Gaining Advantage Through Reexaminations and Interferences

Effective advocacy of clients with sophisticated patent needs often requires aggressive use of Patent Office procedures. We have built an extensive practice of initiating and defending reexaminations and interferences in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and before the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. Our successes include:

Swanson and Guire

We navigated reexamination proceedings and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that made new law concerning the effect of a court's judgment on whether the USPTO may find a substantial new question of patentability in order to trigger a reexamination. Here, we were flexible in the changing legal environment and ultimately obtained a Reexamination Certificate for our clients.

In re Price

We represented EDP in a reexamination concerning a patent for software for generating color-coded labels, obtaining a Reexamination Certificate for our client. We went on to enforce this patent against a competitor in the U.S. District Court of the District of Colorado, obtaining summary judgment by proving that the scope of the patent claims was not altered in reexamination.

McGuire v. Schmieding

We successfully represented two medical doctors, innovators in orthopedic surgery, in an interference proceeding which went to a final hearing before the BPAI. We obtained a dismissal of our adversary's motion on the issue of patentability and won a final decision awarding priority of invention to our clients. In addition, our adversary's reissue application was rejected by the USPTO, while we obtained an allowance of our clients' application that had been involved in the interference.

Visit reexamination.com for a thorough exploration of this topic.