Executive Summary: This article argues that a patent owner facing a third-party-requested ex parte reexamination alongside infringement litigation should ordinarily waive the optional post-order statement authorized by 35 U.S.C. § 304. Filing before the first Office action requires the owner to address potential theories before the examiner has identified an actual rejection, gives the requester a statutory opportunity to refine its challenge, and creates additional prosecuti

Executive Summary: Patent claims frequently state not only what an invention is or does, but what it is intended to accomplish: reducing latency, improving stability, treating disease, preventing movement, or achieving a specified performance level. Whether that language receives “patentable weight” cannot be answered by a rule about words such as “whereby,” “wherein,” “for,” or “configured to.” The sound analysis has three gates, the second of which is conditional. Gate One

Executive Summary: Patent-prosecution files are neither categorically privileged nor automatically subject to production; each document requires a forum-specific analysis of its purpose, participants, confidentiality, and relationship to anticipated litigation. Attorney-client privilege protects qualifying confidential communications made to obtain or provide legal advice, while work-product protection generally requires a concrete litigation nexus that routine ex parte prose

Executive Summary: The United States and Japan each offer a one-year route around certain patent-defeating disclosures. That shared duration is useful—and dangerously incomplete. The U.S. rule asks whether a disclosure falls within a source- and subject-matter-based exception to prior art measured from the claimed invention’s effective filing date. Japan’s rule asks whether a disclosure that would otherwise defeat novelty or inventive step qualifies for a statutory exception

Executive Summary: Artificial-intelligence inventions are patentable in both the United States and China, but neither jurisdiction protects “AI” as an abstract label or rewards generic use of a known model in a new field. U.S. practice applies the Alice/Mayo eligibility framework, with current USPTO guidance emphasizing the claim as a whole, a specific improvement to technology, and evidence connecting that improvement to the claimed mechanism; properly supported declarations