Intellectual property assets are more than just protection for valuable technology. Businesses with forward-thinking intellectual property strategies are also using IP to gain competitive advantages and drive new revenue opportunities. A holistic IP strategy can not only protect your business from an infringement lawsuit but allow you to leverage your IP assets for growth. According to ... »
Traditionally, companies have used a closed patent strategy designed to protect and prolong the lifecycle of existing technologies from business competitors. Patents remain a popular way of safeguarding original work, with almost 3.17 million patents filed worldwide in 2017 (World Intellectual Property Organisation Indicators 2018). This is a 5.8% increase from 2016. The patent system benefits bot... »
The rapid growth of technology and its globalization has extended the boundaries of its implementation beyond any territorial bounds. Today, every segment of the economy is being expanded worldwide on a large scale. This has significantly increased the demand for technology to be protected from it being used without authentication at both local and global platforms. These factors have dominantly c... »
In December 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“PTAB” or “Board”) designated an opinion as precedential (Sotera Wireless, Inc. v. Masimo Corporation),[i] where the Board instituted trial, i.e., did not exercise its discretion to deny institution under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a), after carefully considering the unique facts of a parallel district court proceeding. Specifically, the Board applied th... »
Last year, the global COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for American courts. By making several changes, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was able to largely continue its operations. The most visible of these changes was that the Court began to hear all arguments telephonically, with some early denials of at least some parties’ requests for an oral hearing... »
For many companies, their IP is the most, or one of the most, valuable company assets. And because IP often involves complex legal rights, every company should have an IP strategy in place to maximize the value of that IP. An IP strategy and some of the subtleties many companies must consider related to that strategy: patent eligibility, patent versus trade secret protections, timing pa... »
Your patent is your property, an important asset to your company. Paraphrasing the USPTO’s definition, a patent is an intellectual property right granted by the federal government to an inventor to prohibit others from making or selling their invention for a limited time, in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. That being said, a patent offers your company much more than legal pro... »
Patenting an invention is a complex undertaking across all sectors – but there are particular issues that organizations operating in the tech and engineering fields need to contemplate as part of their global patent strategy. Members of Gowling WLG’s global intellectual property team will examine key patent considerations for tech and engineering businesses, such as: Global challenges: Examin... »
Well, nearly 3 dozen attorneys general have written to the heads of the FDA, HHS and NIH to ask that the federal government step in to enable broader production of Gilead’s remdesivir drug. Studies have demonstrated that use of the drug has severely reduced the risk of death, and it can significantly reduce the length of stay in hospitals for those seriously ill from COVID-19. However,... »
It may be some time before we know the full impact of the covid-19 pandemic and the knock-on economic effects on the global patent system, particularly when it comes to new patent filings. But this summer we received the first early indications from two of the world’s biggest IP powerhouses, which offered two very different messages. The office’s own numbers revealed a fall of 3.7% in April year o... »