On September 16, 2011, President Obama signed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act into law, making the most sweeping changes to U.S. patent law since at least the 1950’s. Many of the provisions can be broadly classified into those that serve the goal of international harmonization (first-inventor-to-file), those that target patent quality concerns (pre-issuance submissions, inter…

One of the topics that have kept our Courts busy over the last few years relates to which test should be applied to judge “equivalence”. Whereas the U.S.’s “same function-same way-same result” test has been accepted in cases involving mechanical patents, it has been discarded in cases dealing with chemical patents. In its judgment of…

The Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion on appeal (as Bilski v. Kappos) that affirmed the judgment of the CAFC of affirming the rejection of the patent, but revised many aspects of the CAFC’s decision. In their decision, handed down on June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the machine-or-transformation test as…

I. Priority of Invention II. Proving Conception and Reduction to Practice III. Sample Laboratory Notebook IV. Instructions For Maintaining Laboratory Notebook V. Instructions for Maintaining Inventory of Laboratory Notebooks I. PRIORITY OF INVENTION In accordance the United States patent statute, only the “first inventor” of the claimed invention is entitled to a patent for that…