Program agenda:
- An overview of the legal standards for written description and enablement under U.S. patent practice, including considerations for both provisional and non-provisional applications
- Strategies for meeting the requirements in your applications to achieve higher approval rates for:
- The electrical and computer arts
- Chemical and pharmaceutical inventions; and
- Biotechnology inventions, particularly antibody claims
- A comparison of the U.S. standards to counterpart requirements in Europe and China, with special emphasis on differences that impact U.S. patent drafting strategies
- Real-life examples of written description and enablement-based rejections and what could have been done differently for a better outcome
- Review of relevant case law
Written description and enablement are among the most common reasons for patent application rejections — not only during the prosecution phase, but also during post-grant review.
While they are often discussed in the same breath as if they are a single requirement, written description and enablement are in fact different considerations under U.S. law with distinct requirements.
Rejections often cause a mass exodus of potential licensees and business partners, or in the case of start-ups a failed application or post-grant challenge can be a death knell for the fledgling company. Adding to the complexity is the impact of differing standards for meeting written description and enablement requirements in overseas patent venues, which should also be factored into your drafting strategies.
We’ve teamed up with leading experts from the law firm Innovators Legal — with decades of experience counseling university clients — to bring you this eye-opening distance learning program that will discuss how each requirement under U.S. law is different, and what factors and strategies you must consider to ensure the strongest possible applications in terms of these Section 112a requirements.
This 90-minute session will also contrast the written description and enablement requirements with major foreign jurisdictions to highlight the relevant considerations that impact your U.S. application drafting.
