Administrative challenges to US patents

Sooner or later, a patent manager or patent counsel will be faced with a patent which an employee believes should never have been granted or a patent application that he or she believes should never issue. Sometimes the patent or patent application is viewed as ‘reinventing the wheel’; sometimes the technology described is deemed to be so weak as to be impractical; and sometimes the invention is believed to have been done by another – perhaps even by someone in the same company. The patent manager or counsel may also have information that leads him or her to suspect that a patent application will be filed on subject matter that does not appear to be patentable. Regardless, the patent manager or counsel needs to deal with the situation.

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