William A. Holtz

Mar 26, 2024 | mondaq.com | William A. Holtz

On March 18, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a memorandum to the Patent Examining Corps regarding the proper examination of means-plus-function (and the less common step-plus-function) claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). The memo states it does not present a change in practice for the USPTO.

Jan 15, 2024 | mondaq.com | William A. Holtz

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a notice in the Federal Register on January 10, 2024, providing guidelines to assist USPTO personnel in assessing enablement under 35 U.S.C. 112(a), in view of and consistent with the Supreme Court decision in Amgen Inc. et al. v. Sanofi et al., 143 S. Ct. 1243 (2023) and post-Amgen Federal Circuit precedent.

Dec 18, 2023 | mondaq.com | William A. Holtz

The high cost of prescription drugs is a concern for many. While most may agree that lowering these prices is a worthy goal, just how to accomplish this is much less agreed upon. And whether the implementation of different strategies would actually result in lower prices or whether they would unleash unintended consequences is hard to predict. The White House last week announced a plan to lower health care and prescription drug costs.

Dec 4, 2023 | mondaq.com | William A. Holtz

Generally, receiving Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) for a patent that took the United States Patent Office (USPTO) a long time to issue is welcome. The purpose of awarding PTA is to compensate applicants for lost patent term due to Office delays not attributable to the applicant.

Nov 13, 2023 | mondaq.com | William A. Holtz

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced at the last moment that it will postpone decommissioning the legacy ESF-Web and Private PAIR patent filing and management systems in favor of the Patent Center system from November 8 to November 15. This will allow the agency additional time to address usability issues.