We have received some good feedback on our latest webinar and would like to continue the discussion on the Women in IP blog and on the AIPLA Women in IP LinkedIn Group.  If you would like to submit questions or make comments to the questions anonymously, please email me at debora.plehn-dujowich@dbr.com or Yelena Morozova at morozova.yelena@gmail.com.  We will post the questions or comments on the Women in IP blog anonymously.

Registration is now open to all attendees, not just Women in IP members.  I am the moderator and one of the organizers of this webinar.  It promises to be very informative and will teach great networking skills.  Please check it out!

FREE Women in IP Webinar on September 18th Open to All Attendees.

I am going to be the moderator for this AIPLA Women in IP webinar on September 18th, sponsored by Drinker Biddle:

Upcoming Free Webinar for Women in IP Law Committee Members on September 18th-Engaging the Room YOUR Way.

The webinar by the AIPLA Women in IP Law Committee: “Overcoming Client Development Challenges for Women Lawyers” was a great success. We have planned our next webinar: “Engaging the Room YOUR Way” with Karen B. Kahn, Managing Partner of Threshold Advisors, LLC for September 18, 2012. However, we need your support to make this and future webinars happen. Please contact Yelena Morozova (yxm@cll.com) or Debora Plehn-Dujowich (Debora.Plehn-Dujowich@dbr.com) about sponsorship opportunities. As a sponsor, your firm name would be prominently displayed in all webinar announcements and your firm would be thanked during the webinar itself.  Thank you. Below is a short description of the webinar:

Does the avalanche of invitations to seminars, conferences, charity events, and holiday parties excite you or fill you with dread?

Hundreds of lawyers report that they find going to these events to be sheer torture and a waste of time. Many times, you don’t have a real choice – you have to go to certain events as part of your job and/or family responsibilities. Instead of focusing on the negative, can you find ways to make these events fun and productive? For example you can earn CLE credit and expand your relationship network at the same event. With many seminars, conferences and holiday events looming on the horizon, we are pleased to present a practice webinar that provides specific instruction about how attendance at gatherings can lead to the acquisition of new knowledge, relationships, opportunities and actual enjoyment.

For more information, check out the AIPLA Women in IP blog here.

WIPO has a new system for keeping track of your International Applications, and it is called ePCT.  It works much like the USPTO’s Private Pair, but it has some advantages over Private Pair, that I will explain below.

For a list of FAQ about ePCT, click here.  Here are some of the highlights regarding this new service offered by WIPO:

1.  As with Pair, there are two services, a public one and a private one.

2.  If you wish to use the public service, all you need will be a basic user account.

3.  If you wish to use the private service, you will have to set up a WIPO online user account via the WIPO accounts service and you will need to obtain and use a digital certificate.  For instructions on how to create a user account and obtain a digital certificate, click here.

4.  ePCT private services allow you to access international applications filed as of January 1, 2009, regardless of the receiving office and regardless of the type of filing.  You will receive advance notification of dates, such as the 30 month time limit.  It also allows you to create constructable links to specific document pages, that you can then forward to your clients or co-workers.  Another advantage over Private Pair is that it allows you to preview the front page of an international application publication, so that you can make any necessary corrections before publication.

5.  It is not yet possible to electronically file an international application via ePCT.

6.  The person who has control over an international application in ePCT is termed the eOwner.  He/she can grant eOwner, eEditor or eViewer to other users with whom he/she has conducted a “digital handshake.”  eEditors can access and edit the documents related to a particular international application, but cannot assign editing or viewing rights to other users.  eViewers, as the name suggests, can only view documents but cannot edit them.

7.  ePCT is part of the entire Global Dossier concept, a virtual environment to give all stakeholders a virtual one-stop shop for managing related international applications.

For a video describing the Global Dossier concept, click below:

Global Dossier concept

In an announcement in the Federal Register on May 15, the USPTO posted a request for comments on the recommendation for the disclosure of sequence listings using XML (Proposed ST.26).   The standard is being revised to require the use of extensible mark-up language (XML) format, to update the standard, and to more closely align requirements of the standard with those of public sequence database providers.  The USPTO is requesting comments to be received on or before July 16, 2012.  No public hearing will be held.

