News & Publications

The US Patent and Trademark Office and the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) agreed to launch a new worksharing arrangement that will accelerate the process of obtaining a patent in Mexico for businesses and individuals already in possession of a corresponding US patent.

The US Patent and Trademark Office welcomes two new members to the Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC): Jeremiah Chan and Tracy-Gene Durkin. Mr. Chan is the Associate General Counsel and Director, Head of Patents at Facebook. Ms. Durkin is the practice leader of the Mechanical & Design Practice Group at the law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox P.L.L.C.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 10, 2020, affirmed the invalidation of Genentech’s patent directed to methods of purifying antibodies, finding that the process of chilling a composition to below room temperature could be found both obvious and anticipated by a process that purified that composition at room temperature.

The US Patent and Trademark Office will brief users on recent examination practice and procedure guidance related to examination of ranges during its Virtual Instructor Led Training (vILT) course Examination of Ranges on February 11, 12, or 13.

The Federal Circuit on January 10, 2020, held that patent infringement claims against Japanese electric motor manufacturer Nidec Corp. were barred by a covenant not to sue, and found that the covenant was not superseded by a later agreement involving the same patent.

CBS Corp. won’t have to pay a $1.3 million infringement award because a podcasting patent was invalidated by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the Federal Circuit said on January 10, 2020.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 9, 2020, affirmed the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling which held that a claim of Hospira’s Precedex Premix sedative was invalid for obviousness.

The US Patent and Trademark Office on January 15, 2020, released a “New to PTAB” toolkit now available on the PTAB webpage of the USPTO website.

“A low level of protection for trade secrets and IP theft in a number of countries, notably in China and India” have caused “irreparable harm to European businesses” said the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, in its “Report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries” released on January 8, 2020.

The addition of a generic top-level domain (gTLD) to an otherwise generic term can, under certain circumstances, create a protectable trademark, the American Intellectual Property Law Association said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on January 13, 2020.