Monthly Archives: November 2022

Discretionary Denial Under Section 325(d): Nuances of Advanced Bionics Framework for Prior Art Cited in an IDS During Prosecution

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has the discretion to deny institution of an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d) if “the same or substantially the same prior art or arguments previously were presented to the Office.” In Advanced Bionics, LLC v. Med-El Elektromedizinische Geräte GmbH (“Advanced Bionics”), the PTAB…

This Week in Washington IP: IP Rights and the Right-To-Repair Movement, Implementing CISA’s First Strategic Plan, and the USPTO’s RFC on Robust and Reliable Patent Rights

This week in Washington IP news, both house of Congress remain quiet during regularly scheduled work periods. Elsewhere, the Hudson Institute explores the growing right-to-repair movement and potential conflicts with federal policy on intellectual property protections. The Center for Strategic & International Studies explores the first three-year strategic plan for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security…

Sorry, prey. Black widows have surprisingly good memory

Enlarge (credit: Robert Llewellyn / Getty Images) Black widows must despise Clint Sergi. While working on his PhD in biology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Sergi spent his time designing little challenges for spiders—which often involved rewarding them with tasty dead crickets or confounding them by stealing the crickets away. “The big question that motivated…

Tiger sharks helped scientists map a vast underwater meadow in the Bahamas

Seagrass meadows are more than just blue carbon sinks, and act as feeding and nursery grounds for an abundance of marine life–such as elasmobranchs like sharks and rays, and economically and culturally significant species like Queen Conch. Cristina Mittermeier and SeaLegacy, 2021 Given their fierce and carnivorous-sounding name, it might be surprising to find out…

Heylo wants to help you build your own little social circles for events

If you’ve worked at large tech companies, you’ve probably seen that a bunch of groups show up, whether officially or unofficially. Google calls ’em Employee Resource Groups (ERG), Facebook has its internal version of Facebook with groups, and other orgs have systems that range from listservs that have been running since the 1990s, to internal…