fitzgerald and Mike Strickland of GlaxoSmithKline attended a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to discuss the USPTO’s Changes to Practice for Continuing Applications, Requests for Continued Examination Practice, and Applications Containing Patentably Indistinct Claims (Fed. Reg. 71: 48-61 (January 3, 2006)). The proposed regulations would limit an […]

While not as fundamentally important as Bong Hits 4 Jesus, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case profoundly important to the pharmaceutical industry. For the second time, the Court rebuffed a challenge to a “reverse payments” deal — this one where an AstraZeneca company paid off a Barr Pharmaceuticals company to delay marketing […]

Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Clinton, and Enzi announced legislation authorizing the FDA to approve a follow-on version of biologic therapies. The legislation, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2007, includes standards for the FDA to approve follow-on biologics as well as a period of exclusivity for the brand name drug company. The draft compromise […]