Patent Law Practice Center

Top 5 Patent Law Blog Posts of the Week

Today we continue our weekly installment highlighting the best of the patent blogosphere from the past week. Highlights include a patent application for dispersing riots with sound, a new database for chemical patents, and an update on the delayed ITC decision. If there are any patent blogs you think should be highlighted by our Top 5, please comment on this post and we’ll check them out!

1) Patently-O: Design Patent Pendency – This post was selected because, although it’s just a paragraph long, it shares the blogging spotlight on the design patent. Design patents don’t get press like utility patents do. This post provides a chart on the progress design patent filings have taken over the years, and explains that the majority of design patent applications get filed within the year.

2) New Scientist: Riot Shields Could Scatter Crowds with a ‘Wall of Sound’ – A Massachusetts defense firm applied for a patent for a “man-portable non-lethal pressure shield” that would emit sounds causing people to disperse due to their physical inability to withstand the sounds. The article reports on how the patent works and how it differentiates from other sound emitting crowd control devices. You can view the patent here.

3) Tech Crunch: Apple Made a Deal with The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll) – The interwebs have been a flutter about this post’s explanation of how Digitude Innovations partnered with Apple and has since been actively suing companies like RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia. The article reports that Apple has transferred about a dozen of its patents in a patent litigation offensive strategy.

4) Bloomberg: HTC Says Decision in U.S. Patent Dispute With Apple Delayed – This post provides a quick  summary of how and why the hotly anticipated ITC ruling was delayed to early next week, and reiterates the impact the decision will have on all parties involved.

5) SiNApSE: New Chemical Database For Patent Search – This post explains the recent announcement that IBM launched of a new database which will provide access to more than 2.4 million chemical compounds extracted from about 4.7 million patents and 11 million biomedical journal abstracts from 1976 to 2000. The new venture is in collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont and Pfizer.

Written Description Requirement: Ariad v. Eli Lilly

I recently had the opportunity to listen in on PLI’s one hour briefing titled Ariad v. Eli Lilly and the Separate Written Description Requirement. This briefing was conducted by Vera M. Elson, a partner in the international law firm McDermott Will & Emery and Burt Magen, a partner in the law firm Vierra Magen Marcus & DeNiro LLP.  Ms. Elson focuses her practice on intellectual property trial and counseling for her firm’s technology clients.  Mr. Magen focuses his practice on intellectual property counseling and patent prosecution for his firm’s technology clients.

Elson began by explaining that pre-Ariad § 112, ¶1 focused on two underlying purposes behind a separate written description.  The first was Possession:  “The purpose of the written description requirement is broader than to merely explain how to make and use; the applicant must also convey with reasonable clarity to those skilled in the art that, as of the filing date sought, he or she was in possession of the invention.” Vas-Cath, Inc. v. Mahurkar, 935 F. 2d 1555 (Fed. Cir. 1991).  In other words, what you claimed you actually invented.  The second was Meaningful Disclosure: “A patent specification must convey the detailed identity of an invention, thereby serving a teaching function as a quid pro quo in which the public is given meaningful disclosure in exchange for being excluded from practicing the invention for a limited period of time. Univ. of Rochester v. G.D. Searle & Co., Inc. 358 F. 3d 916, 921 (Fed. Cir. 2004).  That is to say, you actually invented what you say you invented and you taught it to us.  But, everything came to a head with the Ariad case. (more…)