International Patent Matters from a Canadian Patent Lawyer’s Perspective

How can a Disclaimer broaden a patent claim???

Hershkovitz v. Tyco Safety Products Canada Ltd

Canadian Federal Court of Appeal

Sometimes decisions are made by the courts that make you angry. And other times they just make you sad. This is a case that falls into both categories: Hershkovitz v. Tyco Safety Products Canada Ltd. 2010 FCA 190 Date: July 19, 2010

Patent 2,169,670, relates to an electronic circuit known as a telephone line coupler. A telephone line coupler is used to connect electronic equipment, such as a telephone or alarm system to a telephone line, while providing electrical isolation. The electrical isolation is necessary to protect equipment from power surges and unwanted signals. The electrical isolation is achieved by using optical-electronic components called “opto-couplers”. There’s no need to examine this patent further other than to observe that the patentee, by way of a “disclaimer” introduced into the scope of coverage of the claims the requirement that the following additional features must be present:

“(1) a receive opto-coupler (2) connected (3) in series (4) with the transmit opto-coupler [means] (5) on the line side (6) to draw a minimum of current (7) to place a light-emitting diode (8) of the receive opto-coupler (9) in an operational range.

These features were fully identified in the disclosure as originally filed.

It is perhaps important to note that the Trial Judge then added the observation:

“The Court notes that these newly added elements are considered by the inventor himself as being (1) inventive elements and (2) resulting in new combinations…”

an observation apparently adopted not only by the Trial Court in making its ruling but by the Court of Appeal as well. The implication is that these words pointed the scope of patent coverage in a new direction.

Focusing on the decision in the Court of Appeal, which perpetuates the errors made in the court below, the appeal judgment addressed the first issue as being: Was the disclaimer invalid because it added new inventive elements to the invention?

The Appeal Court found no error in the Trial Court’s decision that the appellant’s disclaimer broadened the scope of the patent by adding new inventive elements to it. On this basis, the disclaimer was held to be invalid. Worse, the Appeal Court endorsed the methodology of the Trial Court, namely of proceeding by construing the claims in the patent both before and as modified by the disclaimer, and then comparing the two in order to conclude that the claim had been broadened.

Before addressing why this is an erroneous approach, it should be observed that the Appeal Court decision makes the following observations on the nature and fundamental principles of patent law:

“At its essence, the patent system is a bargain between the public and inventors”
“An inventor can obtain a patent for any “new and useful art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter”….. The patent gives its holder, the patentee, a time-limited exclusive right to make, construct, use and sell the invention: section 42 of the Act. There is a quid pro quo.
“A person infringes a patent by performing all of the essential elements found within the claims of the patent. The essential elements of a claim are all the elements required for the invention in the claim to function as contemplated by the inventor. Put another way, those elements that can be substituted or omitted without having a material effect on the invention’s function are non-essential. Clearly, adding essential elements to a claim narrows it.
“To be novel the invention must not have been previously made known to the public.
“…an inventor can only claim that which he invented. If an inventor claims more than was invented, the subject-matter of the patent will be too broad. This makes the bargain unfair – the inventor ends up with the exclusive right to exploit subject-matters not invented and not disclosed to the public. Simply put, patents cannot be overbroad.

“. . . a patentee may later discover that part of the invention falls short on one of the three criteria for patentability.

“Sometimes the patentee can address the deficiency upon discovering that part of the invention falls short on one of the three criteria for patentability. Where the deficiency is as a result of a mistake, accident or inadvertence, the patentee may renounce that part of the invention that falls short. …. Renunciation is accomplished by filing with the Patent Office a document called a “disclaimer”: section 48 of the Act. Section 48 provides as follows:

48. Patentee may disclaim anything included in patent by mistake

(1) Whenever, by any mistake, accident or inadvertence, and without any wilful intent to defraud or mislead the public, a patentee has

(a) made a specification [i.e. the claims and disclosure found in the patentee’s patent application] too broad, claiming more than that of which the patentee or the person through whom the patentee claims was the inventor, or (b) in the specification, claimed that the patentee or the person through whom the patentee claims was the inventor of any material or substantial part of the invention patented of which the patentee was not the inventor, and to which the patentee had no lawful right,

the patentee may, on payment of a prescribed fee, make a disclaimer of such parts as the patentee does not claim to hold by virtue of the patent or the assignment thereof.

“The filing of a disclaimer narrows the scope of the patent. The narrowing of the scope of the patent happens automatically upon filing the disclaimer: the Patent Office does not have to assess and approve the disclaimer. As long as the disclaimer is in the prescribed form, the Patent Office registers it.

“When the patentee files a disclaimer, the scope of the patent exclusivity enjoyed by the inventor is reduced.
“Disclaimers that broaden the scope of a patent are invalid.
“In the view of the Federal Court [trial division], this was an invalid broadening of the scope of the patent through disclaimer.