As an explanation for the proposed change, the USPTO explains that in October 2010, the Committee on WIPO Standards (CWS) established a Task Force, designating the European Patent Organization (EPO) as the lead, to propose a revised standard for the filing of nucleotide and/or amino acid sequence listings in XML format, known as the “XML standard.”  It is expected that the XML standard will be adopted at a meeting of the CWS in early 2013.

The text of the current draft of the proposed main body of the sequence listing standard, with its associated Annexes, is available via the Office’s Web site: click here.  The documents are also available below:

1. Recommendation for the disclosure of sequence listings using XML (ST. 26): click here.

2. Annex B1 Controlled Vocabularies: click here.

3. Document Type Definition (DTD for ST. 26): click here.

Some of the highlights of the proposed changes include:

1. The XML standard (paragraph 4) prohibits the inclusion of any branched nucleotide or amino acid sequences or any sequences with fewer than ten specifically defined nucleotides or fewer than four specifically definted amino acids.

2. The XML standard (paragraph 5) specifies inclusion of sequences containing any nucleotides that can be represented using any of the symbols set forth in Annex B.1, paragraph 1, Table 1.  This includes modified nucleotides.

3. The XML standard (paragraph 6) specifies the inclusion of sequences containing D-amino acids.

It remains to be seen how this new XML standard will impact biotech practice, and how burdensome it will turn out to be, or how useful.

The tablet wars are on again.  Amazon is reportedly planning to release a 10 inch Kindle Fire to compete with Apple’s iPad head-on.  Perhaps this is in reponse to Apple’s plans to release a 7 inch mini iPad that will compete head-on with the original Kindle Fire.

Here is a summary of the rumors around the upcoming 10 inch Kindle Fire:

1.  The larger Kindle Fire is codenamed “Hollywood” as was reported by BGR already a year ago, before the original Kindle Fire even launched.

2.  It will have a quad-core processor.

3.  It will launch in the third quarter of 2012.

4.  Amazon could price the 10 inch Kindle Fire at around $299 to compete with the iPad, according to this report.

Meanwhile, the iPad mini is quickly becoming a reality, despite Steve Jobs’ repoted opposition to the project, as suppliers announce that they are preparing to ship the smaller panels.  The cost of the iPad mini could go as low as $199, to really be able to compete with the original Kindle Fire.  Thus, it seems that the end of 2012 will see a new round of tablet wars between Amazon and Apple.

I think that more competition can only be good for the consumer, so let the games begin.

Some of you may have noticed that if you try to go to the Google Patents homepage, you are now automatically redirected to the main  Google Home Page.  In fact, without much warning, Google decided to integrate Google Patents with its main Google search engine.

Google calls it part of its “Spring Cleaning in Sping” in its official blog.   Here is what they say about Google Patents:

• We’re redirecting the old Patent Search homepage to google.com to make sure everyone is getting the best possible experience for their patent searches. Over the past few months, we’ve been making updates and improvements to the Patent Search functionality on google.com—not only are you able to search the same set of U.S. patents with the same advanced search options, the new experience loads twice as fast as the old Patent Search homepage, contributes to a unified search experience across Google, and sports Google Doodles as well. The team looks forward to including patents from other countries soon, and will be rolling out additional features to Patent Search on google.com in the future.

This is part of an initiative by CEO Larry Page to streamline the services offered by Google.  Some of the other services that have also been shut down are Google Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Related, Google Sync for Blackberry, Google Talk’s mobile web app and One Pass.  For a complete list of services that have been affected, read here.

The good news is that Google Patents is not gone altogether, and the Advanced Search Page is still active, as Google explained in their blog, cited above.  It is also encouraging that Google plans to add additional features, such as the addition of patents from other countries.  In a previous blog post, I reported that Google is now archiving US patent file histories from public PAIR.  Hopefully, Google will continue to expand its patent-related services.  Keep checking back for updates!

I attended the AIPLA Annual Meeting in Washington DC in October, 2011.  The AIPLA New Lawyer’s Committee asked me to write about my experience as a first time attendee, for their newsletter Business Casual.

To read the article, click here.

Please note, the link to the article has been fixed.

Women in IP Law Networking Event–New York City Location Added!.