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Chickens First or Eggs: Pre-filing Commercialization Efforts
Is it the chicken or the egg? Your client InventCo thinks it has several great new products, but it needs money to bring the products to the U.S. marketplace. Tooling costs money, as does producing sufficient inventory, and don't even mention what needs to be put aside to pay the patent attorney ' all for products that might flop in the market. “You've got to spend money to make money,” InventCo's president says. “Too bad I can't offer them for sale now and see if any of them actually sell before I start the patenting process, but I remember what you told me about 1-year on-sale bars and what happed to that Pfaff guy,” he continues. “Hold on a minute,” you tell him, “there's a way around Pfaff.”
The on-sale bar to patentability, 35 U.S.C.A. '102(b), prevents the patenting of any invention “in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.” In Pfaff v. Wells Electronics, Inc., 525 U.S. 55, 119 S.Ct. 304 (1998), the Supreme Court addressed the stage of development an invention had to be at, when offered for sale, in order to trigger the 102(b) bar.
Pfaff's filing date was April 19, 1982. On April 8, 1981, Pfaff received a written purchase order from Texas Instruments accepting his offer to sell 30,100 sockets at a total price of $91,155. Id. at 57. Defendant Wells claimed that this proved that the invention was on sale more than 1 year prior to the filing date. Pfaff countered that his “invention” could not have been on sale because it was not finished. He noted that when he received the written purchase order, he did not even have a working prototype. Rather, “[t]he manufacturer took several months to develop the customized tooling necessary to produce the device, and Pfaff was not able to fill the order until July 1981.” Id. at 58.
Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Stranger to the Deed Rule
In 1987, a unanimous Court of Appeals reaffirmed the vitality of the "stranger to the deed" rule, which holds that if a grantor executes a deed to a grantee purporting to create an easement in a third party, the easement is invalid. Daniello v. Wagner, decided by the Second Department on November 29th, makes it clear that not all grantors (or their lawyers) have received the Court of Appeals' message, suggesting that the rule needs re-examination.