On November 30, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) wrote a letter addressed to President Joe Biden asking Biden to withdraw the nomination of Gigi Sohn, a co-founder of the open Internet advocacy group Public Knowledge, to serve as a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). [link]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruled yesterday in two precedential decisions that Moderna’s challenges to decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in favor of Arbutus both failed. [link]

Yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member on the Senate IP Subcommittee, wrote to Ambassador Katherine Tai, the United States Trade Representative who is responsible for negotiating an IP Waiver to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO).[link]

Today, the full Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to question two key IP nominees: Judge Leonard Stark of the of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, who was nominated to replace Judge Kathleen O’Malley on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC); [link]

With the Thanksgiving holiday, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) (18) filings were down, but district court patent filings held steady at 62, with (again) an astounding number of closed or terminated cases (almost 100), many voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.[link]

Companies spend billions and invest heavily in technologies that offer greater telepresence and enable an individual’s digital life. [link]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) earlier today affirmed a district court ruling that Biogen International’s patent for a method of treating multiple sclerosis (MS) was invalid for lack of written description.[link]

Earlier this year, the European Patent Office (EPO) updated some of its Guidelines for Examination in a way that potentially could affect U.S. patent litigation. [link]

On Friday, November 19, the USPTO announced that it will be delaying the $400 fee for patent applications filed in non-DOCX formats until January 1, 2023. Previously, the fee was set to take effect on January 1, 2022, but the Federal Register notice, officially published on Novemebr 22, [link]

IPWatchdog has been told that Kathi Vidal, who is President Biden’s nominee for Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), [link]

This week in Washington IP news, committee hearings in the House of Representatives will focus on ways to ensure that America retains global leadership in microelectronics,[link]

November, the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) School of Law held its 65th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference.[link]

This week on IP Goes Pop! fellow Volpe Koenig Shareholder Robert Leonard joins Michael Snyder to talk about artists’ rights and attempts by musicians to regain rights to their original recordings.[link]

The question that we receive most frequently from inventors, usually independent inventors, relates to whether a provisional patent application can be refiled with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  [link]

Earlier this year, we published our findings on some of the best performing patent firms of 2021.[link]

A light week last week headed into the holidays saw 20 Patent Trial and Appeal Board filings (two more against MemoryWeb, and a lot of one-offs, including one by gaming company Zynga against IGT).[link]

It’s been another challenging year. At the end of 2020, we were all hopeful that 2021 would bring with it a chance to get back to normal, but that has so far eluded most of the world.[link]

The arrival of a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) office action citing no less than six earlier patents directed to various sub-combinations in the features of the main independent claim in an application which I was handling prompted the present note.[link]

Sony has published a patent that would allow the platform holder to manufacture and sell faceplates for the PlayStation 5.[link]

Much deserved criticism has been leveled at the U.S. patent system in the last decade or so, from all sides. No one branch of the system seems to much appreciate what the other branches are doing.[link]