Patent Research

The “Patent Statistics for Decision Makers-2011” Conference will be held 16-17 November 2011, Alexandria, Virginia. The Conference is organized by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), European Patent Office (EPO), Eurostat, Japan Patent Office (JPO), and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Statistical analysis of patent data commonly aids decision-makers in assessing the opportunities available to them, and provides key insights into the risks and challenges associated with their decision options.

The conference will explore advances in the analysis of patent information in the context of the changing legal, economic, competitive and technological landscapes. The Conference aims to educate and share best practices by surveying the breadth of thinking – while exploring the frontiers of our knowledge – on issues relevant to using patent information by industry, academic, and government decision makers.

The Conference’s target audience are experts, statisticians, researchers and analysts working in the fields of innovation, patents, and science and technology policy.

For questions, please contact: duang.phetsaenngam@uspto.gov

California Regional Independent Inventors Conference will take place August 12-13, 2011, Pasadena, California. Senior USPTO officials, successful inventors and intellectual property experts will be on hand to provide practical advice and information for novice and seasoned inventors. A pre-conference workshop on August 11 (from 5-7 pm) will cover the basics of the patent process. The workshop session on patent basics will be repeated as a breakout session on August 12 and 13.

The Twelfth annual Sedona Conference on Patent Litigation will be held Oct 13 – Oct 14, 2011, L’Auberge Del Mar, Del Mar, CA.

The Sedona Conference on Patent Litigation highlights:

• Supreme Court & Federal Circuit Case Law Update
• Joint/Contributory Infringement
• Inequitable Conduct
• Patent Reform
• Strategic Use of Re-examination and Re-Issue
• Patent Litigation Case Management
• Patent Damages & Remedies
• Settlements, License Agreements & Damages

EPO Patent Information Conference will be held 18-20 October 2011, Kilkenny, Ireland. If you need to stay up to date with the latest developments in patent information from the EPO then the Patent Information Conference is for you.This year, at the invitation of the Irish Patents Office, the Patent Information Conference takes place in Kilkenny, Ireland. The venue is the Lyrath Conference Centre and Hotel.

The EPO Patent Information Conference highlights:

• the role of patent offices in open government
• what it takes to keep the world’s biggest patent database on track
• machine-translation for patents
• the EPO’s EPOQUE search engine
• co-operative patent classification – a common classification system for Europe and the USA
• insights from professional patent searchers on specific issues

Following three weeks of proceedings, a jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that Verizon had infringed on all asserted claims of the intellectual property owned by ActiveVideo during the deployment of Verizon’s FiOS television service. The decision upholds ActiveVideo’s IP rights defined in four U.S. patents:

• United States Patent No. 6,034,678, titled “Cable Television System With Remote Interactive Processor;”
• United States Patent No. 5,550,578, titled “Interactive And Conventional Television Information System;”
• United States Patent No. 6,100,883, titled “Home Interface Controller for Providing Interactive Cable Television;”
• United States Patent No. 6,205,582, titled “Interactive Cable Television System with Frame Server.”

ActiveVideo Networks was awarded damages totaling $115 million in the jury trial of the company’s patent infringement suit against Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ).

A Patent Examiner reviews patent applications to determine if they comply with Federal law and regulations, in addition to scientific principle. The incumbent would be responsible for scrutinizing patent applications, determining the scope of protection claimed by the inventor, researching relevant technologies, and communicating findings and decisions to patent practitioners and/or inventors. The job is generally visually demanding in nature and
almost all of a Patent Examiner’s work is performed using a computer. The Patent Examiner is required to conduct an extensive review of a large body of technical information which regularly includes detailed drawings as represented in electrical schematic, 3-dimensional mechanical portrayed drawings or chemical manufacturing process diagrams. The incumbent reviews patent applications and writes office actions, in a production oriented environment that requires the analytical ability to efficiently digest large volumes of scientific information and to use this in making timely decisions regarding the patentability of an application.

Job Summary

• Education: professional mechanical engineering. To be acceptable, the curriculum must: (1) be in a school of engineering with at least one curriculum accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) as a professional engineering curriculum; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) mechanical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optical engineering, computer engineering, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics.
• Specified academic courses: Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and in engineering that included the courses specified in the basic requirements. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of a professional mechanical engineering curriculum.
• Related curriculum: Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor’s degree in engineering technology or in an appropriate professional field, e.g., physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a degree in mechanical engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional mechanical engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional mechanical engineering competence, or several years of prior professional mechanical engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions.

PATENT EXPERIENCE

• Applying established scientific analytical techniques to evaluating applications for patents requiring appropriate applications of mechanical engineering.
• Drafting patent applications in compliance with formal requirements and technical accuracy.
• Drafting disclosure and claims for compliance with 35 USC 112.
• Planning and conducting searches.
• Ensuring that specification and claim amendments fail to introduce new matter.
• Assessing the potential for a proper restriction.
• Determining whether claims distinguish over the prior art.
• Analyzing rejections under 35 USC 102 and 103 which have supporting rationale.
• Determining whether claimed invention is operable/useful as disclosed.
• Evaluating/applying case law as necessary.
• Evaluating sufficiency of affidavits/declarations.
• Determining whether an appropriate line of patentable distinction is maintained between application and/or patents.
• Evaluating legal sufficiency of reissue oath/declaration.
• Evaluating the appropriateness of grounds for reexamination as it relates to mechanical engineering.

More information – see Patent Jobs

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced its participation in a pilot program to test an enhanced framework for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH). The pilot, which will also include the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), IPAustralia, National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (NBPR), Federal Service on Intellectual Property, Patents & Trademarks of Russia (Rospatent), Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) and United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), builds on the success of the current PPH by modifying certain requirements to make the PPH easier to use and more widely available to a greater number of applicants.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a new pilot project for the Patent Prosecution Highway with the Nordic Patent Institute (NPI) based on NPI’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) work products (PCT-PPH pilot program). PPH will permit the USPTO to benefit from the PCT work previously done by the NPI, which reduces the examination workload and improves patent quality. The expedited examination allows applicants to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently in the United States.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced the expansion of the PCT-PPH pilot program with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO). The USPTO-KIPO PCT-PPH pilot started June 1, 2010 and originally allowed only PCT work product from KIPO as a basis to enter PPH at the USPTO. The expanded pilot will now permit PCT work product done by the USPTO as a basis to enter into KIPO. The expedited examination in each office allows applicants to obtain corresponding patents faster and with greater quality in each country. The PCT-PPH program will use international written opinions and international preliminary examination reports developed within the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced a new pilot project for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) with the Israel Patent Office (ILPO). PPH will permit each office to benefit from work previously done by the other office, which reduces the examination workload and improves patent quality. The expedited examination in each office allows applicants to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently in each country. Under the PPH pilot program, an Office of Second Filing (OSF) may utilize the search and examination results of a national application filed in the Office of First Filing (OFF) in a corresponding application filed under the Paris Convention in the OSF.