Unknown Speaker  2:23  
Hello and welcome we'll get started in one moment.

Speaker 1  3:16  
Hello and welcome to today's webinar, the impact of COVID on intellectual property presented by Autumn. My name is Samantha Spiegel, autumns online professional development manager and I will be your staff host for today. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have questions for the panelists, we encourage you to use the q&a feature rather than the chat feature. However, if you have a technical question or a general comment, please feel free to use the chat feature. Today's session is eligible for CLE credit. Throughout the webinar, you will see pop up surveys that are simply asking for a yes or no answer. If you do not intend to apply for CLE credits, you may simply dismiss the polls by clicking on the X in the top right corner of the pop up window. If you do intend to apply for CLE credit, you must answer the question as it is asked. For more information about CLE eligibility for this session or what states have already approved this program. Please feel free to contact me via email. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank autumns 2020, online professional development sponsors. We appreciate your ongoing support. And now I will introduce today's speakers, both of whom are partners at Smith Granville and Russell LLP. Charles foreign brands practice focuses on all aspects of intellectual property with an emphasis on biotechnology and chemical technologies. He has extensive experience in cellular and molecular biology and has prosecuted patent applications directed to nano bio nanotechnology small molecule therapies, genetics, proteins, antivirals, antibody technology. A DNA RNA technology stem cell tissue engineering and more. Dr. Burns rands counsels clients on managing patent portfolios and incorporate successful business strategies into the prosecution and management of intellectual property. As a graduate student, Charles was a National Institutes of Health biophysics fellow and conducted research on various aspects of cell biology. Joining Charles is Matthew Warren, Zack and experienced IP counsel specializing in the enforcement and procurement of patents for his clients. In addition, Matthew handles various trademark copyright licensing and due diligence issues for his clients. Mr. Warren Zack is complete, successfully represented and assisted clients of various sizes, from startups to Fortune 100 companies with patent matters across a wide range of fields, including medical devices, telecommunications, finance, banking, internet applications, lighting, Textiles, Merchandising, displays, and more. And with that, I will turn it over to our distinguished speakers. Welcome, Charlie, and thank you.

Unknown Speaker  6:07  
So the slides

Unknown Speaker  6:08  
right up, Charles.

Unknown Speaker  6:22  
And you're good to go. Okay.

Speaker 2  6:24  
Well, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Today, we're going to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on intellectual property primarily on patents. But before we start, I wanted to give a disclaimer says that the views expressed in this presentation are those solely of the authors and presenters ourselves. So here's the outline of what we're gonna be talking about today. So we're going to start out with a little bit of COVID-19 statistics, then I want to talk a little bit about the virus so that we can understand the pathogen that's causing this pandemic, then max going to start talking about the impact that COVID-19 is having on the USPTO. On inventors at the USPTO and other patent offices in the courts. He's going to talk about briefly about some existing patent court cases that focus are focused on COVID-19. And then I'm going to talk about some representative granted patents that have recently issued some of the vaccines that are out, and some of the representative treatments that are available for treating COVID-19. So as of yesterday, there were 72,000,385 and 935 confirmed global cases, that's just a staggering number of cases. There's 1,000,650 and 52 deaths globally. But as we heard today, there's over 300,000 deaths in the US alone. The source for this is the Johns Hopkins University website, which has current and updated statistics, some of which include a graph of new cases. And I wanted to include the graph because the green line represents the United States. And you can see how significant the number of cases is in the United States versus other countries. If you look down at the bottom, Iran, kind of flatline, right, but they all start to increase in November. So in this slide, what I did was I ranked the number of confirmed cases and put the top 10 in here. And this is very interesting, because you can again, it shows just how significant the change is in the United States, with 15 million confirmed cases. The next closest person country is India with almost 10 million, but India's population is much, much bigger than the United States. If you look over to the right, you'll see what the case fatality percentage is. Ours is 1.9 in the United States, which is pretty much in keeping with Russia, which is 1.8. But you'll notice Russia has probably what an eighth of the cases that the United States has. The important thing though, is that that seems that although we have a lot of cases that we're able to treat them and keep the mortality rate down to match other jurisdictions. So here's the virus. And so just to be clear on terminology, infection with the new Coronavirus its name is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, two or SARS. cov. Two causes Coronavirus disease COVID 19. So COVID-19 is disease and SARS. cov. Two is the virus and if you look at the picture you can see the red spike protein ligands that are on top of the ball. So with that is the that's the, that's the target for a lot of the therapies is that spike protein. Inside the gray area is the messenger RNA that encodes the viral proteins. It is protected by a protein core. But this is this is what what is going around and infecting us. And what it does is it binds to the ACE two receptor in your lungs and gets sucked into yourself. And then it coops the cells machinery to produce viral proteins. All right, Matt.

