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Showing posts with label patent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patent. Show all posts
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Detroit to get first U.S. patent satellite office
Detroit to get first U.S. patent satellite office
The first satellite office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office is set to open in Detroit in early spring 2011, opening up jobs for 100 patent examiners plus support staff.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke made the announcement today in a conference call. He was joined by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and David Kappos, Commerce’s undersecretary for intellectual property and director of the patent office.
The office will monitor the results of the Detroit office in preparation for more regional offices around the country.
“Perhaps two more will open within a year after Detroit,” Locke said.
The decision on the location has not been made, Kappos said. The Patent Office is planning to sign an occupancy agreement this month, with a lease to follow in February. Job offers would start going out soon after that in preparation for an early spring or possibly late winter opening, he said.
The new office and the hiring of 100 examiners will give patent applicants more time to meet for examiner interviews and in turn speed up the patent approval process.
The Patent Office currently has about 710,000 patent applications in its backlog, Kappos said. That’s down from 750,000 at the beginning of the year, amid an increased number of applications, but that’s still not close to being good enough, Locke said.
The goal is to reduce average patent waiting times from three years to one.
Calling the three-year wait time “unacceptable,” Locke compared it to asking a bank for a loan to expand a factory that the applicant won’t have the title to for another three years.
Locke first mentioned the possibility of Detroit getting a patent office in October during a visit to the Detroit Regional Chamber.
The move to set up regional patent offices is also intended to improve recruitment and retention of the patent examiners, who decide which applications get approved. Recruitment is challenging because examiners must possess advanced technical knowledge, a quality that makes them employable elsewhere.
Setting up regional offices will allow the main patent office to no longer ask qualified candidates to move to the Washington, D.C., area.
It also would give the office access to pockets of specialized skilled workers. That’s where Detroit comes in. The region’s abundance of advanced — and unemployed — engineers makes it a perfect fit for the pilot satellite office, Locke, Kappos and Granholm all said.
The Department of Commerce also chose Michigan to set up its first CommerceConnect office. The one-stop access point to all of the department's services for businesses opened in October 2009, and more offices are planned in other regions of the country.
The Pontiac office was a factor in choosing the Detroit area, as was low building costs, access to local research universities and a high number of patent applications coming out of Michigan.
“This city fulfills a number of critical criteria,” Kappos said.
Granholm said the University of Michigan “pushed to have this office come here.”
The presence of schools such as UM and Wayne State University brings diversity to the local technology, said James Stevens, president of the Michigan Intellectual Property Law Association and managing shareholder at Reising Ethington P.C. in Troy.
“Any area has a flavor to its technology,” Stevens said.
He said the hiring of 100 examiners is a serious number. Unlike in past downturns when automotive engineers tended to be untouched, the recent recession has brought layoffs to their doorsteps, as well, he said.
“A lot of them are still in town looking for work,” Stevens said.
Bill signing revives plans for Detroit patent office
Bill signing revives plans for Detroit patent office
Patent legislation that had a big push from Michigan’s research universities and the Detroit automakers has been signed into law.
The “America Invents Act” promises to speed up the patent process, and help reduce a backlog of some 700,000 patent applications in Washington D.C.
Part of that includes opening a satellite patent office in Detroit and two other locations.
"It really puts the patent office in one of the invention centers of the nation, which is the Detroit area," said Steve Forrest, vice president for research at the University of Michigan.
Research schools like U of M say the changes will help them get ideas from academia to the marketplace more quickly.
"The delays have caused some uncertainty in the system. And uncertainty is bad for us because what we’re looking for is either existing companies or new start-ups to open new lines of business or entirely new businesses – so they’re looking for funding, for example, and management," said Rick Brandon, a patent attorney with the University of Michigan.
Brandon says he expects the new law will mean quicker turnaround on patent decisions so people know whether to put time, money and effort into developing new products.
