Patent Baristas

The Australian Patent Office (APO) is proposing official fee increases with effect from August 1, 2010.  Fees always go up (we don’t often get to report on fee decreases).  However, there is one new fee which will close off an existing loophole for avoiding excess claims fees. Those who regularly prosecute applications in Australia should […]

The Japanese Patent Office (“JPO”) introduced a revised version of the “Examination Guidelines for Medical Inventions,” in October of 2009.  The revised guidelines are applicable to all patent applications being examined after November 1, 2009, including pharmaceutical products and medical devices. Methods for Collecting data from the human body In Japan, the examination guidelines stipulate […]

In Ariad v. Eli Lilly & Co., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit set out a split decision on a case addressing patent validity and enforceability issues where Lilly contends that the asserted claims of US 6,410,516 are invalid for including non-statutory subject matter, for being obtained through inequitable conduct, and are unenforceable […]

Earlier, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that the importation and sale of certain lysine feed products did not violate section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 as amended, 19 U.S.C. § 1337. The Commission found that (1) the asserted claims of Ajinomoto’s U.S. Patents 5,827,698 and 6,040,160 are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § […]

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is Chairwoman of the Senate Small Business Committee.  Sen. Landrieu has introduced The Small Business Patent Data Collection Act of 2010 after concerns about how the Senate patent reform bill will impact small businesses.  Small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employers, employing 1/2 of the U.S. labor force. The bill […]

Here comes the Patent Reform Act of 2010 in the form of an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to S. 515 (“Amendment to S. 515”).  I know, you’ve heard all this before with the Patent Reform Act of 2009, the Patent Reform Act of 2008, the Patent Reform Act of 2007, the Patent […]

Admittedly, patent reform is not a sexy topic. Those passionate about it are lab geeks, computer nerds, inventors, academics, attorneys and IP bloggers – not exactly the glitterati. But if it passes the hurdle of a full Senate vote, it will hurt – entrepreneurs, inventors and the economy. Perhaps this lack of charisma is why […]

In my last post, I discussed the approaches taken by four commercial search systems with regard to their Japanese collections:   Minesoft PatBase, Questel’s QPAT and orbit.com platforms, Thomson Reuters Thomson Innovation , and LexisNexis TotalPatent. This post contains a summary of the comparison information in table form.  The tables below reference “machine-assisted” and “machine-aided” translations; […]