Speaker 3  10:40  
No worries. All right. So thanks, Charlie, for the overview of COVID-19. And the numbers are staggering. The what I'm going to focus on is the impact of COVID-19. At the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as in the courts in how that's affected inventors and patent owners and trademark owners as well. I thought it would be a good idea just to kind of give an overview of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I know several people on this webinar are familiar with it. But I think there are some people that aren't the United States Patent and Trademark Office, they they basically will review patent applications as well as trademark applications and approve any issuance of patents and the registration of any trademarks or trademark applications as well. That's the examination branch of that there was also the Trial and Appeal boards for both different branches, patents and trademarks. And we'll get to that a little bit later. The USPTO employs approximately 13,000 people. The majority of these people are patent focus, there are about 6000 examiner's patent examiner's at the USPTO. There are about 600 to 700 administrative patent judges as well. So that's about 7000 of the employees focus on patents, they're about 600 to 700. Employees are trademark attorneys who review trademark applications and they're about I think the number is around 30 or so trademark administrative judges. So the trial and appeals board they hear different cases based upon results that happen during the examination of applications, as well as challenges against patents and registered applications or registered trademarks as well as applications that are about to register. At this point in time. There are five offices of the USPTO in 2012. The American Invents Act added different regional offices before that the USPTO was located solely in Alexandria, Virginia. But now we have four additional regional offices one in Detroit, Michigan, another in Austin, Texas. Then you have one in Denver, Colorado and San Jose California. One of the reasons that they opened up these offices was that they were trying to attract more examiner's patent examiner's and they were finding it harder to get qualified people to DC so they expanded the field and it also gives inventors and applicants an opportunity who are located in other regions to visit these offices and have in person interviews with examiner's as well as having their any type of hearing in front of with a Trial and Appeal boards. So right now, there aren't any of that none of those in person meetings are occurring, which we'll talk about in a second. But I thought it'd be interesting just to kind of give an overview of the USPTO. So what has been the daily impact on the examination side the sides that handle the applications? Well, fortunately, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has been well suited to handle the pandemic. As many of you already know, most of the filings that are done at the USPTO are handled electronically. On the patent side, almost everything is pretty much exclusively filed electronically. There are some areas as far as patent as far as plant patents and some other types of patents that you know might there is things are sent in the old fashioned way via mail or delivered in person but for the most part things are handled electronically. There's been more and more encouragement on the trademark side for that to occur as well. They're actually up to 90% of trademark applications being filed electronically. And the USPTO has done this through different levels of encouragement as far as reading Six fees on filing electronically, and also adding additional costs for those types of filings that are not done electronically. In addition, examiner's are already set up to work remotely. For those people that aren't familiar, at least on the patent side, once a examiner has worked for a certain number of years and USPTO meets met some qualifications, the USPTO allows them to work remotely. This was done before COVID-19 impact but it it's also it's basically been helped them handle closing of the public offices, which is one thing that they've done back in March of this past year. As a result of that, you know, most people are used to working remotely. Some of the younger examiner's are getting to work remotely sooner as a result of that. But based upon the previous infrastructure that was established, the USPTO has handled this pretty well. As I said, the offices are closed to the public, there are no in person meetings or interviews that are being granted at this point in time. However, the USPTO has been set up for years to have telephonic or video conferencing for interviews. So this is, you know, they, they were pretty prepared for this. This pandemic as far as that goes, there's actually been some improvement in some performance measures during the COVID time. For example, the time from when a patent application is filed until when it receives its final office action has been reduced by almost half a month during this time period. There is some question as to whether or not that has, what's the cause of that a lot of people think it has something to do with people not having to take as much vacation time as that. But there has been some improvements of the handling of the USPTO as far as on the examination side. So it really hasn't impacted it too much. Now, as far as the Trial and Appeal Board for for patents and trademarks. These are handled by administrative judges, I've kind of gone over the numbers there. They basically hold handle appeals of examination decisions from trademarks and patents during their examination, as well as they handle opposition's and cancellations for trademark registrations and applications. As far as on patent sides. They handle post grant review procedures. The American Invents Act created these categories in back in 2012. They also put into place specific guidelines as far as timeframes in which certain things have to be done. Once a petition has been granted, to go forward with the post grant review, they have to reach a final decision within 12 months of the petition being granted. COVID has not had an impact at the USPTO as far as that timeline has gone. However, they are allowing people to request extensions if needed. So I don't want you to think that they're they're not looking out for the impact on those applicants or the appellants at this point in time or petitioners. But there has been no real delay. As far as at the USPTO side. Like on the examination side, there are no in person meetings. But as we stated earlier, they've already had the infrastructure set up for telephonic and video hearings, there. So there really hasn't been that huge of an impact on the PC on the FP tab or T tab the acronyms for the Trial and Appeal Board for patents and trademarks. Now, that's not to say that the USPTO isn't looking out for inventors. They went to the passing of the Cares Act. On March 27 of 20 of this past year, authority was granted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to go forward with give give some type of relief to inventors or applicants at the USPTO. Some of this had to do with they told some of the fees waived them adjusted some of the fees for applicants and also modified some deadlines provided some incentives for COVID based inventions and trademarks. But for the most part, these benefits are really geared towards small and micro entity applicants. So keep that in mind with what we're talking about. So some of the extension of fee deadlines. These were done pretty much temporarily. fees that were due between March 27 And September 29. As long as they were paid by September 30. Even if they were late. They were considered to be received in a timely fashion. These fees focused on normal filing fees, issuance fees and maintenance fees on the on the patent side And

