Both Dennis Crouch and Stephen Albainy-Jenei have posted excellent summaries of the Tafas v. Doll case. If you’re looking for more information on this complex case – and the uncertain future of the proposed rules that would limit continuations, Requests for Continued Examination, and claims – be sure to check out both the Patent Baristas post and the PatentlyO post.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its opinion in the Tafas v. Dudas case (now styled as Tafas v. Doll). I provided several updates on Twitter as I read the opinion, and reproduce them below for the wider audience.

Chief Judge Michel, in his keynote speech for the recently-held Sughrue Symposium, issued a clear call to arms for patent system stakeholders. Here’s a paraphrasing from my notes on Judge Michel’s talk.

Discovery Communications, the parent company of The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, recently sued Amazon for patent infringement. The accused device is none other than Amazon’s version of sliced bread, the Kindle wireless reading device. But is Discovery, which doesn’t make or plan to make an electronic reading device, a patent troll? The manner in which the company acquired the patent might be telling.

For the first time in its existence, the European Patent Office is operating with an allowance rate less than 50%. Now, applicants before all three of the Trilateral Patent Offices are batting less than .500.

It’s no secret that a cash crunch is looming at the USPTO. Applicants are filing fewer applications and the Office is issuing fewer patents. Office income is down as a result. The USPTO seems to blame the reduction in filings entirely on the recession, ignoring other likely contributing factors, such as KSR v. Teleflex, examination quality issues, and the growing uncertainty surrounding patent protection in the courts.

Google appears set to play a leading role in the latest push for passage of patent reform legislation. There are two things about the company that we should all keep in mind when assigning weight to the company’s calls for reform.

Both the House (H.R. 1260) and Senate (S.515) versions of the Patent Reform Act of 2009 include a provision that would extend the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to include claim construction orders issued by district courts. While not the most controversial, this has to be one of the Act’s most extreme provisions. The potential effect of such a change is quite drastic – a whole new patent backlog at the Federal Circuit. As such, this reform is a short-sighted, duct-tape solution that shows a lack of concern for the patent law as a whole.

At today’s Sughrue Syposium on IP Law and Policy at the University of Akron, a star-studded panel was asked to rank “the likelihood that the 111th Congress will pass patent reform legislation” on a scale from 1 (no chance) to 10 (guaranteed). Here are their votes.

The full Senate Judiciary Committee has quickly scheduled a hearing on patent reform. Tomorrow at 10AM, the Committee will hold “Patent Reform in the 111th Congress: Legislation and Recent Court Decisions,” the first reform hearing for the 111th Congress.