The Patently-O blog includes an interesting guest column on patent reexamination, including a link to a white paper and several podcasts.
Patent Reexamination – a hot and growing field?
March 10th, 2009Deferred Examination in the U.S.?
March 10th, 2009In a January 28, 2009 Federal Register Notice, the PTO solicited comments for a deferred examination procedure. It stated:
Currently, many intellectual property (IP) offices . . .do not perform a substantive examination on every patent application that is filed in the respective office. Specifically, a patent application is not given a substantive examination in many IP offices unless and until an applicant submits an express request for examination, and the failure to file any such request for examination within a specified time period results in abandonment or withdrawal of the application. This practice is commonly referred to as ‘‘deferred examination.’’
In the United States, the mere filing of a patent application and payment of the applicable fees is effectively a request for examination of the application. The USPTO frequently receives suggestions that the USPTO adopt a deferral of examination procedure.
The USPTO has in place an optional deferred examination procedure that was adopted as part of the rule making to implement eighteen- month publication of patent applications. . . This deferral of examination procedure permits deferral of examination for up to three years from the earliest filing date. . . [This] deferral of examination procedure . . . however, has been used in fewer than two hundred applications since its inception on November 29, 2000. . .
The deadline for receipt of written comments has now been extended to May 29, 2009.
In short, this procedure appears to be a funding effort, with little benefit to IP owners. Obviously, such a procedure would require application owners to pay a new fee and would thus increase the cost of patent procurement.
Potential benefits to application owners might include additional time (i.e., up to 3 years from filing) to determine whether or not the invention described in the application warrants the costs associated with examination. However, many applications are not examined for more than 3 years nowadays, particularly in the more complex technology areas. Hence, this is not likely to be a valuable benefit to IP owners.
A second potential benefit of deferred examination may involve delaying publication of the deferred application in the U.S. U.S. patent applications are generally published 18 months after their priority date. Thus, if deferred applications will not be published during the deferral period, application owners may benefit by keeping their application secret longer than 18 months, and perhaps even spring it on a competitor. Realistically, though, this is not likely to helpful since most businesses are interested in foreign patent protection, and thus file PCT applications (which are published 18 months from the original priority date.)
Finally, deferral would be unattractive to the life sciences industries if it would involve loss of patent term life.
President Obama overturns Bush era order limiting federal funding for stem cell research – stem cell research still faces limitations from federal law
March 9th, 2009The New York Times reports that President Obama will today sign an Executive Order lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The New York Times reports:
At first, the ban stood in the way of taxpayer-financed embryonic stem cell research, because embryos are destroyed when stem cells are extracted from them. But in August 2001, in a careful compromise, President Bush opened the door a tiny crack, by ordering that tax dollars could be used for studies on a small number of lines, or colonies, of stem cells already extracted from embryos — so long as federal researchers did not do the extraction themselves. . .
To the delight of patients’ groups and scientists, the order will allow research on hundreds of stem cell lines already in existence, as well as ones yet to be created, typically from embryos left over from fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded.
The order comes just in time for researchers to take advantage of money in Mr. Obama’s economic recovery package and use it for stem cell studies. But because of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, federal researchers would still be unable to create their own stem cell lines . . .
A senior House Democratic leadership aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said overturning the ban “would be difficult, but not impossible,” adding, “It’s not something that we would do right away, but it’s something that we would look at.”
President Obama also signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. I am not quite sure exactly what this means – but I am sure it will be interesting nonetheless.
Stem cell breakthrough
March 6th, 2009An international team reports in the journal Nature that they have successfully made stem cells from human skin cells without the use of viruses. This is a big deal because viruses used to make stem cells are associated with cancer and genetic instability.
Potential impact of Obama’s call for regulatory pathway for approving follow-on biologics
March 6th, 2009Basic article on how the biotech industry might be affected by a regulatory pathway for approving follow-on biologics: here
Silly Innovation: Hamster-controlled vacuum cleaner
March 4th, 2009I wonder if it comes with an automated device to clean the hamster ball.