Speaker 3  20:01  
in also, during this time period, if you fail to pay or fail to respond, you are able to file a Petition to Revive those applications. As long as without having to pay a fee. Now, that was the July 31 of this year, the fees are still or the fees are now. Still, they're required once again. But you can still ask for extent, extensions or petitions and rely on or providing some type of statement stating that COVID-19 has affected you. And so they they are very aware of the impact. And so they're considering that in regarding when they are reviewing these petitions. It is done by a case by case basis. This can be done for extension of times, reviews of applications. And they can also for accepting the delay and maintenance fees. So they're cognizant of that. So please, you know, keep that in mind. When you're dealing with your clients, or your app Afghans themselves. As far as on the P tab and T tab, you can ask for extensions for COVID related reasons, you just have to provide some type of statement with that. Now, there have also been incentives or programs that have been implemented at the USPTO that are trying to assist inventors with patent applications and trademark applications as well. One of them is the prioritize examination pilot program. This was implemented on May 14 of this year. Basically, for those that are familiar with any with a patent process. applicant can file what's called an accelerated track one examination. Generally, the track one petition requires additional fees, what it basically does is it moves your application to the front of the line as far as in the in the queue system as far as when it's being examined. The USPTO has kept the number of track one applications between 10,012 1000 I think 12,000 is the limit for this year. But with the COVID-19 inventions, they're capping it at 500. So you still have to go through the same process as you would with the track one application, but your fee is waived. Now, the fees only really waived for small and micro entities, small entities. There are certain requirements that you have to meet as far as if you're the size of your business or if you're a nonprofit research institution, you can qualify as a small entity micro entity deals with people that are very limited filings before I think it's up to you can only be listed on four previous applications in it's more for the small time inventor, some of the inquire requirements that in order to get this waiver, as I stated earlier, you're going to be a micro small entity. Your application can only have one claim of priority, meaning it only can claim to one provisional or one predecessor ng predecessor application, the application must be focused on some type of product or processes related to COVID 19. At least one of the claims has to be directed towards that the claimed invention also has to be subject to FDA, FDA approval for use this can be an IND IDE, NDA PLA PMA Are you a that's a lot of acronyms that are thrown at you. I don't know all of those. But there are, if you go and look at the USPTO website, they'll walk you through what what those mean, if it's a utility application, it has to be filed electronically. And you're also limited to only it being a new application a continuation application or an RC request for continued examination. If an application has already been filed, you can't retroactively use this process, you have to file a new application or an RCE or Windows was at the bottom of the slide that I just discussed. So I don't know how many people have actually used this at this point in time. I do know some people may be someone on this presentation who have tried to use this and were unsuccessful because of the requirements for the being a new application in and of itself. Another incentive that's been provided by the USPTO is professional, a COVID 19 provisional fee deferral program. Basically what's happened here is it's very similar to the prioritized requirements as far as what you have to meet. But all we're all that's going on here is that an individual can file a provisional application without having to file or pay the filing fee for the provisional application at the time of filing. There are some other additional requirements for those people that aren't familiar with provisional applications. provisional applications are basically filed at the USPTO. And they're not examined, they're not publicly available, they only become publicly available. Once a nother application that claims priority to it becomes publicly available. So traditionally, provisional applications haven't been accessible until later applications filed the claims priority off of it. One of the record requirements to meet or had the fee waived or deferred at this point in time, is that you have to submit that you have to agree to disclose your invention on a searchable collaboration database that's at the USPTO s website. So basically, you're making your invention publicly available, and an earlier date than you normally would not have. If you'd file or follow the traditional provisional application process. In my opinion, I, you know, provisional application fees are pretty small. So I don't know if it's worth waiting or pushing off the payment, because you still if you do file a non provisional application that claims priority to the provisional application, you will have to pay the provisional application fee at that point in time. So it's not a waiver of the fees just a deferral of fee. So you are going to end up having to pay it at some point. So if keeping this information, confidential, or non public is important, this might not be the incentive program that you might want to follow. Now, the United States, the trademark side, they've also put in some type of incentive programs for trademark and trade service applications for marks that are dealing with COVID 19. The requirements are that it has to be directed towards COVID-19 product or medical devices, medical devices subject to approval by the FDA, or some type of medical service or medical research that's related to COVID-19. You have to petition directly to the director. To do this. This is basically it speeds up the examination process for your application, you have to identify the application layout, and given a statement as to what the goods and services are, and why they should be covered or why they're related to COVID-19. And why they should qualify for prioritized examination. And you also have to basically submit a declaration under penalty when you submit that if you are found to be saying anything false in that application. I don't know anyone who's actually pursued this yet, but I can understand the benefits for doing it. Now COVID-19 Hasn't only impacted the United States, as Charlie was showing earlier, it's impacted other countries as well as their patent offices or intellectual property offices. A lot of the same measures that we've seen here the United States are carried out in other offices, for example, in Australia and Europe, Israel, Mexico and WIPO. The World Intellectual Property Organization, no, visitors are being allowed from the public and no filing or in person filing is being allowed. A lot of countries have followed suit as far as allowing extension of deadlines. However, most of them do require proof that it's COVID 18. related. Japan, Europe, China, Korea, Israel, Taiwan, India, Canada and Australia are some of the countries that are doing that. As far as hearings that are going on, there's kind of a mich mixed bag approach. Depending on the country, for example, Europe, the European Patent Office is holding in person as well as video or rescheduling some of these hearings. The in person hearings have a lot of requirements, very minimal people social distancing things along those lines there, but some countries are flat out refusing to have them in relying exclusively on video or just rescheduling them to a later date. There are also some foreign jurisdictions are also providing some incentive programs. They're not the same as the United States. But some of them for example, Europe is providing a landscape tool, with some built in searches for COVID-19 related applications. Japan is offering a open licensing database so that individuals with the technology can put their technology in a database and allow other individuals who might have the money for research or who want to take this to market. They can reach out to them. The IP five those are the big five IP

