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The frustration with the RCE backlog has finally gotten patent office attention.  Here’s your chance to include your comments.  http://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/wanted_your_ideas_and_feedback. In think one major issue is that when you file an amendment and think you’ve clearly distinguished over the cited art, the examiner throws back a bogus 103 rejection and forces you to amend and file…

This week on Shark Tank a company called BibbiTech (http://http://www.bibbitec.com) touted their high-tec baby bib. It’s made of a neoprene rubber with a non-stain fabric.  I have to admit that the idea is a pretty good one, but the Shark’s didn’t bite.  It was way to expensive and they had no business plan. The Sharks…

The patent office just posted this on their site.  You can download it to your desktop and try it out.http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/patent_term_calculator.jsp#heading-1 .  Several years ago, we produced a similar program that works really well.  However, one word of caution. You still need to review the file history and look at the exact language in terminal disclaimers and other quirky…

The debate was all over the patent held by TEC (Technology Enabled Clothing). When the patent holder didn’t want to sell part of his business, but just license his patent, Mark Cuban lost it. In essence, he said that patents are a waste, they ruin a market and all they do is create uncertainty. While…

Evidently, that is true.  In a recent blog post (http://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/interviews_and_patent_quality), the patent office claims that when an applicant interviews the examiner the patent quality improves. At first this surprised me.  Thinking about it a little more, however, it makes sense. When you interview a case, the examiner tends to pay more attention and so the…

That is essentially what the inventors of the Joulies admitted this week on Shark Tank.http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-detail/episode-414/1056608.  The basic idea behind the Joulies is to put something that looks like a small stone in your coffee to cool it down when it is too hot and to warm it up when it gets cold.  The company web…

I had always assumed most patent applicants knew about the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) and were taking advantage of it.  Evidently not.  I just attended a patent conference where the speaker suggested that not many people are using the PPH.  The speaker indicated that the patent office wants this program to succeed.  He showed statistics…

If you qualify, this is a great deal.  The unfortunate part of patent prosecution is attorneys fees, which are largely the result of the complexity of the prosecution process, and the AIA did little to help that.  However, this is a nice start.  Also, per my previous post on small claims courts for patent litigation,…

The US Patent Office thinks so.  And they just filed a notice asking for comments.  The public has 90 days to provide any thoughts.  I, for one, think this is a great idea.  Right now it costs well over $1 million to bring a patent infringement case, essentially making patents worthless to most American inventors. …