Japanese scientists report they have, for the first time, grown mammalian eggs from stem cells and that these artificially created eggs were used to produce healthy offsprings. This advancement is being called the beginning of the end of the long search for the holy-grail of reproductive biology.
One year after President Obama signed America’s patent reform bill into law, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) has introduced a new way for third parties to file evidence and comments on patents currently pending approval by the USPTO.
The extremely variable pricing of diamonds has made them a historically difficult and unstable commodity to trade. However, recent advents in diamond technology have been patented, and industry insiders such as Martin Rapaport have suggested that diamonds will become akin to gold from an economic standpoint.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in the case Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) and ACLU v. USPTO and Myriad Genetics (Myriad), held in August that isolated genes are a patent-eligible subject matter. The Court of Appeals reaffirmed its prior ruling on the matter, which was recently covered by IP Osgoode.
The current system for genetic testing in America functions by having the patent holder of a particular genetic test control the testing process and results interpretation of that test. There is concern that, inherent in that current system, there is a lack of independent second opinion testing available – testing which has the potential to make […]
New legal research from the University of Pennsylvania Law School suggests so. The aim of the study, according to Professors David S. Abrams and R. Polk Wagner, is to empirically predict how the recent changes to American patent laws, introduced by section 3 (s3) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), will affect American innovation after […]
After more than a year of grueling litigation, the dust has settled between the tech giants for the time being, and it seems as if Apple has come out on top over Samsung.
In Nycomed Canada Inc. v Teva Canada Limited 2012 FCA 195 (Noël, JA), the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) considered whether the Federal Court erred in rejecting Nycomed’s counterclaim for induced infringement. The FCA upheld the lower court’s decision affirming that but-for causation must be established in order to successfully claim contributory infringement.
In the recent decision of Bancorp Services v Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (U.S.), the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has attempted to reconcile the eligibility of software and business process patents with previous decisions from the United States Supreme Court. The holding also makes qualifying patent eligibility in business […]
Re-examination and invalidity proceedings each play an important role in the patent system, offering different avenues that narrow or invalidate existing patent claims. However, a lack of clarity on how the two provisions co-exist has led to litigation which this editor believes could be avoided through legislative amendments to the American patent regime. Similar issues […]