In our December post “A FRANDlier Realm” we discussed emerging law relating to patents that are essential to technological standards, like 3G wireless telecommunications. What happens when patent owners and product makers cannot agree on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms? We said then that, rather than issuing injunctions, American courts “are more likely to attempt… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Patents
Subscribe to Patents RSS FeedSharing an Umbrella
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Big Pharma and academia cement big deals in the quest for bigger prizes With the patents of many highly profitable blockbuster drugs expiring over the course of a few years, the search is on for new drugs to fill large pharmaceutical companies’ shrinking product portfolios. For years, Big Pharma has turned to smaller biotech companies… Continue Reading
Patent Reform: The Process Is New, But Is It Improved?
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012In 2011, the sweeping patent reform legislation sought to reduce litigation by creating a new process for challenging patent validity. But the new process will look more like litigation than the old process, says Matthew Kreeger, chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Patent Interferences Group. Under the old opposition proceedings, challenges were decided by U.S. Patent & Trademark Office patent examiners based on the parties’… Continue Reading
A FRANDlier Realm
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Europe’s courts take sides in standards patent disputes When a patent becomes essential for a product to operate according to industry standards—say, for a cellphone to connect to a 3G network—patent protection can start looking a bit like monopoly power. To avoid antitrust trouble, holders of these patents regularly pledge to license them on fair,… Continue Reading
Jumping the Line
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Generic drug makers aren’t waiting until patents expire Since passage of the Hatch-Waxman Act in 1984, generic drug companies have used its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) process to bring cheaper versions of brand-name drugs to market after their patents expire. In the past decade or so, generic drug companies have commonly applied for the… Continue Reading
The End of Fishing Season
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012For companies daunted by the high cost of intellectual property litigation, some relief may be at hand in the form of proposed limits on the discovery process. A council that advises the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year decried the use of discovery as a “tactical weapon.” It pinpointed the increasing… Continue Reading
Patent Pending: Shifts in patent law, and their impact extend beyond the America Invents Act
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012Once upon a time, patents were supposed to reward—and protect—innovation. That was before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (or PTO) got snowed under with applications, slowing the patent process to a crawl. Before the PTO started issuing streams of patents that many viewed as vague and overly broad. And before so-called nonpracticing entities, or… Continue Reading
FAQs: The America Invents Act
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012Could the America Invents Act help reduce the backlog of patents pending before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office? The PTO has long suffered from budgetary shortfalls, resulting in a backlog of some 670,000 applications. The AIA gives the PTO the right to boost its fees and keep at least some of its own funding. … Continue Reading
Biotech’s Reprieve: A federal panel rules that isolated DNA really are different
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2011The biotech industry has been built on three decades of gene patenting, so it was thrown for a loop a year ago when a federal judge ruled that DNA isolated from the body were “products of nature” and therefore could not be patented. On July 29 a federal appeals court overturned that ruling against Myriad… Continue Reading