Source: https://www.ipo.org/index.php/ip-chat-channel/ip-chat-channel-patent-prosecution-and-pto-practice/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 10:16:25+00:00

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This webinar features the USPTO’s Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, a top in-house counsel, and an experienced patent prosecutor. They will analyze the USPTO’s revised guidance on patent eligibility that was issued earlier this month ‒ and discuss how the Office is expected apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice/Mayo test for subject matter eligibility going forward.
A Federal Circuit decision in 2017 found a Regeneron patent unenforceable due to inequitable conduct based partly on the behavior of litigators. This widened the scope of possible inequitable conduct claims, which traditionally focused only on the prosecution of the patent before the USPTO.
Peerless Industries v. Crimson AV in the Northern District of Illinois (2018), where the court found no inequitable conduct, rejecting defendant’s argument citing Regeneron.
Critics of the decision hoped first for an en banc rehearing by the Federal Circuit — and then that the Supreme Court would grant Regeneron’s petition for certiorari. Those hopes were dashed late last year.
This webinar will highlight the differences and similarities in post-grant practice in front of three leading patent authorities, as well as strategies that can lead to global settlement in licensing negotiations. It will also review effective defensive strategies for patent owners, both in patent drafting and in litigation. With U.S. inter partes reviews (IPRs) and post-grant reviews (PGRs) under the AIA, U.S. post-grant practice has joined European Patent Office opposition as a key component of global IP strategy. Meanwhile, interest in China as a venue for patent litigation continues to grow.
Coordinating post-grant challenges overseas effectively requires a detailed understanding of the variations between systems. For instance, some have noted that in Europe and China, opposition can be used with little risk as a testing ground for the presentation of arguments that could be used in litigation. But a substantial limitation of an EPO opposition is that it must be filed within 6 months of a patent being granted. By contrast, in China, a petition to invalidate a patent can be brought at any time after grant.
The USPTO announced earlier this month that inter partes review, post-grant review, and covered business method patent proceedings will switch from the current broadest reasonable interpretation claim construction standard to the same standard used by district courts, the Phillips standard, starting on 13 November. Soon after the announcement, many experts began to predict a rush of petitioners to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The surge is expected because litigants may try to preserve the flexibility now allowed by differing standards in the different forums by acting to institute proceedings before the change occurs.
Will institution rates at the PTAB be changed by the switch to the Phillips standard?
Will district court judges be less likely to grant stays now that a PTAB claim construction will be more of a true preview of a Markman finding?
Advantages and disadvantages of delaying an IPR filing.
The timing of PTAB and district court decisions — and the potential for collateral estoppel.
The additional complications involved in multi-defendant litigation.
Prosecution history is sometimes overlooked when valuing a patent, but some commentators would say it’s nearly impossible to overestimate the role it can play in litigation.
This summer the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Blackbird Tech v. ELB Electronics, which vacated an earlier judgment of non-infringement of a lighting technology patent asserted by Blackbird. The Federal Circuit determined that the district court had erred in construing the claim term “attachment surface” in finding non-infringement. A claim amendment made during patent prosecution played a prominent part in the appellate court’s decision.
Further, life science litigation involving broad patents can often find a patent owner boxed in by the need to meet Section 112 requirements in prosecution. The scope of disclaimers can also be dispositive in high-tech litigation such as Avid Tech., Inc. v. Harmonic, Inc., which centered on digital data storage.
This webinar will look at the nature of legal traps that can lurk in prosecution history, caused both by disclaimers and amendments, and how they can snare defendants or plaintiffs in infringement litigation. It features attorneys with a wide array of experience related to these issues, including panelists who recently won cases for their clients by exploiting prosecution history. They will provide tips for patent prosecutors on how to try to avoid leaving damaging history — and for transactional lawyers on how to spot problems during due diligence that could turn the patent into a lemon for a purchaser.
• The potential fallout from the PTAB adopting a standard for AIA proceedings that differs from the one used in all other USPTO proceedings, such as reexamination and reissue.
