Two key decisions have been issued from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) this Thursday regarding abuse of process. The first, Patent Quality Assurance, LLC, v. VLSI Technology LLC, IPR2021-01229, Paper 102, is a precedential decision where the Director of the USPTO Kathi Vidal held that Petitioner Patent Quality Assurance (PQA) abused the Inter-Partes […] In recent years the Western District of Texas has become an increasingly popular destination for patent litigation, in large part due to the litigant friendly rules propagated by Judge Albright. The Western District of Texas (as well as the Eastern District of Texas, another popular district for patent litigation) is part of the 5th Circuit. […] On December 3, 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will shorten the response deadline for Trademark office actions from 6-months to 3-months. This shortened deadline will apply to all office actions issued on or after December 3, 2022. There will be an opportunity to file one 3-month extension for an additional fee. The […] Inventor Sholem Weisner sued Google LLC for patent infringement of four patents (10,380,202, 10,642,910, 10,394,905 and 10,642,911) in the District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2020. Weisner’s patents all shared the same specification which generally described ways to “digitally record a person’s physical activities and ways to use this digital record.” […] In a new precedential decision released September 28, 2022, the Federal Circuit overturned a decision from the Northern District of California. The lower court’s decision granted summary judgement for defendant Kollective Technology, finding all claims of plaintiff-complainant Cooperative’s ‘452 patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. §101. Cooperative’s ‘452 Patent relates to systems and methods for structuring […] On September 30, 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) consolidated and replaced four legacy search tools with a single Patent Public Search tool. The new tool is intended to streamline the search process for users and to incorporate new, useful features. The legacy tools that were phased out include: Public-Examiner’s Automated Search […] Maier & Maier partner, Stephen Kunin, has again been named by Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly as a Go To Lawyer for Intellectual Property Law. The selected attorneys were nominated by their colleagues and chosen by a panel from Lawyers Weekly. The full list and individual profiles can be read here. The ever-growing cannabis industry has induced evolution in both the business and legal worlds. In the past few years, legal sales of cannabis for medical and recreational purposes have significantly increased and are projected to continue rising. The cannabis industry includes both plant-touching and ancillary businesses. Plant-touching businesses focus on breeding and cultivating the cannabis […] A new Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response (DSMER) Pilot Program will launch at the USPTO on February 1, 2022. This Pilot Program is designed to address issues currently present in examination of applications for eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101. The Pilot Program will allow applicants to defer examination under Section 101, such that the application […] Judge Alan Albright assumed the bench in September of 2018 and has quickly made the Western District of Texas a premier venue for patent litigation. 24% of all patent cases filed so far in 2021 were filed in the WDTX, up from just 3% of patent cases filed in 2018. This significant increase in filings […]