Archive for January, 2006
Senate on patent reform - .pdf of PACE-Education Act now available
Last week, a package of bills was introduced in the Senate as the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Act. One of the bills, S.2198 - the PACE-Education Act, contains a “Sense of the Senate” section relating to patent reform. While the section is short on details and similar to prior “sense of Congress” [...]
Patent reform in the United States…the search is the thing…
A reader from Japan recently arrived at Promote the Progress through the following Google search:
patent reform it v bio troll
Sums up patent reform efforts in the United States nicely, don’t you think? IT v. BIO, and trolls. Yep, that’s about it.
The division between the software/high-technology industries and biotech/pharma has been huge to date…probably [...]
More smoke signals from the Senate on patent reform…and they’re beginning to get interesting
The Senate is issuing more smoke signals on patent reform, and they’re beginning to get interesting.
Yesterday, the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Act, a package of three bills, was introduced with the support of about 30 Senators. The Act is a comprehensive set of measures aimed at various policy areas with the goal of [...]
USPTO proposed rule limiting continuation and RCE practice: Time to worry?
Quick - how many inventions are disclosed in your portfolio of patent applications currently pending before the United States Patent and Trademark Office? How many of those inventions have actually been claimed? Do you have claims on file of proper scope to cover your current commercial products? Your next generation products? [...]
Top patent law and policy story of 2005 - .pdf of article now available
A .pdf of my retrospective article on patent law and policy in 2005 is now availble on the Dunlap, Codding & Rogers firm web site. You can
view and/or download a copy of the article here.
I’m still not going to give away the punchline on the blog. I will, however, give a few more [...]
Two years and running….
Over the weekend, the Promote the Progress blog turned two. I started the blog on January 21, 2004, just days after Nipper and Sorocco started blogging (each of them reminds me frequently that I was the last to get started, even though they best me only by a matter of days…).
Anniversary posts seem to [...]
Justify Your Existence: PTO proposed changes to continuation and continued examination practice
Earlier this month, the PTO released a proposed rule presenting major changes to continuation and continued examination practice. In 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 Office proposes to require justification for filing of second and [...]
The top patent law story for 2005: Probably not what you would expect
A “year in review” and “biggest story of the year” article of mine has been published on American Lawyer Media’s Law.com. You can read Patent Law and Policy in 2005: Plenty of Drama, but How Much Change? here (registration required).
So what is my biggest story of the year? For now, you’ll have to [...]
PTO proposed Examination Support Document: an effective ten claim limit for initial examination
On January 3rd, the PTO proposed two rules that, independently and certainly together, would dramatically alter the patent prosecution process in the United States. In Changes to Practice for the Examination of Claims in Patent Applications (Fed. Reg. 71: 61-69 (January 3, 2006)), the Office proposes to limit its initial examination of claims [...]
The Senate finally speaks on patent reform…sort of
Last month, Senator Ensign and 15 co-sponsors introduced the National Innovation Act of 2005 (S. 2109) in the Senate. The bill touches on patent reform but is not the Senate’s patent reform bill that many observers are anticipating. Rather, the bill presents a comprehensive set of initiatives in education, tax, defense and other [...]