These days, many companies are asking questions that cut “across” datasets. They are looking for trends and opportunities that, absent the marriage of multiple data sources, would have otherwise gone unrecognized. The advent of cloud storage, open-source database software, and large-scale commercial processing services has drastically reduced the costs to capture, store, and analyze a new flood of data coming from sensors, devices, video/audio, networks, log files, transactional applications, web, and social media – much of it generated in real time.The increased focus on big data has brought with it challenging questions about how companies can protect their intellectual property. This webinar takes a global and comparative look at protecting inventions to collect, process, and make sense of big data.
The Federal Circuit agreed, ruling in 2017 that a published application can count as prior art as of its provisional filing date — but only as to features actually claimed in the application. After the Federal Circuit denied rehearing and rehearing en banc this spring, Ariosa filed a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in July, claiming that in this decision the Federal Circuit misread the patent statute and Supreme Court precedent.
In addition to Ariosa v. Illumina, another significant Federal Circuit opinion, Dynamic Drinkware v. National Graphics (2015), also illustrates that the use and legal standing of provisional patent applications is complex, and there are still major unresolved issues that may lead to patent invalidation. Our expert panelists will discuss potential pitfalls associated with U.S. provisional or CIP patent applications. Problems may arise not only when there is failure to fully claim the invention, as in Ariosa, but if there is a failure to: (1) list all of the inventors in a provisional application, (2) timely assign the provisional application, or (3) properly list the applicant(s). Similarly, if the timing is not right, CIP applications are often dead on arrival and, even if done correctly, may needlessly sacrifice patent term. The panel will address PCT traps, as well as the circumstances when filing a provisional or CIP application instead of a standalone utility application can be a sound strategy.
For all its eye-popping size, the $533 million award that Apple won against Samsung in a design patent infringement case was seen by few as legally significant. Now that the case has settled, it is an interesting time for our expert panel — an attorney who specializes in design patents, a damages expert, and in-house counsel at an automaker — to assess the current state of damages law for design patents.
The Supreme Court in 2016 held that the relevant “article of manufacture” could be either all or part of the infringing product. One possible standard for determining the relevant “article of manufacture” for Section 289 purposes was proposed by the United States Department of Justice in an amicus brief it submitted to the Supreme Court. And that test is taking on a vigorous life of its own.
This summer, Seirus will file a brief in its appeal at the Federal Circuit after it was required by a jury last year to pay $3 million in design patent damages to Columbia. Columbia v. Seirus was the first case after Samsung v. Apple to charge a jury to use the DOJ’s test. The outcome of this case is thus eagerly anticipated.
Pity the life sciences patent prosecutor who tries to find a path through recent appellate court decisions regarding patent eligibility. A recent concurrence in a divided Federal Circuit decision indicated that U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Mayo have left too much uncertainty about what is and is not patent eligible under section 101. Like others in the IP community, the concurrence indicated that perhaps Congress should act. But few experts expect a legislative fix to come quickly. That leaves both patent owners and applicants with a pressing need to assess the impact of recent significant Federal Circuit opinions, such as Exergen, Vanda and Praxair.
Exergen and Vanda have been the cause for cautious optimism for some life science companies.
Vanda affirmed a district court’s finding that claims to a personalized method of treatment are patent eligible. In early June, the USPTO issued a new memo to examiners on Vanda. The Federal Circuit decision didn’t address a number of relevant issues, however, such as whether a doctor could be a direct infringer through divided infringement.
The most recent of the three decisions is far more ominous for life science inventions. Praxair, a recent appeal of an IPR decision, could result in many section 101 challenges being made in IPRs in the form of a printed matter/obviousness challenge.
Our panel includes a life sciences expert at the USPTO, a top patent lawyer at a major pharmaceutical company, and a founding shareholder of an IP law firm who specializes in biotech. They will assess the cumulative impact of recent changes and delineate prosecution strategies to address them.
Warren Woessner, Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.
Until recently, the scope of estoppel triggered by PTAB trials was of concern primarily to litigators, who worried about their arguments being estopped in district court.
But patent prosecutors should also worry about estoppel arising from PTAB proceedings. This was made clear in the latest version of the USPTO’s Manual of Patent Examining Procedure that issued in January 2018, the first revision in two years. It states that, “[PTAB] trial proceedings yield information that may be considered material to pending related patent applications … [An] example of such material information is any assertion that is made during litigation and/or trial proceeding which is contradictory to assertions made to the examiner. Examples include evidence of possible prior public use or sales, questions of inventor ship, [or] prior art.” This sweeping requirement for additional disclosure signals a big change that can create issues for those prosecuting patent applications.
