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Inequitable Conduct
In United States patent law, inequitable conduct is a breach of the applicant's duty of candor and good faith during patent prosecution or similar proceedings by misrepresenting or omitting materiality (law), material information with the specific intention, intent to deception, deceive the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A claim of inequitable conduct is a defense to allegations of patent infringement. Even in an instance when a valid patent suffers infringement, a court ruling on an allegation of infringement may exercise its power of Equity (law), equitable discretion not to enforce the patent if the patentee (the patent owner) has engaged in inequitable conduct. Duty of candor The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Rule 56 explains that patents are "affected with a public interest. The public interest is best served, and the most effective patent examination occurs when, at the time an application is being examined, the Office is aware of and evaluates the teachings o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Patent Law
Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limited time (usually, 20 years) from profiting of a patented technology without the consent of the patent-holder. Specifically, it is the right to exclude others from: making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, inducing others to infringe, applying for an FDA approval, and/or offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent. United States patent law is codified in Title 35 of the United States Code, and authorized by the U.S. Constitution, in Article One, section 8, clause 8, which states: Patent law is designed to encourage inventors to disclose their new technology to the world by offering the incentive of a limited-time monopoly on the technology. For U.S. utility patents, this limited-time term of patent i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clear And Convincing Evidence
In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party had no such burden and is presumed to be correct. The burden of proof requires a party to produce evidence to establish the truth of facts needed to satisfy all the required legal elements of the dispute. The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute. It is often associated with the Latin maxim ''semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit'', a translation of which is: "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges." In civil suits, for example, the plaintiff bears the burden of proof that the defendant's action or inaction caused injury to the plaintiff, and the defendant bears the burden of proving an affirmative defense. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor for criminal cases, and the defendant is presumed innocent. If the claimant fails to discharge the burden of proof to prove their case, the claim will be d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Codes Of Conduct
A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization. Companies' codes of conduct A company code of conduct is a set of rules which is commonly written for employees of a company, which protects the business and informs the employees of the company's expectations. It is appropriate for even the smallest of companies to create a document containing important information on expectations for employees. The document does not need to be complex or have elaborate policies. Failure of an employee to follow a company's code of conduct can have negative consequences. In '' Morgan Stanley v. Skowron'', 989 F. Supp. 2d 356 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), applying New York's faithless servant doctrine, the court held that a hedge fund's employee engaging in insider trading in violation of his company's code of conduct, which also required him to report his misconduct, must repay his employer the full $31 millio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology. Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Three major areas of study within ethics recognized today are: # Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be determined; # Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action; # Applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legal Ethics
Legal ethics are principles of conduct that members of the legal profession are expected to observe in their practice. They are an outgrowth of the development of the legal profession itself. In the United States In the U.S., each state or territory has a code of professional conduct dictating rules of ethics. These may be adopted by the respective state legislatures and/or judicial systems. The American Bar Association has promulgated the Model Rules of Professional Conduct which, while formally only a recommendation by a private body, have been influential in many jurisdictions. The Model Rules address many topics which are found in state ethics rules, including the ''client-lawyer relationship'', duties of a lawyer as ''advocate'' in adversary proceedings, dealings ''with persons other than clients'', ''law firms and associations'', ''public service'', ''advertising'', and ''maintaining the integrity of the profession''. Respect of client confidences, candor toward the tribuna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patent Misuse
In United States patent law, patent misuse is a patent holder's use of a patent to restrain trade beyond enforcing the exclusive rights that a lawfully obtained patent provides. If a court finds that a patent holder committed patent misuse, the court may rule that the patent holder has lost the right to enforce the patent. Patent misuse that restrains economic competition substantially can also violate United States antitrust law.. Definition Patent misuse is a patent owner's improper use of patent rights, speaking very generally, to expand the scope or term of the patent. Examples of such patent misuse include forcing customers to agree to pay royalties on unpatented products or to pay royalties on an expired patent. This type of patent misuse can take place without a violation of antitrust laws. But it violates such policies of US patent law as the monopoly of a patent is confined to what its claims cover and once a patent expires the public has an unlimited right to practice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
