THE PLUS IP FIRM
We are board-certified intellectual property attorneys, inventors, and engineers that help small-size inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses register and protect patents, copyrights, and trademarks so you can profit from them faster.
Call Now: 786.443.7720
Written by Mark Terry Patents grant you the right to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing a patented product or process. Without a patent, others can typically use your ideas and monetize them without any recourse. Patents can be used to protect many different things including products or innovative new ways of doing things, i.e., a process that offers a new solution to a complex problem. It is highly recommended that you enlist the services of a legal professional who will help you through the patent process. I, Mark Terry, am a patent lawyer located in Miami, Florida. In
Written by Mark Terry It is often the case that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will issue a 35 U.S.C. § 103 obviousness rejection based on what an Examiner believes is material that is known to a person of ordinary skill in the art. That is, the Patent Examiner will often state that such-and-such claim element (or some combination of claim elements) are well known to a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA). As a patent practitioner, you can respond with “attorney argument” and/or you can respond with hard evidence. The attached Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision
Written by Mark Terry I came upon a super interesting Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) decision issued today. I found the Smucker v. Mack-Ray case interesting for both educational and entertainment reasons. The decision involves the effect an infringement action may have on a re-exam. But the BPAI used uncharacteristically harsh words to reject the Appellant’s arguments, which made it amusing. It’s rare to see any emotion in a BPAI decision, so when you see Jones Day get a verbal spanking, you can’t help but write about it. In the Smuckers v. Mack-Ray case, the patent owner had sued the defendant for patent infringement
Written by Mark Terry Terms of degree – such as “easily,” “readily,” and “aesthetically pleasing” – can be subjective and therefore problematic when used as claim language. But the recent Federal Circuit decision of Hearing Components, Inc. v. Shure Inc., 600 F. 3d 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2010) provides some guidelines on how to properly use terms of degree in claim language without worrying about a 35 U.S.C. §112 indefiniteness rejection. As a Florida Patent Attorney, I write claims almost every day, so this case is topical for me. Under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, the “specification shall conclude with one or
Written by Mark Terry Today the Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision that plainly answers the question of who is a person of ordinary skill in the art – Extreme Networks v. Enterasys Networks (Fed. Cir. 2010). As a Florida Patent Attorney who routinely deals with this question, I found it refreshing to read a Federal Circuit decision that tackles this issue head on. The case of Extreme v. Enterasys involved a two-way patent dispute over router-based technologies. At issue was whether the lower court erred in excluding one party’s expert because he was not a person of ordinary skill
Written by Mark Terry Another recent decision by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) overturned a rejection by a patent examiner who attempted a 35 U.S.C. §112 rejection of a biotechnology invention that discloses a method for killing malignant melanoma cancer cells (Ex parte Chada). As a Miami-based Board Certified Intellectual Property Attorney, I continuously review new BPAI decisions so that I can skillfully draft proactive and intelligent patent applications based on the latest patent office holdings for my clients. Geneticist Sunil Chada applied for a patent that describes a technique for activating a gene in Melanoma cancer cells
Written by Mark Terry Once again the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) reversed a rejection by an overzealous patent examiner who failed to adequately connect the proverbial dots between prior patents in an attempt to disqualify a patent application for approval (Ex parte Kobayashi). As a Miami-based Patent Lawyer I constantly keep abreast of new holdings handed down by the BPAI in order to deliver up-to-the-minute defenses for my clients’ patent applications. The patent applicant in this month’s Kobayashi decision invented a system for recording the progress of video game players as they achieved certain milestones in online (networked) video games. The
Written by Mark Terry In it’s first decision of the day this sleepy Monday morning, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) rejected a novel “market forces” argument in favor of a Patent Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. 103 obviousness rejection. As a Miami Patent Lawyer, I found the Ex parte Scherschel decision interesting because I like to read the novel arguments asserted by patent attorneys when they have a dog of a case. And sometimes the BPAI’s response is even more interesting. The case of Ex parte Scherschel involved an invention related to cell phone communications systems. This case was on re-hearing, which means the
Written by Mark Terry In the last decision of this past Thursday, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) reiterated the rule that attorney argument is not enough to meet certain burdens in course of patent prosecution. As a Board Certified patent lawyer in Miami with a sizable docket of cases, I’m constantly staying abreast of the current state of the law on issues relating to patent prosecution. The Patent Examiner in the Ex parte Zechlin case asserted that a characteristic of the claimed chemical process was found in a prior art patent. Specifically, the Patent Examiner found the claimed cyclic ketone removal characteristic was
Written by Mark Terry Ric Flair, the greatest professional wrestler of all time, said “If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.” Without knowing it, Ric Flair expressed exactly what it takes to win at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). As a boy, I remember watching Ric Flair froth at the mouth, running around like a mad man and beating his opponents. It was a stunning display of energy, machismo and mayhem, all rolled into one. At some point, he would settle in front of a camera and going on long, screaming diatribes about
THE PLUS IP FIRM
We are board-certified intellectual property attorneys, inventors, and engineers that help small-size inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses register and protect patents, copyrights, and trademarks so you can profit from them faster.
Call Now: 786.443.7720