Some independent inventors have complained that the changes favor large institutions and could put them at a disadvantage.
To hear an earlier story about the U.S. Patent Office's plans (later postponed) to open a Detroit patent office, click here.
From the America Invents Act:
DESIGNATION.—The satellite office of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to be located in Detroit, Michigan, shall be known and designated as the ‘‘Elijah J. McCoy United States Patent and Trademark Office’’.
The Detroit Free Press reports that U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) added the provision to name a future Detroit patent office after McCoy:
Elijah J. McCoy [was] an African-American inventor born in Canada and raised in Ypsilanti. After studying as an engineer in Scotland, McCoy, a son of former slaves, got a job as a fireman for the Michigan Central Railroad and patented several inventions, including a cup that continuously fed oil to bearings in steam engines.
Some claim his process was deemed “the real McCoy,” compared to imitators, though there are other claimants to originating the phrase. By McCoy’s death in 1929, he had secured more than 50 patents.
The legislation calls on the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to open the satellite offices within three years "subject to available resources."
The Detroit Free Press reports the satellite office would be paid for by patent fees.
CNET reports on the big changes to the patent process as a result the America Invents Act:
Among the major changes in the legislation is turning the U.S. patent system into a first-to-file patent system as opposed to a first-to-invent system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's current use of the first-to-invent system awards a patent based on the conception of the invention, not necessarily when it's filed. The first-to-file system, as the name suggests, awards a patent to the first person who files for it.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Patent Bill Could Save Law Firm $214 Million
Patent Bill Could Save Law Firm $214 Million
A bill to overhaul the patent system that is before the Senate contains a provision that could get an influential law firm off the hook for a possible $214 million malpractice payment.
The provision clarifies how much time pharmaceutical companies have to apply for patent extensions that can provide extra years of protection from generic competition.
But critics, who have labeled the provision “The Dog Ate My Homework Act,” say it is really a special fix for one drug manufacturer, the Medicines Company, and its powerful law firm, WilmerHale. The company and its law firm, with hundreds of millions of dollars in drug sales at stake, lobbied Congress heavily for several years to get the patent laws changed.
Back in 2001, the company missed the deadline for applying for a patent extension by a day or two, potentially losing nearly four years of patent protection on its main drug, the anticoagulant Angiomax. The provision would guarantee that the Medicines Company would get the extra patent protection, and it would relieve WilmerHale, which was hired to file the application, of a possible malpractice payment to its client.
On Thursday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on an amendment proposed by Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, that would strip the provision from the bill. “The key question is whether we will vote to bail out a law firm that made a mistake and now wants consumers and taxpayers to pay the freight for that error,” Senator Sessions and Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, said in a letter sent Wednesday to colleagues. They said the extra patent protection on Angiomax could cost hospitals and consumers $1 billion.
But Mr. Sessions faces an uphill battle because Senate leaders want their colleagues to pass the House version of the bill, which contains that provision, without any amendments, saying any changes could jeopardize the entire legislation.
David E. Redlick, co-chairman of the life sciences practice at WilmerHale, said other companies, including Bayer and AstraZeneca, also missed filing deadlines and might now benefit from patent extensions.
“The repeated assertion that this is a single company bill is just not so,” Mr. Redlick said. He said the existing law had unclear wording. The new provision “will resolve that uncertainty on a permanent basis, which one would hope would be a key purpose of patent reform.”
He also said that a federal judge ruled last year that the Medicines Company had filed its application on time. So the patent extension is expected to be granted, and WilmerHale would never have to make the malpractice payment, even without the legislation, he said. The legislation provides insurance in case the court ruling is reversed, he said.
Applications for patent extensions must be made within 60 days of a drug’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office ruled that the Medicines Company, which filed its application in 2001, had missed the deadline by a day or two.
As a result, Angiomax could have been vulnerable to generic competition as early as September 2010, instead of June 2015. Sales of Angiomax accounted for virtually all of the Medicines Company’s $437.6 million in revenue last year.
