Intellectual Property

As discussed in our previous post, one of the most critical tasks for Patent Owners during the Inter Partes Reviews (“IPR”) discovery period is deposing the Petitioner’s expert. Since IPR depositions are treated differently than fact-gathering depositions in district court litigation, a Patent Owner should approach the IPR deposition with different goals.

As a Patent Owner in an instituted Inter Partes Reviews (“IPR”), one of the first and most critical tasks before you is deposing the Petitioner’s witnesses, including its experts.  But approaching an IPR deposition like a typical litigation deposition could be a big mistake. 

On April 5, 2021, the United States Supreme Court issued a significant fair use decision, holding six to two that Google’s copying of 11,500 lines of code from Oracle’s Java SE API in Google’s Android platform was a fair and transformative use. 

On March 24, 2021, U.S. District Judge Colm F. Connolly of the District of Delaware, granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss claims for contributory and induced infringement and enhanced damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284 because the complaint alleged knowledge of the asserted patents solely based on averments in prior original and amended complaints in the same lawsuit.

The Federal Circuit’s recent Uniloc 2017 v. Facebook Inc. decision is a mixed bag of good and bad news for both patent owners and inter partes review petitioners.  On the plus side for patent owners (but not for petitioners), the Federal Circuit determined that the so-called “No Appeal” provision does not necessarily apply to 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(1), and, therefore, a patent owner may still appeal a Patent Trial and Appeal Board determination that a petitioner is not estopped from maintaining an IPR under § 315(e)(1). 

Last week, Mintz Member Lisa Adams moderated a panel discussion between in-house attorneys that covered best practices for conducting patent clearances and obtaining non-infringement and invalidity opinions. The panel discussion, which was hosted by the Boston Patent Law Association, focused on key practical considerations that ensure product clearances and opinions are used as effective tools in a comprehensive intellectual property protection strategy.

Examiner interviews are often indispensable to advance prosecution of a U.S. patent application, and interviews can help advance prosecution in the vast majority of applications. The Midwest Regional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held a webinar on March 24, 2021 entitled “Conducting an Effective Patent Examiner Interview,” featuring Vivek Koppikar, Special Advisor to the Regional Director of the Midwest Regional Office.

Obviousness-type double patenting (“OTDP”) arises when two or more patents or applications include claims that, while not being identical, are not patentably distinct from each other.  In the U.S., OTDP rejections can be overcome by filing a terminal disclaimer that limits the term of the rejected application to be no greater than the term of the disclaimed patent. 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently released statistics about its Fast-Track Appeals Pilot Program. The program went into effect on July 2, 2020 and is currently slated to run until the earlier of July 2, 2021 and 500 appeals being accepted into the program.

On January 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case calling for it to abolish or limit the doctrine of assignor estoppel. See Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc., et al., No. 20-440, 2021 WL 77248 (U.S. Jan. 8, 2021). Mintz previously discussed the Federal Circuit’s decision, which found assignor estoppel to be applicable.

As we noted in Are Design Patents Missing From Your IP Portfolio, a design patent protects the visual ornamental characteristics of an article and can be an important part of a company’s patent portfolio. Like other patent rights, design patent applications may be filed internationally to expand the number of countries in which a company’s designs are protected.

On January 28, 2021, the Federal Circuit affirmed the general principle that the mere fact of copying by an accused infringer is insufficient to rebut a charge of obviousness (L’Oreal USA, Inc. v. Olaplex, Inc.; appeal from PGR2018-00025; non-precedential). 

For many parts of the world, a voluntary divisional application (known as a continuation application in the U.S.) may be filed at any time during the pendency of any parent application.  The claims in the voluntary divisional application must be supported by the original specification and cannot introduce any new matter.  

It is now over 10 years since the Bilski decision was handed down by the United States Supreme Court.  In that decision and several other decisions that followed (i.e., Mayo, Myriad, and Alice), the Supreme Court pronounced patent claims directed to abstract ideas not eligible for patent protection.

On February 4, 2021 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) extended for two years the expansion of the Collaborative Search Pilot Program (CSP), which began in 2015 and is now scheduled to end October 31, 2022.

It can be difficult to advance prosecution of a U.S. patent application efficiently and effectively after prosecution has been closed and an Advisory Action has been mailed.  Various U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) programs are available to expedite prosecution (see Mintz’s previous article about speeding prosecution), but a final Office Acton and then an Advisory Action being mailed makes most of those programs unavailable. 

As 2021 begins and intellectual property (IP) strategies are being developed for the new year, it is a good time to reflect on what IP issues were prominent in 2020.  According to many readers, hot topics included Chinese foreign filing licenses, patenting involving either artificial intelligence (AI) or COVID-19, inter partes review, and attorney fee awards.

On December 27, 2020, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“the Act”) became law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. 

The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) recently designated its decision in Snap, Inc. v. SRK Technology LLC (§ II.A), IPR2020-00820, Paper 15 (Oct. 21, 2020) (“Snap”) as being informative regarding the Fintiv factors analysis.

One of the provisions included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act that President Trump signed into law on December 27, 2020 addresses the so-called “felony streaming” loophole in the Copyright Act and criminal code.