Patently-O TidBits

• Foreign Patent Applicants and the New Rules: Based on the set of 2992 patents that issued on August 21, 2007, it seems likely that the PTO’s new claim filing limits will impact US applicants at a much greater rate than it would foreign applicants. Patents ever_assigned to US corporations are more than twice as likely to issue with more than twenty five claims than patents ever_assigned to foreign corporations.  Even more pronounced within the study, US owned patents are more than three-times as likely to have more than twenty-five claims than are Japanese owned patents.  (Ever_assigned patents are patents that have been assigned at least once to the referenced group.) (See side graph)
• Niro v. Jackson: The famed Niro firm recently filed a declaratory judgment action against its former client alleging patent invalidity.  Niro wants the patent found invalid so that the firm can avoid malpractice charges arising out of patent infringement litigation. NiroVJackson.pdf
• Quanta v. LGE: The Solicitor General supports Quanta’s petition for certiorari covering the first sale doctrine and contractual limitations of patent licensing. [QuantaCVSG.pdf (110 KB)][Background]
• Race Specific Patents: Shubha Ghosh (SMU) has an interesting new paper examing patents that claim race-specific inventions. US Patent No. 6,465463, for instance, claims a drug with improved tolerence “in a black patient.”  Professor Ghosh argues that racial categories should be excluded from patent claims and from any nonobvousness analysis. [Read the Paper Here]

• Patent Law Jobs: New Jobs in Chicago, Atlanta, Oregon, Missouri, Cambridge, Denver, and Maryland.