US Supreme Court Reins In Reach Of US Patents 15/05/2007 by Sarah Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Sarah Lai Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch The United States Supreme Court in late April reined in another patent appeals court ruling it deemed overly-expansive. The high court ruled that software companies liable for infringing a patent in the United States cannot at the same time be held liable by American courts for the same activities outside of US borders. “Foreign law alone, not United States law, currently governs the manufacture and sale of components of patented inventions in foreign countries,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on behalf of three of her colleagues, Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and David Souter.
USPTO Cautious In Interpretation Of Supreme Court Ruling On Patents 09/05/2007 by Sarah Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Sarah Lai Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a preliminary memorandum that instructed its examiners to interpret a landmark Supreme Court ruling conservatively – even as the wider community in the field of US patent law expect the opinion to shake up longstanding rules that determine when an idea is too obvious to be granted a patent. The office also formed an experts’ group on the issue.
US Patent Reform: Could 2007 Be The Year? 25/09/2006 by Sarah Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch 2 Comments By Sarah Lai Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch US information technology companies’ push to overhaul their country’s patent system made little progress in the US Congress in 2006 due to pushback from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. But the hiring of a trio of well-connected lobbyists with a history in the tort reform movement promises […]
U.S. Patent Reform Effort Narrowed in Congress; Could Resurface In Supreme Court 29/09/2005 by Sarah Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Sarah Lai Stirland for Intellectual Property Watch A wall of opposition from the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and independent inventor communities this year gutted some of the most controversial provisions from an ambitious patent reform bill introduced in July in the U.S. House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress. But one of the […]
