Blog Category: Blog

Shutdown orders due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic have created economic disruption, causing companies to scale back on intellectual property (IP) expense. This creates an opportunity to move ahead of the competition. This is especially true because the U.S. patent system, and many others around the world, reward the first inventor to file.

Below are some suggestions for protecting your IP on a reduced budget. This is not an exhaustive list. It is also not right for everyone. You should consult with legal counsel about your IP and what is right for your company.

Further, obtaining the best protection for your IP may involve filing for a utility patent, which is a long process. It involves, for example, understanding the client’s business and its goals; studying the technology; meeting with the inventors; discussing the invention, its genesis, and design alternatives; identifying target concepts to protect; meticulously drafting the claims and the written description; preparing the figures; and reviewing and revising the draft documents many times until they are right, among many other tasks.

By most measures, a pandemic is not an ideal time for many things, including companies trying to protect their IP. Consider discussing the following options with IP counsel to see if any of these might be right for you. For fuller discussion of these and other techniques, see this webinar presented to the Association of Corporate Counsel.

The U.S. and many non-U.S. patent systems reward the first inventor to file. It is therefore important to stake your place in line before the competition. Below are some suggestions for reserving your place in line – your “priority date” – while keeping expenses down.

A. Consider a U.S. provisional patent application filing.

A U.S. provisional patent application holds your place in line at the Patent Office for up to one year. The government filing fee is currently 280 USD (potentially discounted for “small entities” or “micro entities”).

Provisional applications do not require the same level of formality as a non-provisional application. For example, a sketch, a slide deck, or an informal set of notes from an inventor can be filed as a provisional application. While you will only get credit, for priority purposes, for the amount of detail you file, it may be beneficial to file something rather than nothing.

Within one year of the first provisional application filing, you can supplement it with one or more “follow-on” provisional filings. This may be useful, for example, to file a follow-on later when IP budgets are subsequently increased.

All of the filed provisional applications within that one year can then be “rolled up” into a single non-provisional application. If you ultimately decide to do nothing with the one or more filed provisional applications, they will never publish.

B. Consider “coaching” preparation of the patent application.

While ideally a patent attorney will draft your application, this involves additional expense. One option may be to have your attorney “coach” you through the preparation process.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) allows for a trademark application to be filed on an “Intent to Use” basis to establish a priority date before the mark is actually “used in commerce.” However, such use in commerce must happen before the trademark application will register with the USPTO. If your company markets medical devices or related goods that require regulatory approval, the use in commerce requirement presents unique issues.

Typically, use in commerce is established when the goods affiliated with the trademark application are shipped between two states or to a foreign country, and with a label or packaging showing the trademark on the goods. For most industries, use of a trademark “in preparation” of sales will not suffice to satisfy the use in commerce requirement. Additionally, a trademark owner is only given three years to use the mark in commerce and provide evidence of such use after the USPTO determines the application is otherwise ready for registration. If the owner does not submit proof that it has used the mark by the deadline, the application is deemed abandoned. Three years seems like ample time for many trademark owners, but anyone who has needed regulatory approval for a product knows the process can stretch well beyond these three years. How does one deal with this conundrum?

You may think that you should wait to file your trademark application so that you don’t run out the three-year clock. But this may allow competitors to swoop in and file intervening trademark applications. If the USPTO believes your mark is confusingly similar to the mark in a competitors’ prior application or registration, it could prevent you from being able to register your mark.

With few exceptions, the best strategy is to file your trademark application as soon as possible. Fortunately, the law provides an accommodation for trademark registrants with goods and services that require regulatory approval. Legislators recognized the fact that “commerce” varies in different industries. For instance, while some companies can sell products as soon as they are ready for market, others must undergo testing to get a stamp of approval prior to marketing or selling their products. This latter group typically includes medical device companies. These and other devices may require pre-market approval (PMA) or a 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which can take many years.

Lawmakers revised the definition of “use in commerce” to state that such requirement:

be interpreted to mean commercial use which is typical in a particular industry. Additionally, the definition should be interpreted with flexibility so as to encompass various genuine, but less traditional, trademark uses, such as those made in test markets, infrequent sales of large or expensive items, or ongoing shipments of a new drug to clinical investigators by a company awaiting FDA approval (Senate Judiciary Committee Report on S. 1883, S. Rep. No. 100-515, p. 44-45 (Sept. 15, 1988))

This expanded meaning of “use in commerce” has been generally adopted by the USPTO and the courts.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued two new guidance documents related respectively to an “abbreviated” and a “special” approach to the typical 510(K) process for medical devices.

The FDA describes the usual 510(K) process as “a premarket submission made to FDA to demonstrate that the device to be marketed is at least as safe and effective, that is, substantially equivalent, to a legally marketed device…that is not subject to premarket approval.”  According to the FDA, “Each person who wants to market in the U.S., a Class I, II, and III device intended for human use, for which a Premarket Approval application (PMA) is not required, must submit a 510(k) to FDA unless the device is exempt from 510(k) requirements of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the FD&C Act) .”

Now, two recent guidance documents issued by the FDA allow for altered 510(K) approaches for certain medical devices.  The first guidance, issued September 13, 2019, is for a “Special 510(K) Program.”  The FDA describes this program as “an optional pathway for certain well-defined device modifications where a manufacturer modifies its own legally marketed device, and design control procedures produce reliable results that can form, in addition to other 510(k) content requirements, the basis for substantial equivalence (SE).”  The guidance is intended to clarify “the types of technological changes appropriate for review as Special 510(k)s.”  The new guidance also supersedes prior FDA guidance from 1998 regarding Special 510(k) policy in “The New 510(k) Paradigm: Alternate Approaches to Demonstrating Substantial Equivalence in Premarket Notifications.”

This MDDI article purports to offer a “handy checklist” to determine “if changes made to your medical device can be reviewed under the [Special 510(K)] program.”  Some of the questions listed on the article’s checklist include the following:

• Is it a change to the manufacturer’s own device?
• Are performance data needed to evaluate the change?
• Is there a well-established method to evaluate the change?
• Can the data be reviewed in a summary or risk analysis format?

The second FDA guidance, also issued September 13, 2019, is for the “Abbreviated 510(K) Program.”  The FDA describes the program as “an optional approach that may be used to demonstrate substantial equivalence in premarket notifications (510(k)s)” and that “uses guidance documents, special controls, and/or voluntary consensus standards to facilitate FDA’s premarket review of 510(k) submissions.”   The guidance is “intended to facilitate 510(k) submission preparation by manufacturers and review by FDA.”

A copy of the guidance for the Special 510(K) Program can be found here, and a copy of the guidance for the Abbreviated 510(K) Program can be found here.   The FDA currently states that comments on either guidance may be submitted at any time.  Public comments on the guidance for the Special 510(K) Program may be submitted here and for the Abbreviated 510(K) Program here.