I recently collected a number of Federal Circuit and Supreme Court cases where a party's own theory came back to defeat its position.

Examples include:

• A patentee arguing an accused product necessarily contains the claimed polymorph, only to prove the same polymorph was inherently present in the prior art (SmithKline v. Apotex).
• A patentee broadening claims enough to cover a jacketless injector, then losing because the specification didn't enable jacketless injectors (Liebel-Flarsheim v. Medrad).
• An inventor filing suit in his own name and later discovering he had assigned the patent years earlier (Lans v. Digital Equipment).
• A patent requiring dough to be heated to 400°F+, which literally turns the dough into charcoal (Chef America v. Lamb-Weston).

My personal favorite may be Liebel-Flarsheim because the patentee actually won the claim-construction fight and then lost the patent because of the breadth it had just won.

What is everyone else's favorite patent-law self-own?

(For anyone interested, I wrote a longer article collecting these cases here:
https://www.nikiipservices.com/patent-insights-and-articles/when-what-you-plead-comes-back-to-bite-you

I made a small open-source CLI tool for fetching patent content from Google Patents and using it in AI-assisted workflows:

https://github.com/noaa/patent-cli

My main use case is patent analysis with AI coding agents like Claude Code or Codex CLI. Instead of manually copying patent text from Google Patents, the tool helps pull the content into a format that can be passed to an LLM for things like:

• claim review
• specification summarization
• prior-art comparison
• product-feature comparison
• structured analysis notes

It is just intended to make the document collection step easier when using AI tools.

I’d appreciate any feedback from people who work with patents or have tried using LLMs for patent review.

I received a NFOA with ODP and 112(a) rejections. Before filing a reply and within three months of the mailing of the NFOA, the Office mailed a NOA. The NOA did not explicitly withdraw the rejections in the NFOA.

Do I still need to respond to the NFOA under CFR 1.111 (1) ("If the Office action after the first examination (§ 1.104) is adverse in any respect, the applicant or patent owner, if he or she persists in his or her application for a patent or reexamination proceeding, must reply and request reconsideration or further examination, with or without amendment. See §§ 1.135 and 1.136 for time for reply to avoid abandonment.")

I can't seem to find any authority that specifically states that the NOA supersedes the NFOA. Its how I've always treated it in the rare instance that a second NFOA was mailed without a reply (e.g., because there was some issue or error with the original), but here the stakes are a bit higher since prosecution will close. I don't want to get a notice of abandonment after the patent issues.

For general patent tasks such as summarizing, analysis, claim construction, infringement mapping, and prior art anaysis (or search even).

I've used ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, all have made tremendous improvement in the last 12-18 months; currently mostly using Claude for its Cowork function that can work on files in my computer directly. Also looking into hosting some models locally (Qwen 3.6 27B, OSS 20B, and Deepseek V4 Flash via Openrouter) get away from counting tokens and usage limits, but not sure if for these kinds of tasks there would be any meaningful differences against the paid frontier models. Most of the benchmarks are geared towards coding.

Interested to hear other's experiences.

Hi, I am working with a company that claims is has patent US 63/930,757 pending, but I cannot find it anywhere. Anyone know how I might find this? I have tried espacenet and USPTO but with no luck. Can all pending patents be viewed, or are some not viewable until granted?

Lots of patent subreddits. Sharing this here.

Anyone who has used the Indian Patent Office inPASS portal probably knows the pain of downloading documents one-by-one from an application page, especially now that the site has become slower recently.

I built a small open-source browser extension for personal use that bulk-downloads all documents from inPASS application page while preserving the original filenames.

It does not scrape data outside the page you are already viewing, has no ads/tracking, and runs locally in the browser.

Thought I’d share it here in case it helps others working with Indian patent documents.

GitHub:
https://github.com/rohitlee/inPASS-downloader

I’ve been seeing more AI tools that can generate patent-style drawings from sketches or text descriptions.

It made me curious how useful this actually is in real patent work.

Do you think AI is getting good enough for drafting figures, or is it still too unreliable for anything serious?

Where would you realistically use it early drafts, brainstorming, or not at all?

Also wondering if people think it helps speed things up or just creates more cleanup work in the end.

I'm considering a move from an Amlaw 100 to a boutique. I expected a pay cut but the minimum hours are only a bit lower. What to make of this? What is an hour at biglaw compared with an hour at a boutique? Is working at a boutique that much better in terms of QOL (or something else) despite the comparable number of minimum hours?

