On April 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) released an updated draft proposal of an international agreement on the global response to future pandemics. While the WHO pandemic agreement has been met with widespread support from many of the international agency’s member nations, including the United States, it retains provisions limiting intellectual property (IP) rights that have encouraged opposition from lawmakers and pharmaceutical innovators alike ..read more

Lyse Brillouet has been the Chief Intellectual Property Officer and Senior Vice-President, Licensing, for the Orange Group since 2018. In the latest episode of The SEP Couch, Brillouet describes why intellectual property (IP) matters within the Orange Group, which has over 130,000 employees worldwide. IP for Orange is an important outcome of various research and development projects. Orange is a technology company, with its main objective being to bring technology and related service to its customers. In some cases, Brillouet must balance the monetization of IP and the promotion of a new stand ..read more

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today voted in a Special Open Commission Meeting to publish and approve a final version of the January 2023 proposed rule that would ban employers from using clauses for their employees. Today’s rule allows existing non-competes to remain in force for senior executives but bans new non-competes for all workers and makes existing non-competes for all other workers unenforceable after the effective date, which is 120 days after publication in the Federal Register ..read more

Brazil, a country known for its abundant natural resources, is emerging as a significant player in the global renewable energy sector. Brazil has one of the highest levels of insolation in the world (ranging from 4.25 to 6.5 sun hours per day according to the Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment Project – (SWERA) and is therefore uniquely positioned to harness the power of the sun ..read more

The U.S. Supreme Court today denied a petition for certiorari seeking clarification from the Court on the proper standard for a showing of obviousness. Vanda Pharmaceuticals filed the petition following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) May 2023 decision invalidating Vanda’s patent on a method of using the drug tasimelteon to treat Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder. The CAFC came to its decision in part because the court said the disclosure of clinical trials was evidence that a person of ordinary skill in the art “would have had a reasonable expectation of success.” V ..read more

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) has filed an appeal with the U.S. Department of Commerce, which denied the GIPC's January 2024 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking more detail about the working group behind the Biden Administration’s draft framework for considering the exercise of march-in rights. The proposed framework was published in the Federal Register in December 2023 by the Department of Commerce and the National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST) and included suggestions on whether and when to exercise “march-in rights” und ..read more

On April 19, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) formally began implementation of Common Practice 14 (CP14) governing the agency’s treatment of applications of trademarks that are contrary to public policy or accepted principles of morality. The EUIPO’s common communication on CP14 seeks to establish a uniform understanding of the EU Trademark Directive’s prohibitions against registering such marks in light of increased numbers of trademark applications filed that have arguably triggered this statute ..read more

The battle for innovation in AI is relentless. AI Armor by Robert Plotkin is more than just a book about AI. Knowledge is power, and AI Armor provides those brave souls innovating in this space with actionable intelligence they can–and really must–use when navigating the turbulent waters of a tech industry experiencing a pivot moment ..read more

Like most patent attorneys, I get multiple emails each month for artificial intelligence tools purporting to help patent attorneys draft patent applications. I have done demos, and I have no doubt that in five years almost all patent drafting practitioners will be using these generative AI tools in some capacity. But I am also convinced that these tools will not be especially helpful in drafting claims ..read more

This week in Other Barks & Bites: HP sues a Chinese competitor for infringing on cloud computing patents; three federal agencies launch portal to report anti-competitive practices in the healthcare sector; and a European court rejects Pablo Escobar’s family to register the drug lord’s name as a trademark ..read more