The USPTO program run every 2 weeks that creates links between filed petitions for AIA trials and the related applications, which is not accessible to the public or to the attorney of record.
How standard operating procedure for patent prosecutors must now change. The MPEP states that the prosecutor is in danger of violating his or her duty of disclosure if anything in the PTAB record known to be material to the patentability of any claim in an application is not submitted to the USPTO. What are the patent prosecutor’s responsibilities and how should they be fulfilled?
That some commenters have questioned whether the PTAB has authority to issue its estoppel rule, 37 CFR § 42.73(d)(3)(i). Should this have any impact on prosecutors’ behavior?
It’s been five years since a new regulation regarding declarations was promulgated by the USPTO through 37 C.F.R. § 1.130. As patents prosecuted under the AIA begin to flow in larger numbers, practitioners would do well to understand the choices the USPTO has made in implementing those rules.
For instance, the USPTO has arguably taken a hard line on the issue of whether a section 102(b)(1)(B) or 102(b)(2)(B) exception regarding prior art applies. It has narrowly defined the provision that an exception applies when there has been a previous inventor-originated public disclosure of the same subject matter as that of a third party’s potential prior art disclosure, including when a third party discloses an obvious variant of the invention.
The USPTO is frequently having to make decisions on when to apply a section 102(a)(1) exception. This situation arises when prior art has another person’s name on it, e.g., along with the inventor’s. A declaration by the inventor is necessary to explain that the other person was, for example, a graduate student working under the inventor’s direct supervision.
Our panel features a Senior Legal Advisor at the USPTO, and chief IP attorney for a technology company, and a veteran patent prosecutor at a major law firm.
Hatch-Waxman litigation with generic manufacturers has long been the focus of competition involving traditional small molecule drugs. The litigation between Amgen and Sanofi regarding large molecule next-generation cholesterol drugs, however, illustrates the new prominence of innovator vs. innovator litigation in the pharmaceutical industry. In these types of cases, the law of written description looms large because innovators might try to cover all possible drugs that focus on a biologic target while disclosing only a few examples of a possibly large genus.
The recent Federal Circuit opinion in Amgen v. Sanofi, reversing Amgen’s district court win, will have a significant impact from R&D labs to court rooms. The Federal Circuit vacated a district court’s finding that Amgen’s claims for a genus of monoclonal antibodies were not invalid and a permanent injunction enjoining sales of Sanofi’s Praluent®- and remanded for a new trial.
The Federal Circuit also made new law that will influence pharma litigation outside of antibodies. The district court had excluded evidence about Sanofi and co-defendant Regeneron’s own products. The district court excluded the post-priority evidence because it “did not illuminate the state of the art at the time of filing.” The Federal Circuit, by contrast, explained that evidence showing that species disclosed in a patent are not representative of a claimed genus is in fact likely to postdate the priority date, and is able to prove inadequate written description.
What is now needed by way of written description to create a valid patent on an antibody? The entire DNA sequence? Just the CDRs? The entire 3D structure?
How does Amgen v. Sanofi clarify the law beyond earlier cases such as Abbvie v. Janssen and Ariad v. Lilly?
How will pharma litigation change after the case, and how will it affect specific pending cases including challenges on Amgen’s Embrel®?
What happens when the Federal Circuit doesn’t follow the guidance of the Supreme Court? It puts patent prosecutors in a tough spot. Consider the Federal Circuit’s recent guidance on functional claiming in Mastermine v. Microsoft that reversed lower court’s finding of indefiniteness — holding that the claims were not improperly simultaneously directed to both an apparatus and a method of using the apparatus. That decision could provide helpful guidance to patent prosecutors on how to claim user-driven hardware features in the first instance, as well as how to impress upon a patent examiner that functional language of such claims does not cross the line to reciting a separate statutory class.