En Banc
In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench"; also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court (before the entire bench) rather than by one judge or a smaller panel of judges. ''En banc'' review is used for unusually complex or important cases or when the court feels there is a particularly significant issue at stake. United States Federal appeals courts in the United States sometimes grant rehearing to reconsider the decision of a panel of the court (consisting of only three judges) in which the case concerns a matter of exceptional public importance or the panel's decision appears to conflict with a prior decision of the court. In rarer instances, an appellate court will order hearing ''en banc'' as an initial matter instead of the panel hearing it first. Cases in United States courts of appeals are heard by three-judge panels, randomly chosen from the sitting appeals court judges of tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Office Action
In the United States, an Office action is a document written by an examiner in a patent or trademark examination procedure and mailed to an applicant for a patent or trademark. The expression is used in many jurisdictions. Formally, the "O" is supposed to be capitalized, since it refers to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. United States Trademark law In United States trademark law, an Office action is issued by an examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), rejecting an application to register a trademark. An Office action typically includes one or both of two elements. The first possible element is the category of "informalities", matters such as an inadequate sample to show use of the mark, providing insufficient information with respect to the nature of the entity seeking the mark (for example, failing to name the partners in a partnership), or providing insufficient information for the examiner to determine what, exactly, the goods and servi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patent Examiner
A patent examiner (or, historically, a patent clerk) is an employee, usually a civil servant with a scientific or engineering background, working at a patent office. Major employers of patent examiners are the European Patent Office (EPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and other patent offices around the world. Duties Patent examiners review patent applications to determine whether the invention(s) claimed in each of them should be granted a patent or whether the application should instead be refused. One of the most important tasks of a patent examiner is to review the disclosure in the application and to compare it to the prior art. This involves reading and understanding a patent application, searching the prior art (including prior patent applications and patents, scientific literature databases, etc.) to determine what contribution the invention makes over the prior art, and issuing office actions to explain to the applica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Circuit Court Of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (in case citations, Fed. Cir. or C.A.F.C.) is a United States court of appeals that has special appellate jurisdiction over certain types of specialized cases in the U.S. federal court system. It has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal cases involving patents, trademarks, government contracts, veterans' benefits, public safety officers' benefits, federal employees' benefits, and various other categories. Unlike other federal courts, the Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over cases involving criminal, bankruptcy, immigration, or U.S. state law. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Federal Circuit was created in 1982 with passage of the Federal Courts Improvement Act, which merged the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the appellate division of the United States Court of Claims, making the judges of the former courts into circuit judges. The court occupies the Howard T. Markey Na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unclean Hands
Clean hands, sometimes called the clean hands doctrine, unclean hands doctrine, or dirty hands doctrine, is an equitable defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is not entitled to obtain an equitable remedy because the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith with respect to the subject of the complaint—that is, with "unclean hands". The defendant has the burden of proof to show the plaintiff is not acting in good faith. The doctrine is often stated as "those seeking equity must do equity" or "equity must come with clean hands". This is a matter of protocol, characterised by A. P. Herbert in ''Uncommon Law'' by his fictional Judge Mildew saying (as Herbert says, "less elegantly"), "A dirty dog will not have justice by the court". A defendant's unclean hands can also be claimed and proven by the plaintiff to claim other equitable remedies and to prevent that defendant from asserting equitable affirmative defenses. In other words, 'unclean ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unenforceable
An unenforceable contract or transaction is one that is valid but one the court will not enforce. Unenforceable is usually used in contradiction to void (or ''void ab initio'') and voidable. If the parties perform the agreement, it will be valid, but the court will not compel them if they do not. An "agreement to agree", where a purported contract contains an obligation to enter into a subsequent agreement in the future, the terms of which are not certain at the time of the initial agreement, is generally considered to lack sufficient certainty to constitute a legally enforceable contract and is therefore unenforceable. However, an agreement under which "the parties contemplate entering into a further, more formal, agreement later" may be enforceable. Prostitution An example of a transaction which is an unenforceable contract is a contract for prostitution under English law. Prostitution is not actually a crime under English law, but both soliciting a prostitute and living off t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
