IP Law Bulletin

Invention disclosures made by an inventor to an attorney, or a review committee including attorney(s), often contain sensitive information that a client would prefer to keep confidential. It is important for both inventors and attorneys to appreciate the boundaries of the attorney-client privilege, as applied to inventor-attorney communications, to determine which communications can be privileged, and thus sheltered from discovery, and those that will remain discoverable. As in other areas of law, the attorney-client privilege attaches to confidential communications between a client and an attorney made for the purpose of seeking legal advice or services. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has applied this principle to patent law and found that the privilege attaches to confidential invention disclosure communications between an inventor and an attorney made for (1) seeking advice on patentability or (2) for obtaining legal services of preparing a patent application. See In re Spalding Sports Worldwide, Inc., (Fed. Cir. 2000). Thus, the attorney-client privilege attaches to invention disclosures submitted or communicated to an attorney to assist the attorney in evaluating patentability or in prosecuting a patent. Additional inventor-attorney communications which may fall within the attorney-client privilege include draft patent applications prepared for or received by an attorney and communications between a named inventor and a patent attorney about patent prosecution.

If you have ever gone apple picking in late season, you may recall seeing more apples on the ground than on trees. As you begin picking apples, you realize why. You haphazardly grab and yank an apple off a branch and the branch sways, sending many ripe apples to the ground. What a waste!

Harvesting innovation is no different. Without a proper strategy, potentially valuable fruits of R&D may never make it into your IP basket. Today, we explore various strategies your organization can implement to better foster and capture innovation.

The Hon. F. Dennis Saylor, IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently denied a petitioner’s request under 28 USC § 1782 to take discovery related to patent inventorship in connection with an Opposition proceeding pending before the European Patent Office (EPO). The court, in exercising its discretion under the U.S. Supreme Court’s so-called Intel factors set forth in Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 US 241, 264 (2004), denied the petitioner’s request for discovery because the EPO generally does not allow the type of discovery requested by the petitioner in an Opposition proceeding, thus the petitioner’s requested discovery would have no place in an EPO Opposition.

Key Takeaways

• This case illustrates the need for inventors to be familiar with patent laws, procedures, and proceedings in foreign jurisdictions.
• The District of Massachusetts will focus on Intel’s discretionary factors when making decisions about whether to allow discovery for use in foreign tribunals under 28 USC § 1782.

CardiAQ Valve Techs., Inc. v. Neovasc Inc., No. 14-CV-12405-ADB, 2016 WL 1642573 (D. Mass. Apr. 25, 2016)

Neovasc began its business relationship with CardiAQ in June, 2009, by providing services and supplies for the development of CardiAQ’s TMVI heart valve device. Though the relationship lasted only 10 months, the parties exchanged hundreds of technical emails and had regular calls during that period. The parties met again in court when CardiAQ sued Neovasc in the District of Massachusetts before Judge Burroughs claiming, among other things, that Neovasc’s employees surreptitiously used CardiAQ’s confidential information to develop a competing valve device and to patent a related method.

Earlier this month, the Federal Circuit revisited the issue of inventorship disputes and iterated in a nonprecedential opinion that proving nonjoinder of inventors in an issued patent is a difficult threshold for a challenger to meet. In doing so, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court holding that the challenge to correct inventorship of two issued patents was not supported by evidence that rose to the “clear and convincing” standard required to prevail on a 35 U.S.C. § 256 claim.