Patent Law

Quoted: President Obama to the Forum on Moderninzing Government:

'Believe it or not, in our patent office -- now, this is embarrassing -- this is an institution responsible for protecting and promoting innovation -- our patent office receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically, then manually prints them out, scans them, and enters them into an outdated case management system. This is one of the reasons why the average processing time for a patent is roughly three years.'

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal asks 'is it time to privatize the Patent Office?'  If not the whole PTO, the editorial asks why not 'privatize most of the Patent Office functions?'

GWU's IP Speaker Series Continues at 12:00 Noon this Spring:

• January 20, Laura Heymann of William & Mary (Naming, Identity, and Trademark Law)
• February 3, Michael Ryan of GWU, (Patent Incentives in Brazil)
• February 10, Abraham Drassinower of Toronto Law (What's Wrong with Copying)
• February 24, Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law (Minds for Sale)
• March 24, Mark Janis of Indiana Law (Daniel Webster's Patent Cases)
• RSVP to iplaw@law.gwu.edu

Writing Competition: Virginia State Bar Section on Intellectual Property Law Law Student Writing Competition.  $4,000 cash will be given to a current US Law Student (including December 2009 graduates) who either attends school in Virginia or is a resident of Virginia. The prize will be awarded to author of the best IP focused law-review-style article. [Link]