Some experts find it difficult to follow the Federal Circuit’s reasoning that distinguishes Mastermine’s claims as valid, and more fundamentally, worry that the Federal Circuit is disregarding the Supreme Court’s finding in Nautilus (2014) that a patent is indefinite if it doesn’t describe the invention with “reasonable certainty.” Already the PTAB has explained that it believes that the proper test for indefiniteness remains the test outlined by the Federal Circuit in In re Packard, which predates Nautilus. And lately, patent eligibility concerns usually limited to section 101 are cropping up in decisions regarding functional claiming. The panel will discuss this month’s decision BASF v. Johnson Matthew involving catalytic converter technology where the Federal Circuit reversed an indefiniteness finding.
Our panel will also discuss this tangled knot, and in untangling it, give their best advice for how patent prosecutors should proceed.
The patenting process demands many capabilities, from informed legal analysis about the future direction of the law on patent eligibility and indefiniteness to clerical data entry about filed applications. The global legal outsourcing industry has grown dramatically in the last 10 years to over $2 billion annually, as corporations and law firms try to disaggregate those disparate tasks and have them handled cost-effectively by different parties.
• Aiding and abetting the unauthorized practice of law.
Our panel includes the head of patent operations at a major multinational who has supervised patent service providers for many years, an India-based executive of a patent services provider, and an attorney who specializes in ethical issues facing IP lawyers and who represents them in disciplinary matters.
Lessons learned from cases such as Hagenbuch v. Sonrai (E.D. Ill. 2016) on the potential danger of filing an ill-worded terminal disclaimer, and Janssen v. Celltrion (D. Mass. 2016) on serious consequences from filing a continuation instead of a divisional.
Structuring patent ownership, supply chain management, and inventory management to reduce exhaustion, and important tax implications.
William Krovatin, Merck & Co., Inc.
How to inoculate continuations or divisionals of challenged patents to relevant prior art.
Don’t be distracted by the sports metaphors and the fashion industry commentary. Last month’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands found that decorative elements of cheerleader uniforms were potentially protected by copyright law. That decision opens a new avenue for protection of industrial designs as well, an area which itself has earned a higher profile within IP law recently because of the ongoing fight in Apple v. Samsung. That smartphone case involves design patents, of course, but experts say that the Star Athletica should spur new consideration of how copyright and design patents, as well as trade dress and utility patents, can or can’t work together. Increased use of copyrights to protect industrial design makes new litigation on this issue more likely.
How does Star Athletica change the scope of copyright protection for designs? When is copyright protection for useful objects now appropriate?
What are the differences among the different modes of protection, including “novelty and non-obviousness” for design patents, “originality” for copyrights, and “acquired distinctiveness” for trade dress?
What are the open questions left by Star Athletica that are likely to be litigated in the future?
Robert Katz, Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.
With the Federal Circuit decision earlier this year in Eli Lilly v. Teva Parenteral, the reach of divided infringement into the life sciences left the realm of the hypothetical. Akamai v. Limelight and other prior cases about divided infringement involved software and the Internet, but the Lilly case involved a medical method of treatment. The case is also the first Federal Circuit decision to affirm a finding of divided infringement using the new standard for “direct or control” established by the en banc Federal Circuit in August 2015. Under that standard, an infringer can be found guilty of infringement, even if one did not perform all steps of a patented method. In addition to exerting control through traditional means, an infringer can now be held liable when one “conditions participation in an activity or receipt of a benefit upon performance of a step or steps of a patented method and establishes the manner or timing of that performance.” The relationship between doctor and patient is discussed in this context in the Lilly opinion.
Our panel, which includes an in-house patent counsel at a drug company and two patent prosecutors, will analyze Lilly, and extract principles that can be used to guide patent claim drafting in such fields as personalized medicine and companion diagnostics, measuring the efficacy of treatment through biomarkers, and methods involving pretreatment. The panelists will also consider the interplay of factors unique to the drug industry, such as the role of the FDA label.
This webinar will consider what new legal battles are likely to follow from last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Life Tech v. Promega. The decision reversed the Federal Circuit by finding that Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Life Technologies unit did not infringe by shipping a single component of Promega’s patented invention overseas, in a case involving Section 271(f)(1) of the Patent Act.
In parsing that statute, the Justices declined to rule on how close to “all” of an invention’s components must be exported in order to be the “substantial portion” that is needed to infringe. Presumably, that determination will be argued in front of a jury. It is also not clear whether it will be a judge or the jury who will answer the question of exactly how many “components” are defined within a patent. Patent owners will want to argue that there are multiple components in the part of an invention shipped overseas, while alleged infringers will want to include many parts of a patent in one component.
