Recent Limitations On Patent Term Adjustment For 'A' Delay
Law360, New York ( March 9, 2016, 10:43 AM EST) -- The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office compensates patent applicants for delay in processing applications by issuing patent term adjustment that can lengthen the life of a patent based on finding of the existence of so-called "A" and "B" types of delay. The scope of permissible "A" delay by the USPTO was set forth in the Patent Term Guarantee Act of 1999 to "compensate patent applicants for certain reductions in patent term that are not the fault of the applicant. "[1] Recently, however, in Pfizer Inc. v. Lee,[2] the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit nullified any A delay consequent to correction of patent office error if that correction was prompted by the applicant. In effect, the applicant is put "at fault" for errors made by the patent office. This holding, along with two recent decisions by the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seriously limits the statutory "[g]uarantee of prompt patent and trademark office responses. "[3]. . .
Law360 is on it, so you are, too.
A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions.
Law firms are actively looking for ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into their workflow as it becomes ever more common. More than half of surveyed attorneys at U.S. law firms use generative AI for some purpose — up significantly from less than a third of attorneys who participated in the Law360 Pulse AI Survey last year.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Hello! I'm Law360's automated support bot.
How can I help you today?
For example, you can type:
I forgot my password
I took a free trial but didn't get a verification email
