The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a harmonization of the U.S. and European existing patent classification systems, the European Classification System (ECLA) and the U.S. Patent Classification (USPC). The change to the CPC was initiated through a joint partnership between the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). The CPC is the result of the USPTO’s effort to provide a modern classification system that is internationally compatible; and a result of the EPO’s effort to eliminate the reclassification of U.S. patent documents and ensure compliance with International Patent Classification (IPC), administered by the World...
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A New Era for Patent-Eligible Subject Matter
May 1, 2012
By Austen Zuege From Intellectual Property Today, Vol. 19, No. 5 (May 2012) The Supreme Court has announced a new approach to assessing patent subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Bilski v. Kappos “punted” and did little more than reiterate that laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are ineligible for patent protection, stating that the machine-or-transformation (“MoT”) test may be a useful and important clue or investigative tool but is not the sole test for deciding whether an invention is a patent-eligible “process”. [1] But in Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., a unanimous Court...