“[34] In this Court, the appellants cast their challenge to the Federal Court’s ruling on this point very narrowly. They challenged the Federal Court’s finding that the disclaimer introduced, as a new inventive element, a connection between the receive opto-coupler and the transmit opto-coupler. However, even if the Federal Court were wrong on that, its finding that the disclaimer improperly introduced a number of other new inventive elements would remain. For example, in this Court, the appellants did not challenge the finding that “a minimum of current to place a light emitting diode of said receive opto-coupler in an operational range” broadened the scope of the patent. They failed to challenge any of the other elements that the Federal Court described in the above passage, which, in its view, broadened the scope of the patent. Whether or not the appellants’ narrow submission is correct, it does not matter in the end result: the Federal Court has found that the disclaimer, by broadening the original claims in the patent, is invalid. Were it otherwise, parties could use disclaimers to broaden their patents and obtain increased rights of exclusivity over those elements, thereby changing the overall bargain and circumventing the oversight of the Patent Office.

“[35] Because of the rather narrow focus of the appellants’ arguments concerning the above passage, it is not necessary for this Court to examine each of the nine inventive elements identified by the Federal Court and assess whether they are indeed inventive elements. In some cases, this might be necessary. There is a distinction between inventive elements and essential elements. In a disclaimer, one cannot add inventive elements, as that will broaden the scope of the patent. But adding essential elements can narrow the scope of the patent; as mentioned in paragraph 11, above, the more essential elements there are in the patent’s claims, the narrower they get.”
[End of quotations from Court decision]

 

This ruling is a disaster. It not only does great damage to the provisions in the Act that permit a patentee to file a disclaimer, but it does so on the basis of a logical reasoning which is seriously deficient.

Adding new limitations to a claim does not broaden the scope of a patent monopoly. The claim has a scope before the new limitations are added, and after the new limitations are added that scope has been reduced because anything not including the new limitations is now excluded. A properly formulated disclaimer can never broaden the scope of coverage of a patent.

A key feature of a disclaimer is that it is available in cases where a specification [i.e. the claims and disclosure found in the patentee’s patent application] has been made too broad, claiming more than that of which the patentee or the person through whom the patentee claims was the inventor. (Reference to “more than that… the person… was the inventor” is old-fashioned language meaning that the subject claims covered pre-existing prior art. Hence such person was not the “inventor”.)

By permitting disclaimers, a patent claim that violates the Golden Rule of patent law (by extending to cover the prior art) can be repaired by truncating its scope.

There are two ways by which the scope of a patent claim can be limited. One is to declare that claim coverage specific to a prior art configuration that has been discovered after the scope of the claims has been settled through examination are not to be covered by the claim - coverage of such specific prior art is disclaimed. The other way by which the scope of a patent claim can be limited is to stipulate that coverage is to extend only to embodiments of the invention having a specific feature that is not present in the prior art. Properly, the specific feature must also be identified in the patent specification as being available to serve as part of the invention to be covered by the patent. Examples would be appropriate.

Example 1

Claim: I claim a pencil having an eraser attached to the end of the pencil.

Prior art: a pencil together with an eraser having a hole in the eraser which is fitted over the end of the pencil

Disclaimer: I disclaim the case of a pencil together with an eraser having a hole in the eraser which is fitted over the end of the pencil.

Example 2

Claim and prior art as above.

Disclaimer: I disclaim the cases of all pencils not having a brass sleeve fitted at the end of the pencil to hold the eraser in place.

In the first case, the disclaimer is specific to an example of prior art. In the second case the disclaimer adopts a limitation taken from the disclosure in the original patent filing and makes this a requirement for something to fall within the scope of the claim in order to infringe. The first example, whether appropriate or not, is not permissible under the patent rules. The rules stipulate that a disclaimer, other than the entire cancellation of a claim, must be formulated according to the following statement:

“The patentee disclaims the entirety of claim with the exception of the following:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/SOR-96-423/page-5.html#anchorsc:1

Following this procedure, the original claim may then be set out in its entirety with further limitations being added to it. This is the well-known procedure in patent law of narrowing the scope of a patent claim.

How could the Court invalidate the disclaimer on the basis that: “the disclaimer improperly introduced a number of other new inventive elements….” and “the Federal Court (trial division) has found that the disclaimer, by broadening the original claims in the patent, is invalid”? Not only did the Court on Appeal refuse to depart from the decision of the Trial Division but they also endorsed this by adding:

“the Federal Court has found that the disclaimer, by broadening the original claims in the patent, is invalid. Were it otherwise, parties could use disclaimers to broaden their patents and obtain increased rights of exclusivity over those elements, thereby changing the overall bargain and circumventing the oversight of the Patent Office.”

The Court then went on to make the novel and strange observations that:

“There is a distinction between inventive elements and essential elements. In a disclaimer, one cannot add inventive elements, as that will broaden the scope of the patent. But adding essential elements can narrow the scope of the patent; as mentioned in paragraph 11, above, the more essential elements there are in the patent’s claims, the narrower they get.”

This new distinction seems to be related to the earlier statement taken from the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Free World Trust v. Electro Sante Inc., [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1024, 2000 SCC 66 that:

“A person infringes a patent by performing all of the essential elements found within the claims of the patent. The essential elements of a claim are all the elements required for the invention in the claim to function as contemplated by the inventor. Put another way, those elements that can be substituted or omitted without having a material effect on the invention’s function are non-essential. Clearly, adding essential elements to a claim narrows it.”

