Jeremy R. Kriegel Commented on Bill H.R. 5980 Aimed at Repatriating Jobs
Posted live on the nation’s leading patent law blog Patently-O; in the LexisNexis Patent Law Community Blog and in The Wall Street Journal Guest Post, Jeremy R. Kriegel commented on the recent Bill H.R. 5980. Among other provisions aimed at repatriating jobs, the Bill proposes to require that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office publish only the abstracts of patent applications during their pendency rather than publish applications in their entirety.
Mr. Kriegel identified in his article titled “Patent Abstracts Are Not the Answer To Repatriating Jobs” many reasons why the “Patent Protection” provisions of H.R. 5980 would likely fail to achieve the Bill’s objectives, and ironically, would favor foreign companies applying for U.S. patents over their U.S. counterparts in some circumstances. While the Bill’s goal may be to repatriate jobs, any protection purportedly gained by publishing only the abstract of a U.S. application “is illusory in most situations,” argues Mr. Kriegel, because of the ready access to published foreign counterpart applications often filed for inventions on products with significant commercial potential. The article also discusses alternative protections that already exist for U.S. entities concerned about disclosure to third parties prior to a patent’s issuance, including the rights to request non-publication and to recover royalties for infringement during the post-publication, pre-issuance period.
Jeremy R. Kriegel reliably guides clients in such industries as medical, industrial and consumer products, particularly for their mechanical and electro-mechanical innovations, and across all phases of the product life-cycle. His clients find he readily grasps complex rights and business issues, building from his fifteen years of experience with diverse technologies and his training in mechanical engineering. Detail-oriented by nature, he navigates clients toward optimal business positions through careful counsel and forward-thinking intellectual property strategies.