Our panel, which includes the head of IP for a large technology company and two litigators, each of whom was involved in an amicus brief in the case, will also discuss strategies for patent prosecution and global supply chain management going forward. For instance, inventors may want to look harder at procuring foreign patents in countries where competitors are likely to repackage or use components of an invention that now is patented only in the U.S.
Our panel has examined the follow-on decision citing Schulhauser to provide insight into the varied types of method-claim limitations that have not been given patentable weight, including how to avoid emerging trigger words such as, “carrying out a step upon a threshold being exceeded,” “upon,” “whether,” or “when.” They will also discuss how these decisions extend Schulhauser’s holding to system, machine, and apparatus claims without means-plus-function limitations, and will give other relevant practice tips.
In its recent opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court answered this question posed by Samsung: “Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer’s profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?” The reply of the unanimous court, in an opinion written by Judge Sotomayor: “The term ‘article of manufacture’ is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product, whether sold separately or not.” That answer rejects the Federal Circuit’s longstanding interpretation of Section 289.
However, experts say the Supreme Court’s opinion raises many more questions. The Federal Circuit must now create a test that will allow a jury to determine whether the “article of manufacture” covered by a design patent is the entire product or a component, and what that component is. For now, it is not clear whether the patent owner or the defendant bears the burden of proof. Then, it will be up to a judge to apportion to the component some part of the infringer’s entire profits on the product. Our panel — a design patent litigator, a damages expert, and a law professor specializing in patent damages — will discuss how the law of design patent damages might evolve, and see what the options might mean applied to cases currently being litigated, such as Apple v. Samsung and Nordock v. Systems.
Richard Stockton, Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.
A patent prosecutor cannot know how a claim will be interpreted years after a patent issues, and must live with the nightmare possibility that a district court or the PTAB will find that the “broadest reasonable interpretation” (BRI) of a claim renders the patent invalid. In everyday practice, meanwhile, he or she must continually balance the desire to win a broad claim construction from the USPTO (to preserve future enforceability) with the need to tighten the scope (to avoid the prior art).
The panel, which includes a USPTO expert and two patent prosecutors, will discuss practice tips for finessing the issues posed by BRI for patent prosecutors, relying on several PTAB and BPAI decisions of ex parte appeals. They also will discuss how to make sure an issued patent is not caught unexpectedly in the future by Section 112(f), and how to make the best of an existing application in which the specification is lacking but not open to broadening without a loss of priority date.
Software patent law has been on a wild ride over the past month. At first, in mid-September, patent owners applauded the long-awaited Federal Circuit decision in McRO v. Bandai, only its fourth pro-patent eligibility decision (out of 20) since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark holding in Alice v. CLS Bank. McRO appears to offer new paths to patent eligibility for many inventions by, e.g., its analysis of how the invention in question did not preempt other ways of solving the same problem and its embrace of automated mathematical rules.
But then, in early October, a wide rift among the Federal Circuit judges on Section 101 issues was revealed in the decision that invalidated three patents of Intellectual Ventures that had been asserted against Symantec and Trend Micro. Judge Stoll dissented, saying that one of the patents offered concrete steps and was a technical improvement over prior art, relying on Bascom, a Federal Circuit opinion earlier this year. The majority opinion was written by Judge Dyk, but the eye opener was a concurrence by Judge Mayer, stating his view that patents on software should be banned.
Our panel of patent prosecutors will discuss how they think the USPTO will apply the analysis of patent eligibility presented in McRO, and how applicants can best position their arguments to take advantage of McRO and the earlier DDR, Enfish and Bascom decisions.
Will blockchain technology soon leap beyond its initial success in the currency Bitcoin to disrupt many industries and the legal profession itself? That remains to be seen. But companies and clients are curious about blockchain’s potential, regardless of its timetable or ultimate impact, and IP lawyers can benefit from a better understanding of the distributed ledger technology and its implications.
New Applications: Which industries beyond finance will embrace new blockchain applications – 3D printing and digital rights management, logistics and supply chain management, energy grid management, capital markets trading, real property transfers?