This parsing of claims into essential and nonessential elements is derived from the British House of Lords Catnic decision, Catnic Components Ltd v Hill & Smith Ltd (1982) R.P.C. 183 and the subsequent UK Court of Appeal Improver decision, Improver Corporation v Remington Consumer Product Limited [1990] F.S.R. 181. This adoption of the concept of essential and nonessential elements was made without reference to the subsequent British House of Lords decision in Kirin-Amgen v Hoechst Marion Roussel [2004] UKHL 46 (2004-10-21)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirin-Amgen_v_Hoechst_Marion_Roussel
http://www.claytonutz.com/publications/newsletters/life_sciences_insights/20050715/oh_my_lord-the_house_of_lords_clarifies_uk_patent_law.page

which clarifies the intent of the Catnic decision and nullifies the parsing of claims into essential and nonessential elements as the proper method for claim interpretation. That distinction was in reality a residue from the pre-Catnic law principle that the Doctrine of Equivalents cannot operate at the point of invention.

Not only does the present Court of Appeal decision maintain the distinction between essential and nonessential elements in a patent claim, but it also introduces the concept that claims may add inventive elements as well as essential elements, vis: “There is a distinction between inventive elements and essential elements. In a disclaimer, one cannot add inventive elements, as that will broaden the scope of the patent. But adding essential elements can narrow the scope of the patent; as mentioned in paragraph 11, above, the more essential elements there are in the patent’s claims, the narrower they get.” The reality is that adding limitations to a claim cannot broaden its scope. This analysis is hopelessly wrong.

A further effort might be invested in determining whether there were good policy reasons for reaching the same decision on other grounds such as the inventor’s understanding at the time of the patent grant, but for now, we have to decide whether to be either angry or sad at the direction that a decision such as this will point the law in the future.

David J. French
Ottawa, Canada

Posted in Patents, Canadian Law, For Attorneys August 11th, 2010 by David J. French | No comments

US Law Reform: Prefiling Protection for Inventors under revised S515

 US Law Reform: Prefiling Protection for Inventors under revised S515
 
The Canadapatentblog postings of November 16, 2009 and January 31, 2010 addressed the scope of the draft novelty requirements under US Senate bill S515 as originally approved by the US Senate Judiciary Committee in April, 2009.  A proposed revision of that text has now been published by the Senate and is reproduced in the Patently’O blog posting of March 9, 2010 available here:
 
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/03/patent-reform-act-of-2010-proposed-first-to-file-statute.html#comments
 
The language used in this revision expresses much more clearly the apparent intent of the legislators.  The extensive Patently’O blog  commentaries on this revised text finally show that interested members of the patent profession are beginning to attempt to address the real meaning of these provisions.  These commentaries are all well worth reading.
 
In the Canadapatentblog posting of January 31, 2010, the key recommendation was that, under the new scheme being proposed, persons intending to obtain patent protection in the United States should: “file early and file often”.  Some of the key points to consider are as follows:
 
- initial priority patent filings including US Provisional applications should be as complete as possible in order to meet 35 USC 112 requirements
 
- foreign priority filings will enjoy the benefits of the US grace period provisions equally with the filing of a US Provisional application
 
- every patent filer should take advantage of the right to make additional filings during the priority year and consolidate the disclosures of all such filings into the final, non-provisional, patent application that may then be used around the world
 
- the proposed new US patent law includes a Canadian style self-originating grace period which applies to self-originating disclosures, i.e. disclosures originating from the inventor associated with the filing
 
- the proposed new US patent law includes an additional feature present in the following sections:
 
35 USC 102 (b) EXCEPTIONS.—
(1) DISCLOSURES MADE 1 YEAR OR LESS BEFORE THE EFFECTIVE FILING DATE OF THE CLAIMED INVENTION.—A disclosure made 1 year or less before the effective filing date of a claimed invention shall not be prior art to the claimed invention under subsection (a)(1) if— …….
(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor…….
 
(2) DISCLOSURES APPEARING IN APPLICATIONS AND PATENTS.—A disclosure shall not be prior art to a claimed invention under subsection (a)(2) if— ………
(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such subject matter was effectively filed under subsection (a)(2), been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or another who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor; ………
 Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Patents, Canadian Law, US Law, Articles, For Inventors, For Attorneys March 17th, 2010 by David J. French | No comments

First-To-File vs First-To-Invent: Why is there a Dispute?

Patent law reform legislation, for the third time, is presently pending before the US Congress. During 2009 the debate over Health Care has moved this subject to the back burner. But in the last days of 2009, initiatives are now being taken by proponents to save the old first-to-invent patentability system rather than switch to a first-to-file concept as adopted elsewhere in the world.

Defenders of the existing first-to-invent system argue that it spares inventors the burden of rushing to the patent office to make a record of their inventions. If you are the first inventor under the existing US system, then you’re entitled to delay for up to one year from the date of your conception of your invention with complete security. You may do so only so long as you are working on reducing your invention to practice, by either building an apparatus that incorporates the invention or by filing a patent application. But if an inventor is diligent in this respect, there is no rush to the patent office.