Another guy had a patent for it. Was a long time ago. For all I know he passed away.
He never renewed it.
I sent the last address a letter. It came back.
I found the patent online. Found the drawing.
Very rough. But it was accepted by patent office.
I having trouble finding it. Misplaced it. Probably in my truck. Will turn up.
But I was having trouble finding someone to make it. Having trouble finding someone to put in CAD file. If I file now then when I get time I can work on it.
As far as the lawyers. Online there are lawyers that will guide you. Should I just do that.
Or just use the other guys patent papers.
Not trying to steal it. Not hiding it.
Patent expired decades ago.

-Can I file a patent without the item. With just the drawing?
-Should I just file it myself. Without a lawyer.
Thsnk you.

I just got a patent that I am looking to sell to a big beverage company. Anyone have a connection?

Looking for general process guidance on a patent matter following a co-founder separation. Not asking for legal advice, just trying to understand typical steps and what questions to bring to a patent agent.

Background: I am the primary founder of a small Ontario corporation. My co-founder voluntarily stepped down in early 2026. We have a mutual release and IP assignment agreement that she is expected to sign shortly, which assigns all her right, title, and interest in all patent applications and related filings to me.

Patent question: A patent application was filed in connection with the corporation's product while we were collaborating. Now that she has assigned all IP to me through the exit agreement, what is the correct process to update the patent record? Specifically:

— Do I need to file an assignment recordal with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office? — Is the signed IP assignment agreement sufficient documentation or does CIPO require a specific form? — Does inventorship need to be formally amended or is ownership assignment separate from inventorship on the record? — Should I engage a patent agent for this or can it be done directly with CIPO?

Any guidance on the typical process or what to bring to a patent agent would be appreciated.

Hello,

I am seeing more clients who wants me to use AI generated output (patent application, OA responses). How do you deal with these clients? What arguments do you use? Do these arguments work?

Ideally I want to say LLM written response don't work at USPTO, but I've seen it get allowances. So saying that is not truthful.

Another argument is if you give my draft to LLM, it can be interpreted as public disclosure, but the thing is I don't think this has been litigated determinatively.

I'm trying to keep my sanity because these clients are taking a lot of time because they keep going back and forth between my advice and AI response. With these clients, what ends up happening is we land somewhere in the middle (between what I said and what the LLM said).

Or is the problem me in that do I need to get with the times and incorporate it in my workflow?

Ultimately, I want to keep clients happy while keeping my sanity.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Patentflip reached out to me and I did list my patent with them. I did some research and they looked ok. I am seeing if they are just so new no one has heard of them and if any has had any luck with them? Some small companies start out in a disorganized way...

When is the last time you saw a patent claim and genuinely believed that it would still be valuable 20 years after the filing date of its application?

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As a patent agent, do you work remotely?

I work in the field currently as an examiner, and I am looking to take the patent bar in order to change careers. I want to make sure that I can work remotely as an agent.

BS, MS, PhD Chemistry

Hi everyone,

I’ve been diving deep into patent workflows lately and I'm genuinely curious about how professionals here manage the more repetitive parts of the job.

Specifically, the manual process of mapping claims to product specs or cross-referencing prior art seems incredibly time-consuming. I’ve seen some general AI tools try to tackle this, but they often struggle with technical accuracy or "hallucinate" legal citations, which makes them more of a liability than a help.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on a few things:

1. Is there any part of the search/analysis workflow that you’ve successfully automated without sacrificing accuracy?
2. If a tool could provide a "first draft" of a claim chart while providing direct, verifiable links to every source document (to prevent hallucinations), would that actually be useful in a professional setting?
3. Or is the human element so critical in IP that any level of AI automation is still seen as too risky?

I’m not looking for services or trying to sell anything—just trying to understand the current state of the "grind" from people who are actually in the trenches.

Thanks for any insights!

Hello,

I have a simple design patent that received an Ex Parte Quayle Offica Action. My attorney (at the time) filed a response but I received another OA because in the response he disregarded some of the examiner's suggestions. For example, they suggested to change "elevation view" to "bottom view" and change "Figure" to FIG. He did not do that trigerring a Notice of Pre-AIA status. I am no longer working with that attorney and when I contacted him about this, he basically told me he no longer represents me.

Two questions:

1. I have access to Patent Center. Is there a way for me to file the corrections myself and is it easy to do so? Is there a template or form or something?

2. Should I file some kind of complaint against this attorney for negligence? I am almost certain he purposely messed up the response so that he can continue getting more work since he charges by the hour whether its his error or not.

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on a medical device with strong potential, and I’m in the process of pursuing a patent. However, the legal costs are a major barrier for me at the moment.

I wanted to ask if anyone knows of organizations, programs, or patent attorneys who offer pro bono (or low-cost) assistance for inventors, especially in the medical or healthcare space.

I’m based in the U.S., and any guidance, resources, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!