Strengthen Your Patents on Agricultural Inventions by Appealing the Patent Examiner’s Rejections to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)

Abstract

This chapter addresses a key step in obtaining utility patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which is appealing a final rejection from the patent examiner to the PTAB, where a panel composed of three administrative patent judges, who have extensive training and experience in patent law, would hear the appeal and render a decision whether the examiner’s rejection was erroneous or not. It has been found that nearly 30% of all appeals heard by the PTAB result in reversal of the patent examiner’s rejections. As a result of such reversals, patent applicants can get their patents granted for the desired scope of the invention rather than having to settle for something less or even entirely abandoning their invention. This chapter provides an example of an appeal of an examiner’s rejection of claims to an agricultural invention to the PTAB. The invention relates to a method of initiating early flowering and/or fruiting in a non-leguminous plant by the application of lipo-chitooligosaccharide (LCO) to the plant’s leaves. The appeal resulted in a favorable judgment for the patent applicants.