Protecting Potential Patent Rights

Posted by:

Protecting Potential Patent Rights

Startups are typically heady with patent potential, whether real or imagined. It is important to keep in mind some best practices for protecting potential patent rights.

1. Audit your Intellectual Property. Develop of system to organize a keep track of your potentially patentable inventions.  Schedule “harvest” sessions with a patent attorney to identify potential patentable inventions. These sessions are a relatively inexpensive way to develop a patent strategy that makes sense for your startup.

2. Be careful with public and ...

Continue Reading →
0

“Insolubly Ambiguous” falls to “Reasonable Certainty”

Posted by:

What you need. What we know.™ – Patents: Indefiniteness

The United States Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that “insolubly ambiguous” is not the correct standard when evaluating patent claims for indefiniteness.  “Insolubly ambiguous” is certainly a bit of a mouthful – “insolubly ambiguous” – and requires a bit of thought. Now, however, the new standard for determining whether patent claims are indefinite and, therefore, ineligible to receive patent protection, is “reasonable certainty.”

Does the patent claim “inform, with reasonable certainty, those skilled ...

Continue Reading →
0

“Anything Under the Sun that is Made by Man”

Posted by:

​What you need. What we know.™ – Patents: Non-Patentable Subject Matter

“Anything under the sun that is made by man” is patentable. Or so the US Supreme Court once quoted in a 1980 case involving an “invention of a human-made, genetically engineered bacterium capable of breaking down crude oil[.]” Emphasis on the word “made”; abstract ideas are non-patentable subject matter.

Most recently in the spotlight in the area of non-patentable subject matter, 35 U.S.C. § 101, is the ...

Continue Reading →
0