Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog : Maryland Intellectual Property Lawyer & Attorney : Brian Wm. Higgins : Serving Baltimore, Columbia, Frederick

• IP Forum Webinar Announcement: "DELAWARE: Epicenter for U.S. IP Dispute Resolution"
  
       This from a soon-to-be released announcement from my law firm, Blank Rome:  "Join a knowledgeable team from Blank Rome on April 30, 2008 for an in-depth look at the Top 5 Things You Need Know when litigating a patent case in the U.S. District of Delaware Court. Learn why today’s most significant IP matters are being litigated in this jurisdiction from a panel of experts who know how Delaware’s unique rules and procedures work.  J.C. Boggs, Keeto Sabharwal, Steve Caponi, Charles Wolfe, Dale Dubé and Vincent Poppiti will examine several key cases and lead an interactive discussion over the web.  Date: April 30, 2008; time: 1030 to 1200 EDST US."   
  
  
• Rockville, MD-based Nabi Biopharmaceuticals announced on April 3, 2008, that it had settled a patent lawsuit it had filed against Ohio-based Roxane Laboratories over its drug product PhosLo(r). According to a Nabi statement, Nabi had filed the lawsuit on September 27, 2005, under the Hatch-Waxman Act in response to a Paragraph IV Certification letter submitted by Roxane to Nabi concerning Roxane's filing of an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic version of PhosLo GelCaps.  Nabi sold its PhosLo drug product to Fresenius USA Manufacturing, Inc. in 2006. 
  
  
• The Baltimore Business Journal announced Wednesday that Sarah Djamshidi, a University of Maryland business development official, was named Executive Director of the Chesapeake Innovation Center, which is an Annapolis-based incubator that assists startups developing homeland security technologies.
  
  
• Conference announcement: "Copyright Monopoly: Playing the Innovation Game"

     This from the Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland University College (UMUC):  "Since 2001, the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) has provided premier conferences focusing on the intersection of copyright, technological innovation, and higher education. In its Eighth Annual Symposium, the CIP continues its tradition of convening a rich conversation on copyright policy that includes voices from higher education, business and industry, law, policy, government, and nonprofit sectors, and that also spans the spectrum of opinion and perspective."  8th Annual Symposium, May 28-30, 2008, in Metro Washington, D.C.

• Kevin O'Keefe at LEXBLOG provided a State of the AmLaw 200 blogosphere, March 2008, a few weeks ago, in which he noted that over 25% of the AmLaw 200 law firms (53) now have blogs. The Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog (a "non law firm branded" blog) is counted among the total. According to Kevin's statistics, there were only 39 blogs being published by the AmLaw 200 in August 2007.

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     With so much talk about climate change, it's good to see that Congress, including a few notable Presidential candidates, is pursuing meaningful technology-based legislation that tackles at least some of the complex issues associated with global warming. In January of this year, Senator Joe Lieberman introduced S.280, the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007, which was quickly co-sponsored by 11 Senators, including Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain.  The bill was referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works, which held a hearing in July.

     Of particular interest is Section 318 of the Act, entitled "Patent Study," which calls for the Director of the Patent and Trademark Office, in consultation with representatives of interested parties in the private sector, to conduct a study to determine the extent to which changes to the United States patent system are necessary to increase the flow of climate change-related technologies. The Study is suppose to address:

(1) the balance between the protection of the inventor and the disclosure of information;

(2) the role of patents in innovation within the covered sectors;

(3) the extent to which patents facilitate increased investments in climate change research and development;

(4) the international deployment of United States developed climate change related technologies on the United States patent system;

(5) ways to leverage databases as innovation tools;

(6) best practices for collaborative standard setting; and

(7) any other issues the Director deems appropriate.

     It's not clear what is meant by "increas[ing] the flow of climate change-related technologies," but the language suggests that one goal of the Study is to find ways to make obtaining patents less of a burden and faster to get, which would, presumably, encourage innovation (or at least not stymie innovation).  To get a sense of the number of climate change-related patents already issued, I did a quick search of the PTO on-line database for patents issued with the term "global warming" and came up with the following trend:

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