Can you maintain a patent as granted after seeking maintenance of the patent in a more limited form?

This case concerns whether an appellant-patentee from a decisionof the Opposition Division can, before the Board of Appeal,have as a Main Request the maintenance of the patent as grantedeven though the Main Request before the Opposition Divisionwas for the claims in a more limited form.     

Patent first, ask questions later: morality and biotechnology in patent law

This Article explores the U.S. "patent first, ask questions later" approach to determining what subject matter should receive patent protection. Under this approach, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or the Agency) issues patents on "anything under the sun made by man," and to the extent a patent's subject matter is sufficiently controversial, Congress acts retrospectively in assessing whether patents should issue on such interventions. This practice has important ramifications for morally controversial biotechnology patents specifically, and for American society generally. For many years a judicially created "moral utility" doctrine served as a type of gatekeeper of patent subject matter eligibility. The doctrine allowed both the USTPO and courts to deny patents on morally controversial subject matter under the fiction that such inventions were not "useful." The gate, however, is currently untended. A combination of the demise of the moral utility doctrine, along with expansive judicial interpretations of the scope of patent-eligible subject matter, has resulted in virtually no basis on which the USTPO or courts can deny patent protection to morally controversial, but otherwise patentable, subject matter. This is so despite position statements by the Agency to the contrary. Biotechnology is an area in which many morally controversial inventions are generated. Congress has been in react-mode following the issuance of a stream of morally controversial biotech patents, including patents on transgenic animals, surgical methods, and methods of cloning humans. With no statutory limits on patent eligibility, and with myriad concerns complicating congressional action following a patent's issuance, it is not Congress, the representative of the people, determining patent eligibility. Instead, it is patent applicants, scientific inventors, who are deciding matters of high public policy through the contents of the applications they file with the USTPO. This Article explores how the United States has come to be in this position, exposes latent problems with the "patent first" approach, and considers the benefits and disadvantages of the "ask questions first, patents later" approaches employed by some other countries. The Article concludes that granting patents on morally controversial biotech subject matter and then asking whether such inventions should be patentable is bad policy for the United States and its patent system, and posits workable, proactive ways for Congress to successfully guard the patent-eligibility gate.     

修改专利文件的合法性审查

在专利申请审查和无效宣告审查程序中,专利权人可能需要对专利文件进行修改。但这种修改必须符合法律规定,否则可能影响专利权的效力或者不会被接受。修改的基本原则是不能超出原申请文件记载的信息,且在无效宣告审查程序中不得增加未包含在授权的权利要求书中的技术特征,仅能以删除或合并的方式修改权利要求。司法案例对上述原则进行了具体诠释。     

Tales of law and morality

B.A. (hons.), Acadia University 1982; B.A. (juris.), Oxford University 1984; LL.B., Dalhousie University 1985; B.C.L., Oxford University 1986; M.A., Oxford University 1991.     

Oxaliplatin: a 'basic' patent problem

In an application for a declaration of non-infringement withrespect to a patent claiming a method of preparation for a drug,a claim specifying that the pH is adjusted to be between 3.0and 6.0 by adding an alkali solution required a distinct additionof alkali and was not infringed by use of a reagent that yieldeda pH within the specified range without the need for separateaddition of alkali.     

The morality of law and economics

The moral heart of normative law and economics is efficiency, especially dynamic efficiency that takes incentive effects into account. In the economic theory, justificatory argument is inherently at the institutional- or rule-level, not an the individual- or case-level. InMarkets, Morals, and the Law Jules Coleman argues against the efficiency theory on normative grounds. Although he strongly asserts the need to view law institutionally, he frequently grounds his criticisms of law and economics in arguments from little more than direct moral intuition about individual cases. He evidently holds that consent provides a better normative basis for law than does efficiency and he uses consent arguments to attack recommendations from scholars in law and economics. His own chief contribution, however, is to law and economics rather than to any alternative theory.     

论江泽民依法治国和以德治国思想

江泽民同志继承和发展了毛泽东、邓小平加强社会主义民主和法制建设的治国思想,提出了在建设有中国特色的社会主义,发展社会主义市场经济的过程中,要坚持不懈地加强社会主义法制建设,依法治国,同时也要坚持不懈地加强社会主义道德建设,以德治国。这是江泽民同志对毛泽东、邓小平法制思想的新发展,是对马克思主义国家学说的丰富和贡献。     

The political morality of convergence in contract

One of the most interesting recent developments in contract law has been an academic and political effort to integrate private law. The proposed Common European Sales Law was ultimately withdrawn, and a series of setbacks, including the British referendum to exit the EU, has recast the politics of convergence. But it remains an objective for many European scholars. This essay considers the wisdom of convergence on a single law of transactions from the perspective of philosophical contract theory. The essay proceeds by disaggregating the rights at stake in contract law. It characterises the formal right to contract and describes its moral impetus as one that should underwrite contract law in all states, especially liberal states. But the essay argues that the legitimate contours of the formal right are contingent on tenets of political culture that vary across Member States. Similarly, substantive regulation of contract is morally compulsory and serves universal interests; the essay takes regulation of permissible work and remuneration for work as examples. But the rules and standards that best advance those moral interests depend on economic facts specific to individual political communities. The essay concludes by arguing that contract law is a poor tool by which to accelerate political and economic convergence.     

合同条款初探--一个被遗忘问题的思考

什么是合同条款 ?目前 ,理论界没有对其作出解释与阐明 ,是一个还没有人涉足的研究领域。通过分析论证 ,揭示了合同条款的内涵、特征 ,论述了其框架结构、特殊形式和动、静态观点。