Ryan Nicholls, a nine year old inventor from New Zealand, won a children’s TV competition (Let’s Get Inventin’) with his environmentally friendly waste disposal system. His prize – a patent application filed with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, which made him the country’s youngest inventor.

I know you don’t want to quit reading about substantive patent law while you’re away from the office for turkey day, so I figured I’d share some ‘interesting reads’ I’ve come across over the last couple weeks. Enjoy!

The recent opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Medegen v. ICU Medical had all the familiar trappings of a standard claim construction appeal. You don’t have to look far, though, to get a sense that this claim construction opinion is a bit different than most. While the panel majority opinion is mostly conventional for a claim construction review, the dissenting opinion filed by Chief District Judge Walker makes Medegen stand out.

The University of Akron is hosting the 11th Annual Richard C. Sughrue Symposium on Intellectual Property Law and Policy on March 9, 2009. Chief Judge Michel is scheduled as the luncheon speaker at the day-long seminar. Surely any talk from the Chief Judge is worthy of attention and guaranteed to be interesting, but the timing of the Sughrue Symposium should really attract the spotlight.

In the surprise final rule that gave birth to the new (and terribly-named) Practitioner Maintenance Fee, the Patent and Trademark Office promised us that the fees it collects through the new rule won’t be diverted for other purposes. The Office can’t rightfully make this promise, though, as long as a permanent fix to fee diversion remains a dream.

Today, the Patent Office published a Final Rule indicating that it will now levy an annual “practitioner maintenance fee” on all patent practitioners registered to practice before it. In my earlier post on the rule, I expressed my initial thought as “it’s about time.” Here’s the explanation I promised.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today published a Final Rule in the Federal Register that levies a ‘practitioner maintenance fee’ on attorneys and agents recognized to practice before it in patent cases. The new rule requires all registered patent practitioners to pay an annual fee to maintain their professional association with the agency.

Patent stakeholders, including portfolio owners and practitioners alike, are feeling the pain of the dramatically lower allowance rate that we’ve been living with for some time now.

But is the lower allowance rate actually resulting in fewer patents being granted?

I recently noticed the strange timeline that has developed for the controversial continuation and claim limit rules promulgated by the Patent and Trademark Office (and currently subject to a permanent injunction via Tafas v. Dudas).

Consider these events:

The Supreme Court of Canada recently dismissed a challenge to a patent held by pioneer pharmaceutical company Sanofi‑Synthelabo for its anticoagulant medicine Plavix. Apotex, a generic drug manufacturer seeking to market its version of the drug, challenged the patent based on prior art and double patenting grounds. While the decision has an interesting evergreening aspect, its ultimate significance may lie in the stark contrast it draws between the state of obviousness law in the United States and that in Canada.