Patent Law

Not Rethinking Digital Copyright: Ruling Ends ASCAP's Magical Thinking

Posted on April 30, 2007
Not Rethinking Digital Copyright: Ruling Ends ASCAP's Magical Thinking   On April 25th, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) holding that downloads of music...

URLs Gone Bad

Posted on March 27, 2007
Erik J. Heels has an excellent post (Uncool: USPTO Breaks Millions Of Patent URLs Without Public Notice) talking about how the USPTO broke URL links to patents and trademarks over the weekend and how it is making him pull his...

Another example of rising restriction requirements?

Posted on March 22, 2007
As some of you may know, I’m one of the parachute packers here at RethinkIP. That means I’m usually behind the scenes updating the RSS Mojo with the latest news from the USPTO.  But, I’m also a law student with...

Chicago. Tomorrow Night. Blogger Bar Crawl

Posted on March 21, 2007
Matt, Doug and I are going to be in Chicago the next few days for ABA TechShow. Tomorrow night at least one of us will be participating in the TechShow Blogger Bar Crawl that Matt Homann is putting on. If...

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Federal Circuit Summaries, Practice Alerts

Posted on February 21, 2007
Want to follow Federal Circuit caselaw but don’t have time to read lengthy case summaries? FedCirc.us has an RSS/e-mail feed for you. 1. Case Review Summaries (provides summaries of the ten most recent case reviews) RSS: http://feeds.feedburner...

New FedCirc.us Search Tool Released

Posted on February 15, 2007
The master plan for the FedCirc.us site includes several web features designed to deliver patent caselaw information in a more effective manner.  The first - the GimmeTen! feature - has quickly become the most popular page on the site...and for....

Cichocki on USPTO News

Posted on February 14, 2007
One of my favorite motivational stories is the story of POW Charlie Plumb entitled "Packing Parachutes." The three of us at RethinkIP likewise have people who pack our parachutes...people who work behind the scenes helping us do the things we...

Restriction Requirements on the Rise?

Posted on February 13, 2007
I try not to rant here too often, but seeing posts on the allowance rate dropping (within a few years) from 70+% to ~50% and questions regarding whether there has been a secret change to official USPTO policy regarding examination and...

Rethinking the backlog

Posted on February 09, 2007
Doug and I were fortunate to be invited to speak at the recent Corporate Patent Congress in New York City.  Even without our meeting with Bill Patry at Google regarding his rethinking of the legal treatise and the quick jaunt...

Odd new USPTO domain

Posted on February 07, 2007
Anyone have an idea what’s up with the http://des.uspto.gov page?  If you click on that link, you get this page: It also appears that there is an OED page:  http://des.uspto.gov/OEDCI/query.jsp and IP Newsflash’s links to BPAI decisions use a des...

New Magazine Covers Federal Circuit Patent Decisions

Posted on January 31, 2007
FedCirc.us (Matt/Doug/I) announced earlier today the availability of a free preview issue (The Resolution) of our quarterly magazine, The FedCirc.us Reader.  Download the .pdf here. The Resolution will give you a sneak-peak at the features of the magazine...

RTIP'rs Visit Google

Posted on January 24, 2007
Well, I almost feel like Robert Scoble... but without a videocamera in hand, a gadzillion number of readers, or a red couch. Matt and I had the opportunity yesterday to visit Google's NYC offices in lower Manhattan.  It was an...

Christmas Morning in January

Posted on January 16, 2007
While I love my Toshiba R15... my newest geek purchase is taking way too long to arrive for my taste (hint: its model number is X60 and it is made by Lenovo).  Sheesh - I ordered it yesterday and it...

Rethinking the law treatise - Patry leads a revolution

Posted on January 16, 2007
Bill Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google and former Copyright Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, has done some major rethinking.  And by major, I mean, um....major. Bill just completed a massive, seven year solo effort to craft the...

Where there's passion, there's usually excellence

Posted on December 15, 2006
When I was growing up, my father was always offering me little life lessons.  In between the tidbits like “you can’t go wrong with Craftsman,” he’d throw in some real zingers.  As an adult, I’ve really grown to appreciate the...