The Supreme Court is about to receive a Petition for Certiorari in a case that impacts how long a patent protects new inventions, we expect. Specifically, the case addresses the Patent Term.
What Congress has guaranteed, the courts have taken away - The Supreme Court is about to receive a Petition for Certiorari in a case that impacts how long a patent.
Friday, April 9, 2021
The US Supreme Court hears relatively few patent-related cases in any given term. However, on March 1
st, the court heard oral arguments in an important case challenging the very structure and authority of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s administrative review board. In
Arthrex Inc. v. Smith & Nephew Inc. the Court will decide whether the administrative patent judges (APJs) of the Patent Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) were unconstitutionally appointed, and if so, the remedy for such appointments. At stake are over 3,000 decisions rendered by the PTAB since its establishment in 2012. Approximately 100 of these decisions are precedential and binding on APJs, meaning that the Supreme Court’s decision has potential to bring about a metaphorical tectonic shift in the jurisprudential landscape created by the PTAB.
Thursday, April 1, 2021
New York Times by Jennie Erin Smith titled, “
Colombians Ask: Who Would Dare Patent Panela?”
[1] The article explains that ‘panela’ is an unrefined form of cane sugar prepared from the boiling of sugarcane juice, and its use has been widespread in Latin America for hundreds of years. According to the article, the panela process was somehow recently patented in the United States, under U.S. Patent No. 10,632,167. Since international patent laws, including those in the United States, require absolute novelty and non-obviousness as a pre-condition for patentability, my interest as an intellectual property professional was piqued. How could something in use for over 300 years suddenly become patentable? Surely the U.S. Patent Office would not have allowed such a well-known process to be patented, would it? How was this patent, U.S. Patent No. 10,632,167, allowed? And does the patent cover what the article implies? Finally, if for some reas