Please join us for CLE and Lunch

Recent case law has made it much more difficult to procure valuable patents.

The Supreme Court's KSR decision makes it easier to prove obviousness; the McKesson decision requires attention to disclosing Office Actions in Information Disclosure Statements; multiple Federal Circuit opinions regarding claim construction after the court's en banc decision in Phillips have limited the scope of claims to the embodiment disclosed (or narrower); Hakim makes it more difficult to prosecute continuation applications seeking broader claims; Dippin' Dots limits open-ended claiming despite the use of the "comprising" transition; Andersen applies prosecution history statements with a broad brush...The list goes on.

Efforts to build patent portfolios without careful attention to recent case law will likely yield patents with little or no scope beyond a single embodiment and with questionable enforceability - if allowance is reached in the first place.

Steve Gardner, registered patent attorney and co-chair of Kilpatrick Stockton's patent litigation group, will discuss practical tips for preparing and prosecuting patent applications that can yield broad, enforceable patents under recent case law.

RSVP by September 11 to Susan Clark at SClark@KilpatrickStockton.com.

Approved for one hour CLE credit.