Month: September 2016

Why would anyone want a design patent? Design Patents Part One: US patent system written by Elizabeth Gearhart, Ph.D., Patent Agent at Gearhart Law www.GearhartLaw.com Why would anyone want a design patent? 2 reasons: time money Caveat:   the protection from a design patent is very narrow compared to a utility patent. Compare a typical design patent application to a...

Written by Roy Rosser, Ph.D. Patent Agent visit our website at www.GearhartLaw.com Do you need international patent protection, and when do you have to decide? This post describes the method used to file in foreign countries with a timeline for filings. In a nutshell, you have one year from filing a US provisional or...

The Cronut, or rather CronutTM trademark controversy Written by Susanne Somersalo, Ph.D., Esq., patent attorney at Gearhart Law A small bakery in New York is selling fried croissant dough in the form of a doughnut and calls the pastry a Cronut™. Cronuts™ have become so popular that people are lining up outside the bakery in the...

Written by Susanne Somersalo, Ph.D., Esq., patent attorney at Gearhart Law Genetically modified foods are slow to gain acceptance in some quarters – some argue that no one knows exactly how the natural foods have been changed and what they’ll do to our bodies and health if we ingest them. Others argue that the modifications...

Do you know where the United States ranks on the Global Innovation Index for 2013? The answer is below. The Global Innovation Index (GII) is published by Cornell University, INSEAD (“Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires” or European Institute of Business Administration), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The GII looked at 142 economies world...

Fireworks are patentable and have been around for awhile. The figures above are from US Patent No. 001,217,544 granted to William H. Willson of Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 1917. As of July 2, 2013, we’re up to US Patent No. 8,474,092, meaning the USPTO has granted over 8 million patents since patent number 1...

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES RULING:

ASSOCIATION FOR MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY ET. AL. vs. MYRIAD GENETICS, INC., ET. AL. June 13, 2013 decision

Our View Written by Susanne Somersalo, Ph.D., Patent Attorney, Gearhart Law Back in the 1990’s, Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics discovered the location and sequence of two human genes, the mutation of which can...

This blog was written by Roy Rosser, Ph.D., Patent Agent at Gearhart Law A Patent Box? I thought life was meant to be like a Box of Chocolates? Thanks to Skype, it’s now possible to make virtual visits to foreign cities. On one such recent adventure, I discovered that all London is agog about “The Patent...

This blog was written by Roy Rosser, patent agent at Gearhart Law Edison of Arabia – Saudi Arabia joins the PCT As of August 3rd, 2013 Saudi Arabia (SA) will become the 147th country to join the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The PCT is an international Intellectual Property rights treaty administered by the United Nations through its...

USPTO Patent term calculator: http://j.mp/12nR23h Patents have fixed, finite lives. As savvy inventors and entrepreneurs know, since 1995 US patents are valid for twenty years from the date of the first US filing of the patent. Not hard to calculate that – so why has the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) just released...