US Regional Patent Offices Are All Up and Running

The last of the Regional Patent Offices is up and running.  Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Michelle Lee recently attended a ribbon cutting ceremony to open the Texas Region Office of the USPTO. 

The Texas Regional Office is the last of the satellite offices for the USPTO.  Others are located in Detroit, Silicon Valley and Denver.  The satellite offices were opened to help recruit talented patent examiners from around the country, help decrease the backlog of patent cases to be examined, and to establish offices of expertise.   

The addition of four patent offices has decreased the average time to examination and to issue.   In addition, the regional patent offices have enable the USPTO to hire patent examiners with the expertise needed to handle areas of advanced and cutting edge areas of technology.  The regional patent offices also offer services to small businesses and entrepreneurs that will be offered to the communities in each of the regional areas. 

A statement recently released by the USPTO describes the importance of the regional offices by recognizing that “it’s important to ensure the USPTO can engage effectively with communities, industries, and innovators. The USPTO’s regional offices play a crucial role in these efforts, assisting inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses in their respective regions, while supporting the USPTO’s core mission of fostering American innovation and competitiveness.”

Identifying, protecting and leveraging intellectual property is critical to any organization.  Having the right person to help you make those decisions is important.  The Law Office of Kathleen Lynch PLLC is designed to help businesses such as yours keep ahead of the game.   The first telephone consultation is free.  Email us at klynch@kliplaw.com.

Do We Already Have the Technology to Solve Global Warming?

Freeimages.com

A recent article in Bloomberg News poses the question: do we already have the technology needed to solve global warming?  Representatives from all over the world are finishing up in Paris trying to agree on climate accord. Entrepreneurs and investors are ready to tackle the challenges regardless.   

Wealthy donors agreed to invest $2 billion for development in the area of clean energy research. Twenty of the world's largest economies agreed to increase their R&D spending on new energy by at least 200%. Clean-energy patents have significantly increased in the US in recent years.

The recent focus on climate saving technology and the need to reduce global warming has reopened the divide between two schools of thought: should we invent new technologies or deploy effective ideas that already exist? 

One clean-energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah submits that all of the technology needed to solve the global warming crisis is already here.  Some technologies include sharing economy businesses such as Uber and Airbnb, but others include companies that reward good behavior or that make wearable sensors that interact with a smartphone to report air quality in the immediate vicinity.

One of Pure Energy’s managing partners, Nicholas Eisenberger, states that there’s an “unloved, unnoticed tech center that’s up and coming and that can do a big part of the job, too. Why isn’t there more attention to this?” 

Capitalizing on innovative developments is critical to any organization.  Having the right person to help you make those decisions is important.  The Law Office of Kathleen Lynch PLLC is designed to help businesses such as yours keep ahead of the game.   The first telephone consultation is free.  Email us at klynch@kliplaw.com.

Ego is Grounds for Cause of Action in Inventor Dispute

Socrates once said “the way to a good reputation is to be what you desire to appear.”  For one man, he wanted to be a named inventor.   

In an action against his former employer, Seagate, Mr. Shukh filed an action in federal district court charging that his reputation was harmed by Seagate’s failure to include him as an inventor on 6 Seagate patents.  The district court dismissed the action finding that Mr. Shukh did not provide sufficient evidence to support his case.  However, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that hears patent cases, vacated the lower court’s decision.  The court found that “being considered an inventor of important subject matter is a mark of success in one’s field comparable to being an author of an important scientific paper.” 

What’s the take away here?  If you are an inventor, and you are not identified as such on a patent application or issued patent, you may have a case against your employer based on harm to your reputation.  As the court stated, if you are correctly an inventor of important subject matter, being recognized as such is a mark of professional success.  Failure to be properly included as an inventor may harm one’s reputation which may be actionable.

Capitalizing on innovative developments is critical to any organization.  Having the right person to help you make those decisions is important.  The Law Office of Kathleen Lynch PLLC is designed to help businesses such as yours keep ahead of the game.   The first telephone consultation is free.  Email us at klynch@kliplaw.com.