Volume 102 Issue No. 3 is now available! See the below cover page for its articles:

Volume 102 Issue No. 2 is now available. See the below cover page for its articles:

Volume 102 Issue No. 1 is now available, hot off the presses! See the below cover page for its articles:

Forgot to report on this due to the fact that Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc., 594 U.S. ___ (2021) was decided by SCOTUS several days after U.S. v. Arthrex (precisely eight days later, which also cited us on page 2 of its majority opinion - see below), but Justice Amy Coney Barrett cited us on page 5 of her dissent, joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, specifically the article of Lechner, Estoppel Against Patent Assignors—The Scott Paper Company Case, 28 J. Pat. Off. Soc. 325, 330 (1946)! Check out the citation below.

The first page of Justice Barrett's dissent: 

Attorney for Trademark/Copyright Pratice Group 

Morgan Lewis, one of the world’s leading international law firms, seeks to hire a highly qualified attorney to join our trademark/copyright practice group in the Washington, DC office. This position could also be resident in Boston and San Francisco. This is a non-partnership track position and compensation is commensurate with experience.

We would like to highlight an incredible article from Volume 101, Issue No. 4, Serving America: The USPTO’s IP Attaché Program by Bratislav Stankovic and Dominic Keating. We have also uploaded the article online and you can read it by clicking the below image or here. We hope you enjoy the article's explanation of the USPTO's highly coveted "IP Attachés", who are able to perform duties in different countries across the globe as part-diplomat and part-IP-attorney. More information about the program can also be found at its official website!

Volume 101 Issue 4 is now available, hot off the presses! See below for the articles in it:

Patent Agent - Technology 

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, one of the world’s leading global law firms with over 4,000 lawyers and staff in 31 offices is seeking a Patent Agent for their award-winning IP Team.

Check out the Past EICs page (you can also click on the text in the header banner immediately above to the right) to see biographical data compiled of the first fifteen Editors in Chief of the Journal: George P. Tucker, William I. Wyman, E.C. Reynolds, W.B. Johnson, V.I. Richard, C.C. Pidgeon, Max W. Tucker, Howard S. Miller, Dr. Joseph Rossman, Ph.D., P.J. Federico, Edwin M. Thomas, John H. Merchant, Milton Weissman, Gerald H. Bjorge, and Louis Zarfas. 

Truly a group of remarkable and outstanding individuals, each of them having fascinating backgrounds and life stories: from the very first EIC who held a LLB from George Washington University and an LLM from American University (George P. Tucker), whose son, eight years later, served as the seventh EIC (Max W. Tucker), to an Army Captain having to leave the EIC post when called to active military duty to serve in WWII and who later became a JAG Lieutenant Colonel (Edwin M. Thomas), a Lehigh Civil Engineering graduate who "was employed on important engineering projects in New York State and elsewhere, including the Niagara Power and Development Company project and the great ship canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson River" (E.C. Reynolds), a regular contributor to Scientific American, who won first prize in a 1913 essay competition held by the publication on the subject "What Are The Ten Greatest Inventions of Our Time, and Why?" (William I. Wyman), a mathematician, Examiner-in-Chief, author of 56 JPTOS articles and co-drafter of the Patent Act of 1952 (PJ Federico), a 1915 University of California graduate who received a Master's degree in Physics at that institution and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University (Howard S. Miller), a former Organic Chemistry Professor who was head of the Chemistry Department at DePauw University (Wellington B. Johnson), a Primary Examiner with over thirty years of examining experience who famously testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1973 regarding the Hart Bill (Milton Weissman), a prolific author with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, a LLB and MA from George Washington University, and a Ph.D in Psychology from American University (Dr. Joseph Rossman, Ph.D), a former Treasurer of the Patent Office Society - as it was called back then (C.C. Pidgeon), a past Library of Congress employee who "obtained a working knowledge of library science" (V.I. Richard), a trademark expert who served as EIC for the longest period of 25 years (John H. Merchant), a previous Associate USPTO Solicitor, BPAI Chief Examiner and founder of the Federal Circuit Bar Journal (Gerald H. Bjorge), and a MIT graduate known as, according to Patently-O, the "primary examiner associated with the most issued design patents" (Louis S. Zarfas). Later EIC bios forthcoming soon!

