Authored by Michael Vosseller

Authored by Michael Vosseller

Here at Juristat, we are often asked whether an entity's size affects its allowance rate for patents. We’ve run the numbers, and the results may be more skewed than you expect.

The USPTO has issued new guidance on subject matter eligibility under § 101. The document, entitled “2014 Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility” (Interim Eligibility Guidance), comes in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decisions in Mayo, Myriad, and Alice Corp. that have shaken up the way patent examiners determine if an idea is patentable. Prior to the Interim Eligibility Guidance's release on December 15th, patent examiners relied primarily on two documents released earlier this year: (1) the Myriad/Mayo guidance issued on March 4th; and (2) the Alice Corp. guidance issued on June 25th. The new document supplements the latter and supersedes the former.

SAWS. If you think it sounds ominous, you’re not the first. Alyssa Bereznak at Yahoo Tech recently broke the story on this shadowy USPTO system.

Friday May 23, 2014

Lists identifying top patent blogs are woefully out of date, as many of the blogs listed have been completely abandoned by their authors.

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By default, patent applications filed in the United States publish eighteen months after their earliest effective filing date. However, under 35 U.S.C 122(b)(2)(B)(i)[1], an applicant may file a non-publication request which, if certain requirements are met, allows for the application to remain unpublished beyond eighteen months, to be published only if and when a patent is granted. If the application is abandoned, then the contents of the application will remain unpublished indefinitely. I know from time to time we have all wondered which firms and in-house counsels are filing all of these secret patent applications. Well, Juristat knows. Below is a graph of the Top 15 filers of non-published patent applications publications that were ultimately granted.