This week, over protests from European patent practitioners, the EPO decided to add new limitations on when a divisional application may be filed, beginning next April. Of late, the EPO has become increasingly hostile towards what it regards as “abusive” filing of divisionals—practices such as repeatedly re-filing a divisional patent applications to avoid the effects of a rejection, or filing a divisional before an allowed application issues to pursue broader claims than were allowed.
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Trade Secret Review
Trade secret law is concerned with the protection of technological and commercial information not generally known in the trade against unauthorized commercial use by others. The policy basis for trade secret protection is the desire to encourage research and development by providing protection for the originator of business information, and also to maintain proper standards of business ethics. See Kewanee Oil Company v. Bicron Corp., 416 U.S. 470 (190). The trade secret owner is not granted exclusivity to the information, but rather is only protected against improper acquisition and/or use of the information. As a result, others are free to discover a trade secret by any fair means.
One of the hidden (literally!) values of method claims
Yesterday, the Federal Circuit reminded us of another reason why method claims are so valuable. In Crown Packaging Technology, Inc. v. Rexam Beverage Can Co., No. 08-1284 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 17. 2009), the court held, among other things, that a method claim does not require markings to enforce the patent in litigation.
What it looks like to win a patent infringement case
This is a Portland case, but I thought you’d find it interesting anyway. The plaintiffs, a Portland chain maker called Blount, Inc., sued a handful of defendants for patent infringement. The jury returned a $2m verdict a few days ago, so I thought I’d show you what $2m looks like on a special verdict form.
Posted in Litigation 1 Comment
The geeks were right…
Yesterday, I was looking at an old InterTrust patent application. It was a continuation of an application filed back in Silicon Valley’s dot-com boom times. InterTrust had then, like a lot of our clients do today, very ambitious goals. In this case, those goals didn’t materialize, and InterTrust morphed in to (what I call) a pure innovation company. And it still became very successful because of the value of its intellectual property.
Posted in Portfolio Management Leave a comment
European Maintenance Fees Fiasco
I had a revealing conversation with one of my foreign associates the other day. I had asked them to continue reminding me of patent maintenance fees for one of my clients, even though the client would be responsible for the payment of the fees. I got a strange level of pushback from the foreign associate. When I asked why, they said “Because we would not know if the fee had been paid.” What? “Just go online” I said. Well, that opened up a whole can of worms I never knew existed.
Posted in International Tagged annuity, Europe, France, Italy, maintenace fee, patent Leave a comment
Can an “Idea” be patented?
Looking through various invention and entrepreneurial websites and blogs, I’ve noticed that there is some controversy and inconsistency regarding whether ideas are patentable. (e.g. StartupNation.com, Gaebler.com, and IPwatchdog.com) Some assert that it’s possible to patent an idea, while others staunchly dismiss the possibility.
Posted in Patent Prosecution Leave a comment