The U.S. Supreme Court cited a Journal of the Patent & Trademark Office Society article on page 2 of its U.S. v. Arthrex opinion, which was decided on June 21, 2021. The article is by former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, former Examiner-in-Chief of the Board of Appeals, and co-drafter (with Judge Giles S. Rich) of the Patent Act of 1952, Pasquale Joseph ("PJ") Federico (See also Pasquale Joseph Federico, Wikipedia), entitled "Operation of the Patent Act of 1790," 18 J. Pat. Off. Soc. 237, 338-239 (1936). This is a concrete affirmation of the standing JPTOS holds in the field of IP & Patent Law, and further motivation for publishing a forthcoming "Arthrex Issue" as well. You can see the citation below: 

Volume 101 Issue 3 is now available!

Preambles: Form over Substance

Roy Y. Yi

Patent claim preambles perplex and confound even the most seasoned patent practitioners. Ranging from inventors to Federal judges, understanding the purpose and meaning of a patent claim preamble is elusive; primarily in determining whether the preamble limits the scope of the patent claim. The Federal Circuit developed a framework to facilitate in determining a limiting preamble in Catalina Marketing International v. Coolsavings.com. The framework, however, does not recite any clear rules or tests for practitioners to performmaking preamble determination subjective in nature. This framework may leave a patent drafter feeling insecure that the preamble he writes will not be understood properly. Likewise, the USPTO also has difficulty in assessing the limiting or non-limiting nature of a claim preamble. Examiners use a non-legal authority manual during examination which is called the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP). With the MPEP, the USPTO tries to describe and reduce legal principles into manageable and digestible pieces of legal information for the examiner. But like the Catalina framework, there are no clear rules or tests for the examiner to use; therefore, each examiner must determine the nature of preamble subjectively. 

I Wrote This, I Swear!: Protecting the “Copyright” of Fanfiction Writers from the Thievery of Other Fanfiction Writers

Narisa Bandali

People who write fanfiction do so to explore, sustain, and contribute to content to which they feel a connection––content that is generally protected under copyright. The legal status of fanfiction in comparison to copyright law is a gray area, but fanfiction is generally considered to be transformative. Regardless of how a court may view fanfiction, writers of fanfiction invest time, effort, and passion into works that can sometimes be longer than a normal published novel. While fanfiction is currently a topic of discussion in the legal world, plagiarism of fanfiction tends to be ignored. Similarly, plagiarism within the fanfiction community does not currently have any real regulation besides social pressure, like online shaming. 

Vanda v. West-Ward: Swinging Back the Pendulum for Patenting Natural Phenomena

Kevin A. Sforza, Ph.D.

Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2001, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent protection to nearly sixty thousand DNA-based patents, about twenty-six hundred of which are for isolated DNA. However, the rulings of two Supreme Court decisions, Mayo in 2012 and Myriad in 2014, put an end to the laissez-faire environment for DNA-based patents. Under those decisions, natural gene and protein sequences are per se ineligible subject matter. The Court’s decisions left the USPTO and many DNA-based patent-holders bewildered. While the Court attempted to define a bright-line rule proscribing natural phenomena, known as the Mayo/Alice framework, its lack of clear guidance on how to apply the test left the lower courts to wrestle with its practical administration. The Supreme Court rightfully aimed to avoid preempting researchers and the public from using natural phenomena, but in doing so gutted the patent incentives for modern research. This Note argues that in a recent decision, Vanda v. West-Ward, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit misapplied the Mayo/Alice framework when analyzing a method patent involving a natural relationship. However, the Federal Circuit was justified in redrawing the bounds of patentable subject matter requirements for pro-patent and pro-scientific research reasons. The current patentability statutes under 35 U.S.C. bleed together, and clarifying the requirements may require Congressional and Supreme Court intervention and cooperation.