practice commentary

Jake Ward

Jake Ward
December 17, 2008 00:04

An interesting practice note we thought we’d share.  Per MPEP 1126: The publication fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.18(d) must be paid in each application published (or scheduled to be published) under 35 U.S.C. 122(b) before a patent will be granted on the application. . . . Applicant is required t...

Jake Ward

Jake Ward
December 10, 2008 02:30

Per this last minute notice in the Federal Register (to be published tomorrow, December 10th): SUMMARY: On June 10, 2008, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) published the final rule that amends the rules governing practice before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences ...

Jake Ward

Jake Ward
December 07, 2008 04:08

As a reminder to all practitioners preparing Notices of Appeal and Appeal Briefs for appeals before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI), the new BPAI rules take effect December 10, 2008.   See our original post concerning the BPAI rules change here.  The rules as published may be vi...

setrue

Jake Ward
December 07, 2008 03:53

  Jacob Zoarets, founder and CTO of Transformer Software Ltd, recently wrote to inform us of his new “free” patent search tool called the Setrue Semantic Patent Search Engine.   The Setrue website states that the search tool includes features such as:  semantic natural language query cap...

Showing “First to Invent”.

Jake Ward
December 05, 2008 19:20

While all of us that practice patent law realize that the U.S. is a first-to-invent country, rather than a first-to-file country, an interesting aspect of the law can arise when considering the question of whether a client was first-to-invent.  In particular, what if a client invents something in a ...