The company, based in Parsippany, N.J., sued the Patent Office, arguing that since it had received F.D.A. approval for Angiomax after the customary close of business on a Friday, the 60-day clock should not have started ticking until the next Monday.
In August 2010, a federal judge agreed and the government did not appeal. The Patent Office, which granted interim patent extensions during the lawsuit, is working on the final extension.
But APP Pharmaceuticals, a drug company that wants to sell a generic version of Angiomax, is trying to have the judge’s decision overturned.
The amendment would change the patent law to agree with the judge’s interpretation of the deadline calculations.
The Medicines Company has been pressing for years for a legislative solution, spending more than $17 million since 2005 on prominent lobbyists, including former House majority leaders Richard Gephardt, a Democrat, and Dick Armey, a Republican.
The company has been assisted in its effort by WilmerHale, known formally as Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
The firm has a huge Washington office, and a few dozen of its members went to work for the Obama administration. The firm is also a powerhouse in Boston, and some of the most active supporters of the provision in Congress are from Massachusetts, like Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat.
In February, WilmerHale agreed to pay $18 million to the Medicines Company to compensate it for its legal and lobbying costs. It also agreed to pay as much as $214 million more if a generic version of Angiomax reached the market before June 15, 2015, because the extension application was deemed late.
WilmerHale reported revenue of $962 million in 2010, with profit of $1.33 million per partner.
The Medicines Company, according to its regulatory filings, is also talking about compensation from Ropes & Gray, another law firm that was involved in the filing for the patent extension.
APP Pharmaceuticals, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association and Citizens Against Government Waste are trying to derail the provision.
The Medicines Company has argued that longer patent protection will allow it to test Angiomax, also known as bivalirudin, for more uses. It also argues that the drug saves money for the health care system over all compared to alternatives.
In late June, the House of Representatives narrowly approved adding the provision to the patent reform bill.
Initially, the vote was 209 to 208 against the amendment, but some Democrats pushed for a revote, saying not all members had had time to vote. On the revote, the amendment was approved 223 to 198. Democrats voted 155 to 31 in favor and Republicans 167 to 68 against.
John Conyers Jr., a Democrat from Michigan who sponsored the amendment, called it a “technical revision.” He added, “By eliminating confusion regarding the deadline for patent term extensions applications, this amendment provides the certainty necessary to encourage costly investments in life-saving medical research.”
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, opposed the amendment.
“As a practical matter, this is a special fix for one company,” he said. He said that it should have been handled under rules for private relief bills and that it would also interfere with the litigation.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Rep. Conyers Speaks Out Against H.R. 1249
Rep. Conyers Speaks Out Against H.R. 1249
General Debate Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr. in Opposition to H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act
Our Nation’s patent system plays a critical role in the economic health of the United States and global leadership in innovative technology development.
But our patent system has long been in need of comprehensive reform.
Unfortunately, H.R. 1249 – or the misnamed America Invents Act – fails to meet this critical goal for several reasons.
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
To begin with, the bill essentially will give large banks a special, new bailout at the expense of small inventors and the American taxpayer, and even worse, would do so on a retroactive basis.
The bill’s retroactive impact would constitute a an unconstitutional taking of property according to several highly respected constitutional law experts, including Professors Richard Epstein and Jonathan Massey.
As a result, the federal government would be forced to pay just compensation to the patent holders, which put taxpayers at risk of having to fund billions of dollars in payments.
Another concern is that the legislation undermines the false patent marking statute by retroactively changing the law applicable to pending enforcement actions.
The false marking statute prohibits manufacturers from falsely claiming that a product is or remains patent-protected beyond a 20-year term.
Public Citizen has explained that this provision “would completely remove the incentive to stop intentional false labeling of products as patented.”
Finally, the bill will give patent owners an opportunity to provide corrected or new information to the Patent and Trademark Office that was not previously presented or not accurately presented during the application process.
