Appellate work at the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a vital part of patent prosecution. Appeals at the USPTO are decided by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. This course provides an experiential course where students are given an actual patent application from Hewlett Packard, a fortune 500 company with headquarters in Silicon Valley, that stands rejected on a final rejection. Students take that patent application and develop a strategy for advancing the case along with writing a Pre-Appeal Brief, an Appeal Brief, draft an Answer from the USPTO Examiner, and perform a simulated Oral Argument in a mock-trial setting. In addition to receiving feedback from the Professor on each assignment, students receive the actual documents that HP submitted in the case during the appellate process for review. The goal of the course is to give students a practical working knowledge of the USPTO Appeals process while prosecuting patents. Patent Law is a prerequisite for this course. This course is a great way to learn persuasive patent advocacy skills for patent prosecution that are applicable to patent litigation as well.

Additional Information:
Credit Hours: 2
Grading Option: Letter Grade Only
Graduation Writing Requirement: No
Flexible/Upper-Level Writing Requirement: No
Skills Requirement: No
Simulation Course: No
Experiential Learning: Yes
Seminar: No
Prerequisite: Patent Law
Special Withdrawal Course: No
Limited Enrollment Number: 8
Final Exam Given: No
Attendance Policy: Per Statement Of Student Policies
Teaching Method: In Person

* The law school has a policy that is used to calculate credit hours. Please see the Statement of Student Policies.