Several reports suggest that a new patent reform bill will be introduced in Congress this week. Most early indications suggest very few surprises and it seems safe to assume that the new bill will look quite a bit like those of the past. One report suggests that the main battle line will be drawn on a familiar sticking point of the past – apportionment of damages. It also suggests, though, that progress has been made on the controversial “second window” aspect of the post-grant review proposal. If true, can a deal on apportionment of damages be far behind?

In In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ushered in a new era for patentability of process claims. Under Bilski, a process claim must be “tied to a particular machine or apparatus”or must “transform[] a particular article into a different state or thing.” A recently issued patent includes a claim to a “method for detecting and processing fraud and credit abuse” that makes you wonder about how strict the Office is applying the Bilski test. And a comparison between this claim and a recent application of the test by the court reveals the difficulty associated with applying the vague test against which all process claims now must be evaluated.

Over the last several months, Twitter has become a vital component of the Promote the Progress site. I’ve grown to appreciate the effectiveness of Twitter as a tool for engaging a community, and am now tying to recruit the Patent and Trademark Office to use it to engage its community of stakeholders.

It’s official – President Obama has lost another nominee for Secretary of Commerce. Meanwhile, an exchange between John Doll and Professor Arti Rai during a roundtable discussion on deferred examination suggests that the Office, acting in a policy void created by the vacant Commerce post, continues to seek radical administrative reform in its pursuit for administrative efficiency.

Today’s caselaw environment seems to have sent the phrase “valid and infringed” into the closet of the lexicon of American patent law. We just don’t see it very often these days, thanks in large part to KSR v. Teleflex and a few other key decisions. I’ve assembled a validity scorecard to help stakeholders watch the trend as it continues to develop. Here’s the scorecard for January, 2009.

Claim construction is one of the most challenging tasks in the patent law game. We all struggle with it – prosecutors, examiners, litigators, judges. Lack of clarity and loyalty in the law aside, the task is a difficult one because, no matter how clear the meaning of a term is to you, it might have an entirely different meaning to someone else. This is often true irrespective of what the rest of the patent says about the meaning of the term, including the claim language, the specification, and the prosecution history. Nothing illustrates this point better than a recent exchange between Judge Rader and counsel for the patent owner in Boston Scientific v. Cordis.

We’ve got a new Congressman – Bob Latta – here in Perrysburg (and the rest of Ohio’s 5th Congressional District). I don’t know where Bob stands on patent reform and other patent policy issues, so I was a bit intrigued when I recently received a “let’s talk” mailer from his office. My completed card appears below.

Last week in Boston Scientific v. Cordis, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit declared invalid several claims of a Boston Scientific patent covering drug-eluting stents. While the conclusion of obviousness might not be surprising, the analytical path leading to the conclusion is very interesting and is worthy of attention. The court failed to cite Graham v. John Deere and did not discuss “the factors.” Perhaps more intriguing, the court did note – twice – that the skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the separate embodiments of the prior art patent to arrive at the claimed invention.

I had the honor of being a panelist on Duncan Bucknell’s weekly IP Think Tank podcast this week. On the patent front, we touched on Bilski, Classen, and the potential impact of a new USPTO Director.