Security: What is the focus of the debate about blockchain security?
The IP landscape of blockchain — Open source or proprietary?: Many founders of Bitcoin embrace open-source models, but at least one pioneer is reported to have recently filed patent applications on the building blocks of blockchain. Other companies are quickly trying to amass patent portfolios around blockchain applications. But questions about patent eligibility and obviousness loom. Are many blockchain patents and applications little more than the computerized and non-novel application of an “abstract idea”?
Rapid Litigation v. CellzDirect, where in early July, the U.S. Federal Circuit panel reversed a district court’s holding that claims to a method of isolating and preserving liver cells were patent-ineligible. The appellate court held that the claims did not encompass a judicial exception (step one of the Mayo/Alice analysis). The same kind of analysis helped save patents involving self-referential software databases in Enfish v. Microsoft this spring.
Bascom v. AT&T, where in June the U.S. Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s finding that Bascom’s patent for filtering internet content failed step two of the Mayo/Alice The U.S. Federal Circuit stated that “the inventive concept inquiry requires more than recognizing that each claim element, by itself, was known in the art. . . an inventive concept can be found in the non-conventional and non-generic arrangement of known, conventional pieces.” Life science experts believe this finding can also help life science patents.
Our panelists will give specific tips for drafting and prosecuting patents in their industries to avoid Section 101 rejections, resulting in patents that will withstand patent-eligibility attacks in litigation. The life science webinar will include discussion of both therapeutics and diagnostics, and the software webinar will include discussion of several recent useful ex parte PTAB decisions that overturned examiners Section 101 rejections.
Christopher Jeffers, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Our panelists will give specific tips for drafting and prosecuting patents in their industries to avoid Section 101 rejections, resulting in patents that will withstand patent-eligibility attacks in litigation.
Stephen Durant, Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.
The USPTO emerged as the big winner in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Cuozzo decision. The Court approved the PTO’s approach of applying the broadest reasonable construction (BRI) standard to interpret patent claims in post-grant proceedings and it upheld the agency’s interpretation of the AIA provision that bars challenges to the PTO’s decisions to institute inter partes review (IPR).
What lessons should patent prosecutors take from Cuozzo?
A senior lawyer at the USPTO and two experienced life science patent prosecutors will use this webinar to probe deeply into the new examples published this month that show how claims for life science inventions should be examined by the agency for subject-matter patent eligibility. They will look in detail at the first four examples, two centering on diagnostics and two on inventions that involve a product of nature. Attendees will benefit most if they are already familiar with the examples and have a printed copy of the examples available to refer to during the webinar. The examples are available on the USPTO website.
The panelists will crystallize the examples into “dos and don’t” for patent prosecutors in life science matters relating to Subject 101. They will also discuss pending litigation and how the guidelines will have to change if the U.S. Supreme Court denies certiorari in the Sequenom case. The two diagnostic examples do not apply the 2015 Federal Circuit decision in Sequenom.
The USPTO is trying to put an end to the “I know it when I see it” era of subject-matter ineligibility decisions by patent examiners. This month the agency published a new package of guidance to examiners that includes, among other things, instructions on formulating detailed subject-matter eligibility rejections and responses to applicant’s replies, and a new set of life science examples.
Our webinar on Wednesday, May 18 will focus on the patent prosecution process and Section 101 rejections in light of the new guidance. The panel features the USPTO’s Deputy Commissioner of Patent Examination Policy. In discussion with two law firm patent prosecutors, he will explain the agency’s new policies and how the agency will encourage examiners to follow them. The panel will also review the recent Federal Circuit decision in Enfish v. Microsoft and other pending decisions that may cause the USPTO to further adjust its policies.
Another upcoming webinar (date to be announced shortly) will feature a USPTO life sciences expert who will hone in on the new life science examples in discussion with two life science patent prosecutors. Despite the welcome new insights provided to patent applicants by the latest USPTO examples, some experts point out that hard questions remain. For example, what is the likely eligibility of a claim directed to a mixture of an efficacious amount of a naturally-occurring product?
Bart Eppenauer, Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.
Lexmark: A Bulwark Against Exhaustion?
