Ask Pat is a “go to” resource for clients and friends of the firm to answer your day-to-day questions related to intellectual property law and your business. You are invited to email your questions directly to askpat@rogowskilaw.com and she will respond to you within two business days. Be sure to indicate whether I have permission to share your question and/or disclose attribution on the website.
Supreme Court Holds First Amendment Doesn’t Give Unrestricted Right to Poop on Trademark Rights
In 2014 Jack Daniel’s Properties demanded VIP stop selling a squeaky dog toy that somewhat resembles a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle, but which also bears an image of a spaniel and includes funny phrases like “Bad Spaniels”, “the Old No. 2 on your Tennessee Carpet”,...
Only Humans, not machines, can be inventors of patents in the US
Thaler claims to own an artificial intelligence “AI” software system named DABUS, which is an acronym for “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience”. Thaler further claims that DABUS conceived of two patentable inventions, one for a fractal-shaped...
USPTO Will No Longer Mail Paper Trademark Registration Certificates
Starting Tuesday, June 7, 2022, the US Patent and Trademark Office will begin issuing only electronic trademark registration certificates, accessible through the website https://tsdr.uspto.gov/. Trademark owners will have the option to request paper “presentation”...
Congratulations to Kathi Vidal – our new Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office!
Kathi Vidal was confirmed by the United States Senate as Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and as Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Kathi will lead the USPTO’s 13,000+ employees and its nearly $4 billion budget. She...
We Lost a Great Leader: Madeleine Albright
In January 2013, I had the privilege of being in the room with greatness. My husband, Tony, and I attended the Kenner Lecture on Cultural Understanding and Tolerance at Lehigh University. In an informal question and answer format, former Secretary of State Madeleine...
Will Patent Grants Keep Escalating in US?
US utility patents have issued at a more rapid pace in the last ten years – see bar graph. While it took almost 15 years (from 1976 to 1991) for one-million US utility patents to issue between US Pat. 4,000,000 and US Pat. 5,000,000, the pace of patenting has...
Women Continued to Spur Innovation Through 2019; Can Upward Trend Continue?
In July 2020, the US Patent and Trademark Office released a report titled "Progress and Potential: 2020 Update on U.S. Women inventor-Patentees”. Building on the report released in 2019 [reported in AskPat here:...
Supreme Court Defends Free Speech – Registration of Profane Words As Trademarks Now Clearly Permitted in the US
On June 24, 2019, the Justices struck down as unconstitutional a provision of the Lanham Act (US Trademark Law) that prohibited granting federal trademark protection for "immoral" or "scandalous" material. The case was brought by Erik Brunetti, who founded...
Secret Sales of a Product Embodying Your Invention Are Prior Art
Before the America Invents Act (AIA) went into effect in 2013, 35 U.S.C. §102 barred the patentability of an invention that was “patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more...
Working with a Patent Agent Rather than a Patent Attorney Is More Risky
Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark of the Delaware District Court recently ruled that the privilege against disclosure in discovery of confidential communications with patent agents is much narrower than the privilege applicable to confidential communications...
Study Confirms Women Have Untapped Potential to Spur Innovation
On February 11, 2019, the US Patent and Trademark Office released a report titled "Progress and Potential: a profile of women inventors on U.S. patents" on the trends of women inventors named on US patents granted in the last 40 years (1976-2016). Prepared...
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