The patent law blog Patently’O run by Prof. Dennis Crouch addressed this issue once again on December 10, 2009:

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/12/the-matrix-for-first-inventor-to-file-an-experimental-investigation-into-proposed-changes-in-us-patent-law.html

This posting makes reference to a paper of December 4th by Brad Pedersen and Justin Woo of Patterson, Thuente, Skaar & Christensen, P.A. in Minneapolis entitled “The ‘Matrix’ for First-Inventor-To-File: An Experimental Investigation into Proposed Changes in U.S. Patent Law”:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1518660

Amongst numerous comments made on the Patently’O blog in response to this posting, a strong defense of the existing first-to-invent system was put forward by Ron Katznelson, whose views are representative of many of the 160,000 small business and startup companies represented by the The Small Business Coalition. These comments were based on the practical experience of small businesses and startups who count on patent rights to get themselves under way but cannot afford to comply with the early filing requirement of a first-to-file system.

Here are Ron’s comments on this issue:

“Consider an actual profile of a five-year R&D and invention effort of the Mova® system developed by my friend Steve Perlman. It is described in Steve’s Columbia University presentation available at http://j.mp/Mova-development. Slide 35 shows that no less than fifty important inventive ideas had been conceived, evaluated and tested over periods spanning months or years in the course of this system’s development (labeled by “invention” squares).

The majority of these inventions proved to be useless. During that time, only about six patent applications had been filed (labeled by “path to success” arrows). In most cases, there was no way of filing prompt and enabling applications. As Steve explains in his presentation, the prospects of such a development effort under FTF would have been dire. Because the cost, effort and time lost to have acted on every one of these inventions would have been prohibitive, this R&D team would have had to frequently face a painful dilemma as to which of these inventions should be written up and filed in a patent application.

Unfortunately, many such premature guesses would have proved wrong, so, under FTF, costly applications would be filed for some useless inventions and patent protection would be lost for other valuable inventions. Investors will not assume such risks, which is why such inventions seldom occur under FTF scenarios.”

Posted by: Ron Katznelson President of Bi-Level Technologies, Encinitas, California, Dec 16, 2009 at 08:25 AM as a comment to the Patently’O Blog of December 10, 2009.
In commenting on the Pattersen and Woo paper (above) Prof Dennis Crouch had observed in his Patently’O Blog of December 10, 2009:
“The Patent Reform Act of 2009 would replace the current “first-to-invent” (FTI) system with a new “first-inventor-to-file” (FITF) system. While touted as a way to harmonize the US system with “first-to-file” (FTF) systems used in other countries, an experimental investigation of a matrix of two hundred typical fact patterns for two competing inventors was analyzed under all three systems (FTI, FITF and FTF) to test this assumption. Based on the matrix analysis, it appears that if FITF is adopted there likely will be changes in applicant behavior and significant extra costs for at least several years as a result of the transition to a new system; and, it is unclear whether FITF really gets the US any closer to patent harmonization.”

Fair enough comment. But where is all this anxiety regarding a switch to a first-inventor-to-file system coming from? If you review the comments of Ron Katznelson above and the recent submissions of The Small Business Coalition on Patent Legislation in a letter sent to the U.S. SBA ( http://bit.ly/SB-Coalition-Letter-to-SBA ) , the great concern appears to be the consequences of pressuring small businesses in America, and particularly new business startups, to prepare and file patent applications more frequently and at a premature stage, before their inventions are fully developed and understood.
First some clarifying observations.

Compare “first-to-file” and “first-inventor-to-file” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Patents, US Law, Articles, For Inventors, For Attorneys January 31st, 2010 by David J. French | No comments

Swearing Back under a revised US patent law: 37 CFR 1.131 equivalent in S515

Dennis Crouch, as part of his Patently O blog is circulating a survey that addresses the first-to-invent/first-to-file patentability requirements. He is doing so in conjunction with a larger survey addressing the extent to which applicants are able to swear-back of prior disclosures published in the one-year grace period before their US filing date. According to the US code of federal regulations applicable to patents, 37 CFR 1.131 provides as follows:

37 CFR 1.131 Affidavit or declaration of prior invention.

(a) When any claim of an application …is rejected, the inventor of the subject matter of the rejected claim…….may submit an appropriate oath or declaration to establish invention of the subject matter of the rejected claim prior to the effective date of the reference or activity on which the rejection is based……

A cited reference means a publication or a pending application filed by another party located by the examiner which does not claim the same invention but which nevertheless either discloses the same invention or renders the applicant’s invention obvious. Swearing-back of such a reference does not close the book on whether a valid patent will be granted. The other party may be the true first inventor and the cited reference may be associated with a public use that could eventually defeat the applicant’s eventual patent. But by forcing an applicant to make a 37 CFR 1.131 declaration, the patent office has at least applied the first-to-invent concept to the extent that the patent that will be granted is not clearly invalid: If you can’t swear back of a reference then you are not the first inventor!

Dennis Crouch has been gathering evidence on the extent to which reliance has been placed by applicants before the US patent office on this procedure. This goes to the heart of the issue as to whether a switch to the first-to-invent system would be appropriate for a revised United States patent law.

