Patent Baristas

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a patent directed to certain fermentation methods used to produce fatty acids such as DHA and reversed the trial court’s interpretation of the term animal to exclude humans in claims directed to methods of increasing the concentration of microbial omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA […]

Korea is a first-to-file or absolute novelty country, which does not allow an invention to be made available to the public (anywhere in the world) before filing an application for the invention.  Specifically, Article 29(1) of the Korean Patent Act provides that the novelty of an invention is destroyed where: the invention was publicly known […]

The USPTO has issued “Interim Examination Instructions For Evaluating Subject Matter Eligibility Under 35 U.S.C. § 101” to be used by patent examiners during examination. These instructions supersede previous guidance on subject matter eligibility. These instructions  must be “really” important given the extraordinarily “high” number of “unnecessary” quotation marks.  Maybe the USPTO could benefit from […]

Bill Bennett, of Pizzeys in Australia, sent a note detailing how in order to be eligible for an extension of term, the patent in question must claim “one or more pharmaceutical substances per se”, and there must have been a delay of more than 5 years between the date on which the patent was filed […]

Dinesh Vadhia, CEO of Xyggy Corporation, gave us an early look at a new patent search tool Xyggy Patent, which allows you to search for similar patents using known patents as the query. The queried patents are selected by patent number or patent title and the results are returned in ranked order according to their […]

SCOTUScast is presenting a podcast debate between Professor Michael Risch (WVU) and Professor Joshua Sarnoff (American) on the In re Bilski case.  They each filed competing amicus briefs before the en banc panel last year, and so are ideal opponents. This 30-minute podcast, part of a podcast series called SCOTUSCast run by the Federalist Society, […]

OK, I admit it. I judge a book by it’s cover. There, I said it. I’m not proud of it but I’m very visually oriented and there is something about a beautifully designed cover of a book that makes me want to open and read the pages inside.  So it was when I received my […]

Exergen sued Wal-Mart, CVS, and several thermometer makers (including SAAT) for infringement of three patents covering infrared detecting thermometers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that one of the patents was invalid because it is inherently anticipated, and the other two were not infringed. See Exergen, Corp. v. Wal Mart Stores. […]