The U.S. Commerce Department released yesterday a comprehensive report, entitled “Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus,” which finds that intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries support at least 40 million jobs and contribute more than $5 trillion dollars to, or 34.8 percent of, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). “This first of its kind report [...]
Patent searches are conducted onsite at the US Patent and Trademark Office on the East Search System. The East Search System is the same system that is used by US Patent Examiners and includes a limited amount of foreign patents. We have been searching patents for over 20 years for purposes of determining patentability as [...]
Background A patent is a grant that is issued by the United States Government that gives you the right to exclude all others from making, using or selling the claimed subject matter of your patent, or its equivalents. Before you decide to pursue your idea, you should be confident that a market exists for you [...]
This month David Kappos, the Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has expanded the First Action Interview Pilot Program to all utility technical areas. The announcement can be found here. Early Interviews concerning the pending patent application provide advantages to both the applicant and to the USPTO, including: (1) the ability to [...]
Amazon, Google and Facebook have each recently been granted US Patents for social networking related patents. Each of the patents have issued in the wake of the important case of In re Bilske, 545 F.3d 943 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 30, 2008), cert. Granted sub nom. Bilski v. Doll, 129 S. Ct. 2735 (June 1, 2009) [...]