Meanwhile, bills are progressing through both the US House of Representatives and the Senate to revise the US patent law in certain fundamental respects. One of the proposed revisions will be to adopt a first-to-file system, more correctly described by its proponents as a first-inventor-to-file system. Not appreciated by virtually all of the commentators is that these two bills pending before Congress contain a remarkable provision for which there is no precedent anywhere in the world. Using Senate bill S515 as a reference, this bill includes a kind of echo of the existing 37 CFR 1.131 procedure. This legislation would amend Section 102 of the US patent law to explicitly provide as follows:

“102(b)

(b) Exceptions.–
(1) Prior inventor disclosure exception.–Subject matter that would otherwise qualify as prior art based upon a disclosure under subparagraph (B) of subsection (a)(1) shall not be prior art to a claimed invention under that subparagraph if the subject matter had, before such disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a joint inventor or others who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or joint inventor.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Patents, US Law, Articles, For Attorneys November 16th, 2009 by David J. French | No comments

The Crisis in the American Patent System

                                    The Crisis in the American Patent System
   

                                                                      Part I
 

This first section is part of a multi-part paper addressing the challenges presented by the American patent system.  The first part is historical.  The second part, to follow, addresses proposals pending before Congress in 2009 to improve the operation of the American patent law in the 21st century. A further part will provide a comparative analysis of the experience of Europe and Canada with the principles of “absolute novelty”, more precisely “absolute world novelty”, adopted in those jurisdictions in 1978 and 1989 respectively.
 

                                                The Patent Crisis of the 1830s1
 

            In the 1830s, the United States was undergoing a patent crisis.  It is not the same patent crisis that it faces today, but something can be learned from what occurred in those most interesting years.
 

The Patent Act of 1790
 

            On April 10, 1790, President Washington signed the first patent statute into law.  The first patent statute did not create a Patent Office. It directed applicants to file a petition for a patent with the Secretary of State. Then the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney General were to determine if they, or any two of them, thought “the invention or discovery sufficiently useful and important” to merit a patent.         
 

            The first officers given this duty were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. They called themselves collectively the “Commissioners for the Promotion of Useful Arts,” or the “Board of Arts,” although others called them the Patent Commission or Patent Board.
 

            The Patent Act of 1790 did not satisfy applicants, and it did not satisfy those who were appointed to administer it. Applicants did not like the strictness with which the Patent Board determined who should and who should not receive patents. There was no appeal from the discretion of the Patent Board. The members of the Patent Board had high positions in the Government and did not have sufficient time to spare to run the patent system.  Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter years later in 1813, stating that the investigations of patent applications had required more time than the members of the Patent Board could spare from their higher duties and that the applications had required a great deal of time to understand and treat with justice.
 

            In a 1792 letter to Dr. Hugh Williamson, the chairman of a congressional committee to revise the patent law, Jefferson wrote that it distressed him to render crude and uninformed opinions on valuable and important rights without being able to devote the full attention that the petitions deserved. He drafted a bill to reform the patent law on December 1, 1791, and discussed it with Dr. Williamson.  Mr. Jefferson’s bill would have eliminated all examination and made the Secretary of State the registrar of patents, with determinations of patent validity to be made by the courts.
 

           While Mr. Jefferson’s bill as written was not introduced into Congress, some of its provisions were incorporated into a bill that was passed as the Act of February 21, 1793. It is likely that the primary reason for the Act of 1793 was not the dissatisfaction of inventors but was the inability of the Patent Board to administer the Act of 1790 while carrying out their other duties. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Patents, US Law, Articles, For Inventors, For Attorneys September 11th, 2009 by David J. French | No comments

The Role of Patents in Focused Innovation

Throughout my career as a professional engineer working as a patent attorney I have repeatedly been trying to appeciate why people do not understand what patents are all about. Almost invariably, everyone who has approached me to discuss patenting has arrived with preconceived notions about the subject. I have spent a large part of my career trying to reorient those notions.

In parallel, I have come to recognize that there is a need to articulate the process by which innovators can focus on the most appropriate technology or opportunity for them to pursue. In respect of the patenting aspect, this requires an understanding of the benefits that a patent can deliver, and its limitations. It also requires an understanding of the essence of an inventive advance. This last requirement is closely related to the field of engineering.

A core concept is as follows:

The object in patenting is not simply to obtain a patent on your own product.  For a patent to be of commercial value, it should extend to and cover close alternatives that could compete with your own product. This actually requires an inventor to think about how the benefits of an invention could be achieved in other ways.

An inventor seeking to obtain a valuable and effective patent should engage in “super inventing”. This means going beyond thinking of the original invention in terms of its specifics. Every invention starts-off as an assembly of parts and processes. Instead, the invention has to be understood at its most abstract level. This will help greatly in identifying alternate variations on the original invention. The objective, for patent purposes, is to characterize the larger inventive concept in language that will encompass all of these variants.

Surprisingly, to many, most inventions change over time as inventors come to understand the invention at a deeper, or higher, level. Once alternate variations of an original invention have been identified it will often be recognized that the original invention had its own deficiencies. A modified invention can then be identified that is superior to the original concept. This process can be carried-out iteratively, with the potential for great profit. Not only can the invention be improved, but the prospects for obtaining an effective patent monopoly can be enhanced.

