One year ago today, the authors listed on the sidebar to the left -- Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, Jason Derry, Chris Singer, and Sherri Oslick -- began publishing Patent Docs, a weblog focusing on recent developments in biotech and pharma patent law. Chris Singer penned the first new Patent Docs article, which discussed the electronic submission of Sequence Listings via the EFS-Web.
In the year since our first new post, we have published over 600 more articles covering changes in Patent Office rules and procedures affecting biotech and pharma patent prosecution, summarizing court decisions impacting biotech and pharma patent litigation and prosecution, reporting on biotech and pharma news, and highlighting newly issued biotech and pharma patents. Over the past year, Patent Docs has provided in-depth coverage of the new continuation and claims rules and the GSK case, the KSR decision and the Patent Office's response to KSR, proposals for improving the U.S. patent system, patent reform, the gene patenting and stem cell debates, biologics legislation and biosimilars, and compulsory drug licensing. We have also reported on every biotech or pharma patent lawsuit filed in the past year.
We would like to thank Dennis Crouch of Patently-O for all of his help in getting this project off the ground. We would also like to thank Mark Chael, Rob Dailey, Baltazar Gomez, Kwame Mensah, Suresh Pillai, and Brad Crawford for their contributions. More importantly, however, we would like to thank all of you for reading Patent Docs, as well as everyone who has taken the time to submit comments and those who have subscribed to the Patent Docs e-mail newsletter (if you haven't yet subscribed, you can do so by entering your e-mail address in the box to the left). We enjoy hearing from readers, so if there's anything you want to tell us or if there's a topic or issue that you think we should be writing about, please feel free to contact us at: [email protected].
Congratulations to the best bio-patent blog. Keep up the great work! Special kudos to Kevin Noonan for his sensible, thoughtful insights.
One suggestion (which I think is already beginning to be taken up here): I'd like to see a more international perspective. The USA tends to be rather insular which is not surprising given its premier market value. However, as is abundantly clear these days, its patent system is hardly free from flaws, possibly arising from its unique features. For example, I am not aware of continuations being available anywhere outside the US other than divisionals, and usually those are intended for distinct inventions under the PCT-style unity concept. (On the other hand, may be divisionals are used in practice as a type of continuation in other jurisdictions? In Canada, that would not be feasible because of double patenting, but may be in Australia?).
Perhaps you could have a guest blogger to offer a non-US perspective?
Posted by: Biotech practitioner | November 10, 2007 at 12:47 AM
Thanks for running this blog. It provides a real service to the profession. I have signed on only recently, and find the information and insight helpful even though I am not a biotech practitioner and do not handle much pharma work either.
Posted by: Not a biotech practitioner | November 10, 2007 at 09:01 AM