Patent

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. This is FindLaw’s collection of Patent articles, part of the Intellectual Property section of the Corporate Counsel Center. Law articles in this archive are predominantly written by lawyers for a professional audience seeking business solutions to legal issues. Start your free research with FindLaw.

Intellectual Property

Patent Articles

Patent Claims and the Claim Game

Inventors are supposed to understand the claims of their patent applications. However, understanding claims is not easy. The claims are surely the part of the patent application that requires the most concentrated thought by the patent attorney who ...
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Patent Document Type and Number Definitions

Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program Utility 7 digits 3394738 Design D + 6 digits D277050 Plant PP + 5 digits PP13845 Defensive Publication T + 6 digits T103201 Statutory Invention Registration (SIR) H + 7 digits H0000016 Certificate of ...
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Patent Foreseeability in the Wake of Festo

On remand from the Supreme Court,1 the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently revisited the issue as to whether prosecution history estoppel barred a patent owner from relying on the doctrine of equivalents in a patent infringement suit ...
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Patent Infringement: Put It in Writing

Well, your word's good enough for me. Now then, is my word good enough for you? I should say not. Groucho and Chico Marx, negotiating a contract in A Night at the Opera When the issue is whether an accused patent infringer came up with an ...
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Patent Invalidated

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently held in Great Northern v. Henry Molded Products that a patent on a product for supporting rolls of material, such as cellophane or steel, was invalid for failing to disclose the ...
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Patent Law: “Reasonable Apprehension” After Receipt of Cease-and-Desist Letter Grounds for Declaratory Judgment Action

The drafter of a cease-and-desist letter must carefully craft the language in the letter to put the recipient on actual notice of patent infringement without giving the recipient a "reasonable apprehension" of litigation. When a court considers a ...
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Patent Litigation: Views from the Bar and Bench

Contributed by FindLaw Staff Ronald Schutz, Chairman of the Intellectual Property Litigation Department at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P., engaged the audience in a lively panel on Patent Litigation: Views from the Bar and Bench on Strategy ...
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Patent Ruling Turns an “About” Face

What is the meaning of the word about when used in a patent? The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals confronted that elusive question in a recent dispute between two pharmaceutical manufacturers and expert testimony proved important in finding the ...
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Patent Trends in Nanotechnology

The publication of patent applications by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides a means of following new developments in a field of interest. One such field of interest is nanotechnology, and reviewing some of the published ...
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Patenting Methods Of Doing Business

Q. ? A. Prior to the recent Federal Circuit decision in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), companies relied upon trade secrets to protect their business methods. Today, companies are able to ...
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