Many examples can be generated where this principle is demonstrated. One example that may surprise people is that of the Wright Brothers patent, granted just over 100 years ago. This patent as originally drafted was deficient in respect of the feature identified as the principle inventive advance. The Wright Brothers did not really understand their own invention.

It is the responsibility of every patent applicant to not only describe their invention in terms of how to build it, but also to define it. The Wright Brothers knew that they had not invented the idea of an airplane that would fly under power. Such a concept had been thoroughly discussed in the previous 40 years and a considerable number of attempts to build a flying vehicle had been made. Steam powered model aircraft had already flown distances on the order of half a mile. Patents are not granted for doing something for the first time; they are granted for originating the idea of how something should be done, that is, coming up with a new idea. The idea of flying was old. To obtain a patent, the Wright Brothers had to conceive of something that had not been proposed before.

The Wright Brothers believed that they had invented the idea of controlling an aircraft so that it would bank to the left or bank to the right - to achieve “roll” - by twisting the tips of the wings. They built a glider aircraft with “soft” outer wing ends that could be warped. But when this didn’t work very well they ran a rope to the tail to correct a steering problem by “slaving” the tail to turn in conjunction with the wing tips. That’s what they thought was the essence of their invention when they filed their patent application.

Once they had filed a patent application they visited the Examiner at the Patent Office in Washington. He recommended to them that they engage a patent attorney. Returning home, they located and met with a patent attorney who appreciated the importance of what they had accomplished. By then they had made their first successful flight under power using their new control system.

Eventually, this patent attorney was able to re-characterize the features that constituted the essence of the real advance that had been achieved, and amended the patent accordingly. Even then, once the patent was issued, the Wright Brothers were faced with “infringers”, including in particular Glenn Curtiss, who built aircraft with rigid wings and small, secondary, “ailerons” to control roll.

The story of the litigation that followed provides further valuable insight into the patent universe.

If you think you understand this principle then you can test it out yourself by making a list of all of the features which characterize a scrollbar on a computer screen. How many can you identify? Are you able, in one sentence, to provide defining language which will cover all of these features? If so, you are well-qualified to understand the fundamental nature and challenge faced by inventors when they set out to originally conceive and eventually patent their inventions.

More significantly, you will be well-positioned to engage in “Directed Innovation” which means conceiving inventions which have an improved prospect of being profitable.

 

 

Posted in Patents, Articles, For Inventors, For Attorneys September 8th, 2009 by David J. French | No comments

The Torture of Explaining to Clients - KSR

Every attorney practicing patent law has experienced the difficulty of explaining to clients the principles of patent law. This exercise is particularly challenging when the client, subjectively, has made a substantial advance which the attorney feels is not likely to support the grant of a patent.

Typically, when interviewed, the inventor will describe a number of significant features respecting his/her invention which he/she has developed and believes to be novel. Since these features apparently have not been incorporated into a marketable cartridge made by others, the inventor has the impression that a patent should be obtainable on such a device. As all attorneys know, unfortunately, that is not the full story. Even if the inventor has subjectively made an invention, it is necessary to explain to the inventor the distinctions of patent law and the reasons why a patent may not necessarily be granted. What follows is yet another attempt to present this explanation. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized, Patents, Patent Prosecution, US Law, Articles, For Inventors, For Attorneys January 17th, 2008 by admin | No comments

Priority Right When Abandoning And Refiling Applications

“We frequently simply re-file US provisional applications to start new one year periods where clients are not ready to proceed.”

The above quotation is from a US attorney handling a PCT filing on behalf of a US resident inventor. This response was given when, as representative of the beneficial Canadian owner, I inquired about abandoning the US provisional application prior to the filing of a further application in order to restart the priority date. Unfortunately, the abandonment of a US provisional application, while automatic at the end of 12 months from the original filing date, cannot be arranged on short notice prior to that deadline.

The regulatory entitlement to voluntarily abandon the US provisional application is not entirely clear:

USPTO MPEP 201.04(b) Provisional Application
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0200_201_04_b.htm#sect201.04b

The US patent office takes the position that a voluntary abandonment is not effective until it is entered by the office. They recommend that applicants allow a delay of three months for this to occur.

In these circumstances, what problems can arise by “ simply re-filing US provisional applications to start new one year periods where clients are not ready to proceed”?

Article 4C(4) of the Paris Convention provides that:

“ A subsequent application concerning the same subject as a previous first application within the meaning of paragraph (2), above, filed in the same country of the Union. shall be considered as the first application, of which the filing date shall be the starting point of the period of priority, if, at the time of filing the subsequent application, the said previous application has been withdrawn, abandoned, or refused, without having been laid open to public inspection and without leaving any rights outstanding, and if it has not yet served as a basis for claiming a right of priority. The previous application may not thereafter serve as a basis for claiming a right of priority.”