Covetous employees, foreign government hackers, erstwhile suppliers, or disloyal business partners: all can pose the threat of trade secret theft to corporations these days. This webinar will give best practices for secret holders when the alarm of a potential theft first sounds. In those stress-filled hours, a swift and well-focused response can save the day, while a bungled reflex might negatively impact the outcome of the entire episode.
First moves in litigation: Whether and how best to request a court for temporary restraining order or immediate injunctive relief.
Our panel includes the general counsel of a large diversified law firm that does patent prosecution; a law firm attorney who represents patent practitioners involved in claims of professional misconduct, attorney discipline, and ethics matters; and an in-house counsel with responsibility for IP for major business segment of a multinational. They will discuss best practices for law firms and clients in light of Maling, and consider hypotheticals where the answer about conflicts is tough to call.
Scott Markow, Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.
When the Federal Circuit last summer rejected a request for a rehearing en banc from Samsung on the damages awarded to Apple for infringement of three of its design patents, it reaffirmed what experts in design patents already knew: With design patents, the infringer’s damages are its entire profits from the article of manufacture. That formula stemmed from design patents’ has historically been used as a weapon in the fight against counterfeits and knock-offs. But the ruling in Apple v. Samsung, based on a straightforward reading of Section 289 of the Patent Act, was an eye opener even for many patent law veterans outside the design space. The Federal Circuit reiterated its stance again in September in Nordock v. Systems, when it remanded a patent design case because the lower court’s damages calculation shortchanged the plaintiff.
Our panel brings together two design-patent veterans with a damages expert to discuss the implications on design patent prosecution and litigation of the increased consciousness regarding design patent damages. Is this just a blip or will it lead to an increase in design patent litigation and prosecution, as some experts predict? How will courts define “the article of manufacture”? What are the limitations of design patent enforcement despite the possibility of 289 damages? The panelists will also consider Samsung’s certiorari petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This panel will examine how double patenting arises in tech company patent portfolios, how ex parte reexam differs from other post-grant proceedings vis a vis double patenting, and how it can be used to invalidate vulnerable patents. Our panel includes both an in-house tech company lawyer and a law firm lawyer with relevant first-hand experience, and a law firm attorney who was former head of the USPTO’s Central Reexamination Unit.
The Federal Circuit decision twenty months ago in Gilead v. Natco arose out of ANDA litigation over patents on anti-viral drugs, and tremors from that decision – which expanded the universe of patents vulnerable to charges of double patenting — are being widely felt in the pharma and biotech industry. But life sciences companies are not the only ones to find themselves with Gilead’s problem: after asserting a patent in litigation, some high-tech companies have discovered that the defendant can use one of the plaintiff’s later issued but earlier expiring patents to knock out a patent that was issued earlier but expires later. Like drugmakers, some tech companies may come to regret relying heavily on continuations in their patent prosecution, using a “more is more” strategy to grow large patent families. Ex parte reexamination has emerged as the proceeding of choice for tech patent challengers with at least a dozen patents invalidated by the USPTO’s Central Reexamination Unit for double patenting since Gilead.
The Federal Circuit decision twenty months ago in Gilead v. Natco arose out of ANDA litigation over patents on anti-viral drugs, and it is widely seen as expanding the universe of patents vulnerable to charges of double patenting in the pharma and biotech industry. However, life sciences companies are not the only ones to find themselves with Gilead’s problem. After asserting a patent in litigation, some high-tech companies have discovered that the defendant can use one of the plaintiff’s later issued, but earlier expiring patents, to knock out a patent that was issued earlier but expires later.
Like drugmakers, some tech companies may come to regret relying heavily on continuations in their patent prosecution, using a “more is more” strategy to grow large patent families. Ex parte reexamination has emerged as the proceeding of choice for tech patent challengers, with at least a dozen patents invalidated by the USPTO’s Central Reexamination Unit for double patenting since Gilead.
This panel will focus on tips for patent prosecution after Gilead, as well as the litigation outlook with a particular focus on biosimilars. Because many branded pharma companies are entering the biosimilar market, they are finding themselves combing the portfolios of competitors for double patenting weakness, much as generic companies are doing. Our panel features the lawyer who argued for Natco at the Federal Circuit, a law firm biotech lawyer who is an expert on patent term adjustment, and the vice president of IP at a drug development company.
Tim Babcock, Akros Pharma Inc.

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