OC Patent Lawyer Orange County Patent Attorney welcomes clients in the Orange County region, recommends cost efficient patent protection strategy

Thank you for making 2011 such a wonderful year!  May your holiday season be filled with much joy and laughter.  May your new year be more prosperous and satisfying than the last. James Yang OC Patent Lawyer James@OCPatentLawyer.com (949) 433-0900

Patent attorneys and employment lawyers are becoming creative when crafting invention assignment agreements. When I worked as an engineer, my employer’s invention assignment agreement was straight forward. I aassigned all inventions created on the job to my employer. Back then, this was a typical invention assignment clause. In the following case, an employer had its [...]

Yes.  In a recent case, the United States Supreme Court held that business methods are eligible for patent protection.  Bilski v. Kappos (2010).  However, it was a close call since the 9 Supreme Court Justices were divided 5-4 in the decision. . The Bilski case involved a method for hedging risk.  Although the justices agreed [...]

The claim section is the most important part of the patent. The claims define the buondaries of patent protection afforded under the patent and the Patent Office. The claims are also reviewed by the courts and compared to the prior art to determine whether the claimed invention is novel and non-obviousness and thus valid and [...]

  Claim drafting is one of the harder aspects of preparing a patent application.  The reason is that the patent attorney must balance broad claim langauge and avoiding the prior art.  A broad claim is desireable because competitors will have difficulty designing around your patent, should one issue.  However, broader claims are also subject to [...]

A patent provides the right to exclude others from practicing the patented invention. In other words, a patentee can demand that competitors stop selling a device that infringes on the patent. This is the traditional offensive aspect of a patent. However, patents have other purposes. For example, when a company is accused of infringement, the [...]

A patentee can seek money damages and/or an injunction against companies that infringe their patent.  Damages are calculated as the dollar value that the patentee suffered due to the infringement.  However, in certain situations, the patentee may not have suffered any damage or the damage suffered by the patentee was de minimus.  For example, the [...]

You file a patent application. You go through a couple of rounds with the examiner but are unsuccesful in obtaining a patent grant. You appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“BPAI”) arguing that the examiner is incorrect. At this point, you’ve gone through a lot but there is still more you can [...]

California has a strong public policy that allows employees to change jobs, seek employment, or otherwise practice their trade or skill.  This policy is embodied in Business and Professions Code Section 16600 (“Section 16600”).  Under Section 16600, all contracts that restrain an employee’s ability to work are void unless the contract is based on a [...]

To be liable for patent infringement, a “single” entity must sell a product or perform all of the steps of a claim in a patent. If “two” different parties provide different components or different steps of the patented product or method, then there is no liability unless one party control or directs the other party. [...]