Currently, patents are unenforceable and invalid if they are fraudulently obtained.
So this new provision will be the equivalent to a “get out of jail free” card for firms that have not been truthful in seeking patent protection.
Not surprisingly, groups like the Generic Pharmaceutical Association recognize the problems this provision presents.
The Association states that the bill “could reward patent holders that knowingly falsify information in their original patent application with the USPTO or intentionally omit material information.”
Finally, H.R. 1249 would — for the first time in more than 220 years — convert the United States from a “first-to-invent” patent system into a European-style “first-to-file” patent system.
As a result, the bill would permit the Patent and Trademark Office to award a patent to the first person who can win a race to the patent office regardless of who is the actual inventor.
This is patently unfair to inventors.
I have supported similar clauses in past bills, but those measures included a grace period before conversion to a first-to-file patent system. This bill contains no such grace period.
I am also very concerned that the move to first-to-file will favor multinational corporations, which are typically better staffed and funded to file applications.
And, the “first-to-file system” could force U.S. inventors to prematurely disclose their inventions, thus providing Chinese firms and other foreign entities opportunities to unlawfully exploit U.S. inventions overseas where intellectual property enforcement is lax.
It is for these and many other reasons that the bill is opposed by such a broad spectrum of groups, including the American Bar Association, the Patent Office Professional Organization, Innovation Alliance, Public Citizen, Eagle Forum, and others.
Without question, H.R. 1249 will benefit large multinationals at the expense of independent inventors and small businesses.
This bill will harm jobs, harm innovation, and harm our Nation.
Accordingly, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Patent Reform Act Stumbles Over Control of Money
Patent Reform Act Stumbles Over Control of Money
News out of Washington is that the Patent Reform Act is off again. The main issue of debate appears to be the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office funding provisions in H.R. 1249, “The America Invents Act.”
Section 22 of the Judiciary Committee reported bill allows the USPTO to retain all user fees to use for operations, preventing the fees from being redirected to other non-USPTO purposes. The news came after a gaggle of modifications were submitted for vote. See 86 pages of proposed HR 1249 Amendments here!
H.R. 1249, would move the U.S. to a “first-to-file” patent system similar to most of the rest of the developed world. In contrast, the U.S. system relies on a determination of who invented first. The bill creates a sort of “first-inventor-to-file” process in which priority will be given to patents that are filed first. However, it also creates a new “derivation” process that will be used to ensure that the first person to file for a patent is also the first inventor.
COPY WRONG: GOP FIGHT DELAYS PATENT BILL — The House Rules Committee postponed a planned Tuesday afternoon markup of legislation that would rewrite patent law because of an unresolved dispute over whether to give the Patent and Trademark Office full control over the money that it raises through fees or continue to require an annual congressional appropriation for its budget. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office says he’s confident the bill will still be up this week, as planned. But it’s a serious enough disagreement that it will require either a “fix” or a change of heart by some of the opponents. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) criticized Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for allowing the floor vote to be postponed during a closed-door session on Monday night, according to Republican sources who spoke to POLITICO’s John Bresnahan. Boehner said “he didn’t agree with how they dealt with fees or funding mechanism,” one of the sources added.Proponents say PTO should be able to keep all of the funds it raises through fees — rather than worry about appropriators diverting a portion of its income for other programs — in order to address a backlog of pending requests. Opponents worry that taking PTO out of the annual appropriations process will give PTO too much autonomy and too little oversight. The bill would require the director of the office to submit an annual report to the appropriations committees in the House and Senate detailing PTO’s financial plans. Still, it’s a fight that pits authorizers (who would gain authority) against appropriators (who would lose it). Put Boehner in the appropriators’ camp on this one.
If you’re cynical (and I’m not saying I am) then you might be inclined to think that “patent reform” will go on and on as long as campaign contributions keep flowing in.
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