Patent Law

Upcoming Events:

• Apr 17 in Concord, NH: Pierce Law's IP Symposium
• May 2 - May 7 in San Antonio, TX: Patent Information User's Group Annual Conference. Very good conference for any interested in patent informatics and patent searching. The focus of this year's conference is on international patent information. I will be one of the speakers.
• May 8 in Overland Park, KS: KBA's IP Law Institute. I'm planning to be there in the audience to hear John Whealan, Chuck McManis, and Paul Fleischut.
• May 12 in Washington DC: GWU will host its Law Symposium on Intellectual Property with a focus on practical patent litigation issues.

New Source of Upcoming Events: The Patently-O Events Calendar (BETA VERSION). HTTP://www.patentyo.com/calendar. We're still working on the formatting & integration. The best way to post an event is to use create the event in your calendar (such as Outlook, Google Calendar, or iCal), and then invite patentevents@gmail.com. Be sure to include a URL in the description.

Job Postings from April 2009:

• Patent Attorney/Agent - Law Firm - Austin, Texas
• IP Associate - Law Firm - West Palm Beach, Fla.
• IP Counsel - Small Corporation - Gaithersburg, Md.
• Intellectual Asset Manager - Small Corporation - Cambridge, Mass.
• Chief IP Counsel - Brookhaven National Laboratory - Upton, N.Y.
• IP Associate - Law Firm - Washington D.C.
• Patent Attorney/Agent - Law Firm - Alexandria , Va.

Query:

• I should know this, but I don't recall the answer: Suppose a recently issued patent was filed in 2004 and claims to be a continuation-in-part of another application filed in 2000. In the new patent, some of the claims were fully described and enabled in the 2000 application while other claims in the new patent include matter only found in the 2000 application. Will the enforceable patent term differ between the two sets of claims? If so, does the PTO require a terminal disclaimer if the claims are not patentably distinct?