Intellectual Property Directions

This blog is not a newspaper of record like the Times or the Post, but in case you haven’t heard, the District Court has issued a permanent injunction barring the Patent Office from implementing the much maligned “administrative” rules changes it announced last year.

The court ruling essentially states that limiting the number of continuation filings, for example, is not an administrative change but instead is a substantive change to what had been allowed by law.

Although one can never tell the underlying thought processes of the parties to a legal proceeding, I have to wonder if the USPTO understands the difference between an an administrative change (a new format for a patent application form) and a substantive change (new limits on how many patent applications can be filed).

In any case, the sky has not fallen (no new PTO rules) but we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop (patent reform legislation).

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under New rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.