Once upon a time – not so very long ago, in fact – it was rare for the Australian Patent Office to issue a formal published ruling on the patent-eligibility of claims submitted for examination. Indeed, ex parte decisions (i.e.
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SMEs, Universities and Research Organisations Most Disadvantaged by Lack of a Patent Filing Grace Period, says EPO Study
Over the past two decades or so, the number of major jurisdictions offering some form of general ‘grace period’ for filing of patent applications has grown significantly. This has largely been driven by bilateral agreements (e.g. free trade agreements involving…
Aristocrat’s EGM Inventions Set for Showdown in the High Court
On 10 March 2022, the High Court of Australia granted Aristocrat’s application for special leave to appeal the decision of a Full Bench of the Federal Court, which found its claims directed to an Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) implementing…
Privately-Held Attorney Firms Have Built Filing Share Over the Past Decade, Thanks Largely to IPH!
While some doomsayers predicted that the rise of publicly listed groups of patent attorney firms would lead to terrible problems, including a reduction of competition, in the Australasian market for IP services, the sky has yet to actually fall. After…
Division and Conversion – the Continuing Life of the Australian Innovation Patent
In the Patents chapter of its recently-published 2022 IP Report, IP Australia provides the usual annual filing statistics for 2021. According to the report, there were 23,371 Australian standard patent applications filed as National Phase Entries (NPEs) from international…
Attorney Code of Conduct Passes ‘Health Check’ with Flying Colours
The Trans-Tasman IP Attorneys Board (TTIPAB) has published a report, and its response, on a Health Check of the Code of Conduct for Trans-Tasman Patent and Trade Marks Attorneys 2018 [PDF, 2.05MB]. The Report was prepared by Professor Andrew…
Upcoming Online Conference on ‘Inventorship in Patent Law’
On Monday 16 May 2022 the European Patent Office (EPO) is running an online conference on ‘Inventorship in Patent Law’. It commences at 1.30pm Central European Summer Time (CEST), which is 9.30pm on the east coast of Australia (AEST),…
DABUS Exited with Fatal Exception: Human Agency Required in Development of an Invention
In a decision handed down on 13 April 2022, a panel of five judges of the Federal Court of Australia (‘Full Court’) overturned last year’s controversial ruling by Justice Jonathan Beach, determining that the (alleged) ‘AI inventor’ DABUS cannot…
Patent Examination Delays are Rising at IP Australia
In my previous article I presented some data on Australian standard patent application prosecution events between 2017 and 2021. While the total number of events (examination requests, examination reports, responses and acceptances) has remained fairly consistent in recent years,…
Who Were The Leading Australian Patent Prosecution Firms in 2021?
With significant increases in both standard and (especially) innovation patent applications, 2021 should have been a bumper year for patent attorneys operating in Australia. And although that was true overall, the benefits were not uniformly distributed. While some smaller…