Paris Convention Article 4 Priority right
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxp_4.htm#parart4

Countries are not obliged to adopt all of the limitations in this paragraph but most probably do. Canada certainly does. The right to restart a priority date is limited in the Canadian Patent Act by the following:

28.4 (5) A previously regularly filed application mentioned in section 28.1 or 28.2 (i.e. the right to claim a priority date for each respective claim) or subsection 78.3(1) or (2) shall, for the purposes of that section or subsection, be considered never to have been filed if

(a) it was filed more than twelve months before the filing date of

(i) the pending application, in the case of section 28.1

(ii) the co-pending application, in the case of section 28.2,

(iii) the later application, in the case of subsection 78.3(1), or

(iv) the earlier application, in the case of subsection 78.3(2);

(b) before the filing date referred to in paragraph (a), another application

(i) is filed by the person who filed the previously regularly filed application or by the agent, legal representative or predecessor in title of that person,

(ii) is filed in or for the country where the previously regularly filed application was filed, and

(iii) discloses the subject-matter defined by the claim in the application mentioned in paragraph (a); and

(c) on the filing date of the other application mentioned in paragraph (b) or, if there is more than one such application, on the earliest of their filing dates, the previously regularly filed application

(i) has been withdrawn, abandoned or refused without having been opened to public inspection and without leaving any rights outstanding, and

(ii) has not served as a basis for a request for priority in any country, including Canada.


Canadian Patent Act http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/P-4/bo-ga:s_27//en#anchorbo-ga:s_27

The above provisions are extremely difficult to read. But they make it clear that the replacing application intended to start a new priority date must not overlap with the earlier filing. The earlier filing must have been abandoned at the time that the new priority filing is made. 

Obviously, this language is an attempt to comply with article 4C(4) of the Paris Convention. In all likelihood the national patent laws of many members of the Paris Convention include similar provisions.

The conclusion is that the procedure of: ” simply re-filing a US provisional application to start a new one year period where clients are not ready to proceed” will not necessarily generate a genuine new priority date for use in making filings out of the United States if the second filing overlaps in any way with the first filing. Attorneys beware!

David J French

Ottawa, Canada

Posted in Uncategorized, Patents, Canadian Law, US Law, For Attorneys January 8th, 2008 by admin | 1 comment

Euro-Excellence Inc. v. Kraft Canada Inc.,

The Supreme Court of Canada has issued a very contentious ruling on copyright as it affects gray market transactions. It is contentious not only because it allows gray market goods bearing copyrighted logos to be imported into Canada, but because the nine judges involved end-up in four different camps.

Kraft Foods Belgium SA (“KFB”) and Kraft Foods Schweiz AG (“KFS”) were respectively, the owners of the Côte d’Or and Toblerone copyrights at issue in this case, as well as manufacturers of chocolate bars marketed under those brand names. The subsidiary of these two corporations, Kraft Canada Inc. (”KCI”) was appointed by these two companies as their exclusive Canadian distributor of Côte d’Or and Toblerone chocolate bars in Canada.

When Euro Excellence Inc. as defendant, having purchased genuine Côte d’Or and Toblerone chocolate bars, (bearing the subject copyrighted logos) from the manufacturers and copyright owners in Europe, attempted to import such products into Canada, KCI obtained injunctions, upheld at the level of the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal, barring distribution of such chocolate bars in Canada so long as they displayed the copyrighted logos. KCI founded it’s right on its status as an exclusive licensee under the Canadian Copyright Act.

The lower court judgments were overturned. Four judges of the Supreme Court ruled that the grant of an exclusive license cannot place of the copyright owner in the category of being a copyright infringer. According to this theory, the exclusive licensee has a right of action against the owner of copyright in contract only. Since Euro Excellence had purchased the chocolate bars from the copyright owners, there were no circumstances under which the importation of bars bearing the copyrighted logos could constitute an infringement in Canada.

These four judges, essentially, made their ruling based on the technical character of the copyright privilege as established by the Copyright Act, according to their interpretation.

Three of the judges, upholding the right of Euro-Excellence to a import the subject chocolate bars, did so on the basis that the Legislature never contemplated use of copyright for incidental markings on commercial products as a vehicle to interfere with the importation of such products. Thus these judges founded their reasons on the intention of the Legislature: ” The protection offered by copyright cannot be leveraged to include protection of economic interests that are only tangentially related to the copyrighted work. … (The Act) is not meant to protect manufacturers from the unauthorized importation of consumer goods on the basis of their having a copyrighted work affixed to their wrapper, this work being merely incidental to their value as consumer goods….. only those distributions which affect the legitimate economic interests protected by copyright will be held to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright.” Thus these three judges made their ruling based upon a higher, policy-based ground.

Two judges, however, dissented. These judges rejected the premise that there was an exception to copyright infringement for logos on the basis that they are “incidental” to a commercial product. They relied upon the definition of an exclusive license in section 2.7 of the Act which states that such a license grants: ” an authorization to do any act that is subject to copyright to the exclusion of all others including the copyright owner”. Accordingly, these two judges would’ve upheld the finding of infringement based upon a black-letter reading of the Act.

This decision is significant for the distinct approaches taken by different judges to interpreting the scope of private rights granted by the Legislature. Most significantly, three out of nine judges relied heavily on policy considerations to depart from what should judges considered a black-letter interpretation of the law. No doubt law school professors now in their old age would be proud of what their students are accomplishing.

Supreme Court of Canada - Decisions - Euro-Excellence Inc. v. Kraft Canada Inc.

