Executive Summary: The Madrid Protocol is best understood not as a worldwide trademark or a full trademark analogue to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (“PCT”), but as a centralized filing and portfolio-administration mechanism that delivers requests for protection to designated trademark offices for examination under local law. The PCT generally buys time and patentability information through international search, preliminary evaluation, and deferred national-phase entry; Madri

Executive Summary: This article explains why, for employee inventions, naming the employer as the applicant under 35 U.S.C. § 118 and Rule 1.46 generally provides greater continuity and corporate control than naming the employee-inventor, particularly if the employee later leaves, becomes unavailable, or refuses to cooperate. Employer-applicant status allows the company to direct prosecution, appoint counsel, and, when the statutory requirements are satisfied, execute a subst

Executive Summary: This article examines whether prior art cited or considered during prosecution of a parent application may support discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. § 325(d), even when the reference does not appear on the face of the challenged patent. It explains that MPEP § 609.02 permits information considered in a direct parent to carry forward into a continuation without being resubmitted merely for consideration, making the prosecution history more probative than

Executive Summary This article explains how a single patent specification disclosing inventions A through F should be divided into later applications under U.S. and Chinese practice. In the United States, restricted inventions B and C should ordinarily be pursued in timely divisional applications to preserve the strongest protection under 35 U.S.C. § 121, while A3 and the previously unclaimed inventions D through F generally may be pursued in continuations under § 120 if