Clients often ask “what are my chances of getting a patent?” In other words, clients are asking about the average allowance rate – which is the rate that an application gets allowed vs. goes abandoned. The simple answer is this: The allowance rate of an average patent application is slightly greater than 70%. However, with […]
OUR RECENT BLOG POSTS
Clear Drafting For Valid Patents
On March 29, 2022, a federal judge in the state of Illinois’s federal court invalidated the claims of a plaintiff’s patent as being “indefinite” under 35 U.S.C. §112. The individual plaintiff was suing HP, Inc. for induced infringement of his document archival patent. A copy of the full text of the invalidated patent can be […]
The Trademark Modernization Act’s New Cancellation Procedures
If a registered trademark, which is not in use, is or has prevented you from obtaining a registration for your trademark help is finally here. The Trademark Modernization Act’s (“TMA”) is now effective and new procedures for cancelling unused registrations, or registrations with goods and services that were not in use at the time of […]
Continuous Innovation to Extend Patent Coverage
Patents have a term of 20 years from the filing date. After this term, the technology enters the public domain for all to use. This balances incentivizing innovation during the patent term with allowing further innovation and broader access after the term expires. Often, clients ask how they can extend or otherwise expand upon the […]
Design Patents
Determining the Difference Between Ornamentality and Functionality The fundamental difference between design patents and utility patents is that design patents protect how an article looks; whereas, utility patents protect the way an article is used and works. In other words, design patents protect the purely ornamental characteristics of an article. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Sometimes […]