Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, April 2013

When the Founding Fathers included the concept of patents in the original U.S. Constitution, their 18th century minds could never have conceived of all the new technologies that would be patented, from the light bulb and the telephone to computers and medical diagnostics. And they surely could not have imagined the issue of whether human genes could be patented. A 21st century Supreme Court will have to make that decision.

Wealth of Ideas, March 2013

The U.S. patent system is not the only patent-granting body undergoing a great deal of change. This month, as our own patent system switches to a “first-to-file” regime in an effort to be in harmony with patent systems in other countries, we take a look at the European Union’s newly unified patent court system.

Why a Unified Patent Court?

With 27 member states, the European Union has been in the process of establishing a single European patent for the past few decades.

Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, February 2013

In early January, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) teamed up with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to urge the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to limit the granting of sales bans on products that have been found to infringe another party’s patent(s).

The past year seemed to fly by, but many events that happened in the IP world last year are worth a second look. So as we say a last goodbye to 2012, we take a look back - and a look ahead into 2013.

Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, December 2012

In September 2011, the America Invents Act – formerly the Patent Reform Act of 2010 and then the Patent Reform Act of 2011 – became the law of the land, introducing some of the most significant changes to the U.S. patent system since the 1950s.

Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, November 2012

The basis for U.S. copyright laws comes from the same source as U.S. patent legislation: Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the original U.S. Constitution that was ratified in 1787. Since the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, was not ratified until 1791, copyright and patent laws actually predate such commonly accepted U.S. principles as free speech, freedom of the press, due process and habeas corpus.

Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, October 2012

The passage of the America Invents Act last year ushered in a number of controversial changes to U.S. patent law – some immediate, others taking effect over the coming months and years. But one immediate change was that tax strategies are no longer patentable.

Wealth of Ideas, September 2012

Several recent patent-related events – from the attempt by Kodak to sell its patent portfolio to the proposed SHIELD (Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes) Act to the Apple-Samsung patent infringement trial verdict – have put patents, patent enforcement and the concept of patent trolls in the forefront of the news. So let’s address each of these.

Wealth of Ideas, August 2012

Wealth of Ideas, July 2012

The European Patent system may be on the verge of a big makeover – one that would greatly simplify the process of enforcing a patent in the European Union. But will the European Commission and the European Parliament be able to reach an agreement on the proposed European Unitary Patent system?

The old system and the new