Patent Law

Shortchanged

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Jorge Tayler was mistakenly $10 short on his patent maintenance fee payment. The USPTO later declared his patent dead because of it, in violation of its own rulebook, the MPEP. "The PTO was arbitrary and capricious in its failure to notify Mr. Taylor of the minor insufficiencies in his attempted payment of a patent maintenance fee," so ruled the CAFC (2009-1133). The patent office does this sort of thing habitually: taking fees and then unreasonably denying the action for which the fee was paid, as well as refusing refund.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on August 05, 2009 (boomark / email).