I was recently alerted1 to an entry in John Q. Adams’ diary, pertaining to patents in the early days of the United States. The entry, from Dec. 27, 1804, reads: “Next I called at Dr. [William] Thornton’s Office, acting under the Secretary of State as Commissioner of Patents; to speak with him regarding the application…
Blog Posts
Cisco, Google, MIT, and USPTO Team Up To Create Prior Art Archive
by Josh Landau •
One of the biggest problems in patent examination is actually finding prior art. When it comes to patents and patent applications, that’s relatively easy—examiners have access to databases of all patents and applications, and they’re well-trained in searching those databases. But when it comes to non-patent prior art—product manuals, journal articles, standards proposals, and other…
Additional Studies Show IPR Is Not A Threat To Hatch-Waxman Process
by Josh Landau •
Over a year ago, I took a look at a study of the success rate for inter partes reviews (IPRs) of pharmaceutical patents. That study showed that drug and biologic patents are significantly more likely to be upheld at the PTAB than the average patent. Recently, there’s been a wave of additional studies looking at…
ITC: No Public Interest In Excluding Qualcomm Competitors
by Josh Landau •
Over a year ago, I filed comments at the International Trade Commission (ITC). Those comments explained why it went against the public interest to exclude Qualcomm’s competitors products from the U.S. market based on Qualcomm’s patent infringement allegations. Last week, the ITC administrative law judge in charge of the case agreed. What’s At Stake? About…
Yet More Evidence That NPEs Are Harmful To Innovation
by Josh Landau •
Profs. Cohen, Gurun, and Kominers first published a paper collecting evidence of the impacts of NPEs on innovation in 2014. Recently, they updated the paper, incorporating additional evidence and research from the past four years. The key takeaways? “NPE litigation has a real negative impact on innovation at targeted firms: firms substantially reduce their innovative…
Getting The Future Backwards: Iancu’s Comments On § 101 At IPO
by Josh Landau •
This morning, Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Director Iancu gave remarks at the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) Annual Meeting. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given IPO’s efforts to legislatively overturn the Supreme Court’s recent cases reinforcing the bar on patents on products of nature and abstract ideas, Director Iancu’s remarks focused on patentable subject matter—§ 101. While…
CCIA, ACT File Amicus Brief In FTC v. Qualcomm
by Josh Landau •
Yesterday, CCIA and ACT filed an amicus brief in the FTC’s case against Qualcomm in the Northern District of California. As explained in the brief, the FRAND obligation which patent owners voluntarily agree to when they participate in the development of a standard requires the owners of standard-essential patents to license their patents on “fair,…
Markup Of New SUCCESS Act Should Keep In Mind Recent Problems At PTO
by Josh Landau •
Today, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to markup Rep. Chabot’s newly-introduced SUCCESS Act, which is itself a combination of portions of two other bills Patent Progress has covered: Reps. Comstock and Adams’ SUCCESS Act, and the fee-setting authority contained within Rep. Chabot’s BIG DATA for IP bill. Each bill is individually worthwhile. The SUCCESS Act…
ITC Institutes An Investigation… Based On An NPE’s Complaint
by Josh Landau •
Yesterday, the International Trade Commission (ITC) instituted an investigation based on a complaint filed by an apparent non-practicing entity (NPE), SIPCO. The ITC, as Patent Progress has covered in the past [1][2], is intended to protect American manufacturers from unfair foreign competition. So why did the ITC institute an investigation of American companies filed by…
Further Evidence That Examiners Can Be Incentivized To Improve Patent Quality
by Josh Landau •
Patent Progress has previously covered the research of Profs. Wasserman and Frakes regarding structural incentives at the USPTO that affect examiner behavior. A new paper in the AIPLA Quarterly Journal, written by Eric Blatt and Lian Huang (both former examiners), examines another area in which examiner incentives affect behavior—the Signatory Authority Review Program.