Posted in Patents, Canadian Law, Articles, For Attorneys July 27th, 2007 by David J. French | No comments

Liebel-Flarsheim v. Medrad (Fed. Cir. 2007). Patently-O Commentaries

 

Dennis Crouch’s blog posting of March 22, 2007 entitled: “The New Law of Enablement” provides a commentary on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case of Liebel-Flarsheim v. Medrad (Fed. Cir. 2007). This posting has inspired an exceptionally long thread of commentary, giving rise to this commentary as a consequence.
Essentially, the CFCA ruled on a claim to a mechanical drive for a hypodermic needle injector for use with a disposable syringe. The patent included a description which addressed inclusion (only) of a pressure jacket to protect the disposable syringe from bursting under pressure. The CFCA ruled that such claims were invalid when the patent owner attempted to apply the claims against a competitor manufacturing a needle injector without a pressure jacket.
The patent specification indicated in the background discussion that existing disposable syringes required a pressure jacket because syringes that are able to withstand high pressures are “expensive and therefore impractical where the syringes are to be disposable.” The CFCA observed that this taught away from the use of the new style mechanical drive needle injector for use with a disposable syringe in the absence of a pressure jacket.
The competitor developed a mechanical drive hypodermic needle injector system for use with a disposable syringe that did not require a pressure jacket. Essentially, the competitor invented a disposable syringe that was strong enough. The competitor defended itself against the relevant claims on the basis that the patentee had failed to provide an enabling disclosure that would describe how its hypodermic needle injector could be made to work with a disposable syringe in the absence of a pressure jacket.

Even the patentee’s inventors admitted that they were stymied by the challenge of producing a pressure-jacketless system that would work with existing disposable syringes. The competitor succeeded where the patentees inventors said they were not able to provide a solution.
When the application was originally filed, the claims to the mechanical drive included the limitation that the needle injector was claimed in association with a pressure jacket for containing disposable syringes. That limitation was removed during the prosecution of a subsequent Continuation application after the patentees learned of the activities of the competitor in building a system that lacked a pressure jacket.
The CFCA adopted the principle that a patentee’s specification: “must enable one of ordinary skill in the art to practice the full scope of the claimed invention.” (emphasis in original).

Because in the present case the asserted claims read-on and included an injector system with and without a pressure jacket, this was held to be the full scope of the claimed invention. The claims were, on this basis, held invalid. The claims read-on the competitor’s system because the claims were silent about the presence of a pressure jacket.
The principle of this ruling is hotly contested by many of the commentators to the above blog. Some felt that it was unjust for a patentee to be the denied the benefit of claim coverage where the competitor was using all of the features of claims that could not be invalidated on the basis of the prior art. Others felt that the claims should be held invalid where the patentee had failed to provide an enabling disclosure for the full scope of patent claim coverage that the patentee was asserting.
This debate is reminiscent of the often-raise defense in Canadian patent proceedings, that the patentee has: “claimed more than he has invented”. I’’ve always been puzzled at this allegation. If a patent claim fairly describes a characteristic of the preferred embodiment using language which prevents the claim from describing anything in the prior art, then such a claim would seem to be valid. The statement that such a claim covers more than was invented is really a statement that the claim should have included further limitations. But if the claim can stand-up to novelty and obviousness tests, why can’’t such a claim be held valid?
I have always thought that it was permissible to claim a sub-component of an apparatus, focusing the claim on the aspect of an apparatus that is novel and inventive. For example: “a vehicle having a windscreen and a wiper for removing water from the windscreen wherein ……(describing the wiper) “ . If the inventor has described a highway motor vehicle as his preferred embodiment, would it be outside the scope of such a claim to cover such a wiper when carried by a boat, or an aircraft? Would it matter if the disclosure acknowledged that the rubber used in the wiper as described in the preferred embodiment would be susceptible of deterioration in the presence of saltwater, but the claim is silent as to the type of rubber to be used in the wiper?

Could a competitor then adopt the wiper for use with a boat in a saltwater environment by substituting a different rubber not ever mentioned in the original patent disclosure? Would it matter if the different rubber qualifies as a new invention?
Another analogy might be the case where the wiper inventor observed in his patent disclosure that his wiper may be susceptible to lift-off in the presence of high-speed winds. Then a competitor invents a deflector vane which remedies this defect. However, the competitor uses exactly the wiper as conceived and claimed by the patentee.
In either of such cases, could it be said that the patentee had “claimed more than he had invented”; or, as the CFCA had phrased it, failed to: “enable one of ordinary skill in the art to practice the full scope of the claimed invention”?
The key question is whether the “invention” is delimited by the claim or the “invention” is no broader than the inventor’s understanding at the time that the patent description is filed. Reference may also be made to the Canadian Patent Act section 32 which addresses the patenting of improvement inventions.
The exceptional number of commentaries forming the thread for the above blog posting shows the great disparity of opinion arising around this question. There are really two issues at stake. The first is what the law requires, and the second is what good sense would suggest to be appropriate.

 

Posted in Patents, Patent Prosecution, Canadian Law, US Law, For Attorneys March 25th, 2007 by David J. French | 2 comments

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