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Jo Dale Carothers

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Jo Dale Carothers is a shareholder and chair of Weintraub Tobin’s Intellectual Property group. She is an intellectual property litigator and registered patent attorney, who advises clients on a wide range of issues related to patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights. Her practice emphasizes intellectual property litigation, licensing, prosecution, contract disputes, and issues related to proceedings before the USPTO.

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Many resources are being devoted to preventing data breaches and protecting privacy.  In fact, patents have issued on various approaches.  But are those approaches really patentable?   In a recent challenge to OneTrust’s patent, which is related to data privacy risk, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) found the subject matter patent ineligible.

OneTrust’s patent, U.S. Patent No. 9,691,090 (“’090 Patent”), relates to privacy management software that calculates the risk to personal data that has been collected and is being used, for example, by a business.  OneTrust explained its software platform is used by companies to comply with data privacy regulations.
Continue Reading PTAB Invalidates Data Privacy Risk Assessment Patent

Have you ever driven away from your home and then had that irritating doubt in your mind as to whether you remembered to close your garage door? I know I have. No matter how hard I try to search my brain’s archives, I really don’t remember whether I closed the garage door even though I close it 99.9% of the time! In that moment, you wish there was a way to check that doesn’t require turning around and going back home to see if you really left the house wide open for anyone to walk in.

Well The Chamberlain Group, Inc. (“Chamberlain”) thought it had patented an invention that could help with this type of problem—a garage door opener that wirelessly transmits information such as whether the door is open or closed. See U.S. Patent No. 7,224,275 (the “’275 Patent”). Specifically, the patent “relates to an apparatus and method for communicating information about the status of a movable barrier, for example, a garage door.”
Continue Reading Federal Circuit Invalidates Garage Door Opener Patent Because It Is an Abstract Idea

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) explains that

“A trademark is a brand name. A trademark or service mark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used or intended to be used to identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services.”
–https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics.Continue Reading Rule Change Requires U.S. Counsel for Foreign-Domiciled Trademark Applicants

Shockingly, some at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) think textbook publishers who include dated copyright notices don’t actually publish the textbooks that year!  Further, would you have imagined an argument that textbooks aren’t printed publications?  Given the amount we paid for textbooks in college and the number stored in my garage that seems…