GSK Secures Injunction

Judge James C. Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia has issued his Order, Memorandum and Opinion, and Minute entry for proceedings following today's hearing in the consolidated cases of SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Dudas and Tafas v. Dudas.  Patent Docs will provide additional coverage of the Court's Order and Opinion later today.

Comments

[A Patent Practitioner]

The USPTO has a real problem on its hands. Now that patent fees are no longer being diverted to the General Fund, the USPTO can’t blame its increasing patent application backlog on a simple lack of funding. Instead, the agency seems to be currently focussing its Sisyphean assault on changing customers’ behavoir, rather better-focussing their limited resources on the examinations that really matter — reexaminations, reissues, appeals, and those involved in infrigement litigation. Can we really afford a patent system where all inventions are treated equally, regardless of their (lack of) effect on commerce? The UKIPO no longer examines all trademark applications for relative grounds of refusal. The day may be coming for the patent system to stop automatically examining all patent applications for novelty and inventive step.

[me]

The sky is not falling Mr. Practitioner. Why not just try delayed examination?

As for the hearing - I was there and it was a beautiful thing. My two favorite PTO arguments:

1) Enjoining the rules would cause the loss of all the training of Examiners because they can't remeber the rules for 6 weeks. Stunning.

2) The Schumer letter was aimed at the '06 rules, not the August 21 rules. This, of course, was easily refuted by GSK as the letter points to August 21 in the first freakin' paragraph!!!!

Poor woman from DOJ was totally outclassed. Loved it when she said at the end that they needed a new scheduling order bacause they are now up against a multi-billion dollar corporation instead of an individual inventor.

GREAT DAY! BREAK OUT THE BEER!

[Jeffrey Spangler]

While waiting for the GSK argument, I was a little unnerved when Judge Cacheris was conducting a criminal guilty plea colloquy and struggled with the pronunciation of "methamphetamine", deleting the "h". The non-Registrant AUSA argued this case poorly, and was clearly outgunned. She was whiny and arrogant by telling the court that if GSK couldn't find adequate guidance for the ESD search requirements, they "haven't looked hard enough." She described it "ironic" that what GSK was really looking for was "unlimited continuations". She continued the Government's silly and vigorous objection to AIPLA's amicus brief, described as a "putative" amicus in her papers. The only thing that's putative now is the new rules. The Bushies lose another one, deservedly so!