With a new year upon us, it is time to take stock of our patent portfolios and to plan for the actions we need to take to protect our intellectual property in the coming months and years. We at Robert Plotkin, P.C. recommend that as you plan for the New Year, you make sure to . . .

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has just enacted new rules which will impose limits on the number of continuing patent applications a patent applicant can file and the number of claims an applicant can include in a patent application. Read on for a brief overview of some of the most important effects the rule changes will have on patent applicants.

Preparing and filing a patent application is a difficult and time-consuming task. It is easy to feel a sense of relief and forget about your patent application after it has been filed. This is a mistake, not only because you have ongoing legal obligations to take certain actions in connection with your patent application after it has been filed, but also because you can increase the strength of the resulting patent by remaining attentive to the patent application while it is being prosecuted.

Read on for a list of five steps you should take after your patent application has been filed.

Protecting patent rights in a global economy presents significant challenges. In the days when a company invented, manufactured, and sold its products solely within a single country, it was sufficient for that company to obtain patents in that country alone. Now, if you launch a web site that uses breakthrough software technology, that web site is accessible-and the underlying software potentially subject to being copied-instantaneously anywhere in the world.