Speaker 3  29:49  
Office offices made up of China, Europe, Japan and Korea in the United States. They're all working together to harmonize the processes here. As you can see there There's several different things that they're doing, trying to enhance access to patent information, provide some type of initiatives and share best practices between each of these countries. There's a lot of things going on there. There was a joint statement that was released by all five of these offices back in June, I believe, June or July, that outlines what they're trying to do together. So those are the impacts of the patent offices, specifically USPTO. However, COVID-19 has had some impacts on the courts here. Now, I know that several people on this presentation are very familiar with the federal court system in the United States. However, for those individuals that aren't the trade, trademarks and patents are under are covered by federal law. So it's the jurisdiction of the federal courts that handle this, for this is a three tiered structure we had basically had to district courts at the lowest level, those are word trials are occur. Above that you also have a pit appeal court. So you have circuit courts of appeals, there are 11 different circuits, or 12 different circuits, the United 13 different circuits in the United States, one, the lemons circuits, one through 11, then you also have the Federal Circuit in the DC Circuit. And then you have the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court in the court of appeals handle all the appeals in the United States on these questions. So it's kind of wanted to give a different or give an overview of the structure for those people who aren't familiar with it. District Courts, these are your trial courts. They have jury and bench trials and also handling Grand Jury proceedings. And basically, the these are where you see most of the lawsuits. This is when someone files a lawsuit, this is where it's going to occur. The phases of velocity are filing of a complaint, and then an answer that comes after that. And then you have discovery and briefing, which includes hearings, depositions and conferences between the parties. If the case advances, then you can go to trial and at trial, you'll have evidence being presented, which includes documents and witnesses being presented to a jury or the or the judge in case of a bench bench trial. So how has that impacted How's COVID impacted district courts? It's kind of very, it's a lot of a lot of it comes down to local state borders. Some district courts have shut down in person hearings, things along those lines, trials have been suspended. But it's still left up to the districts at this point to decide. You know, juries grand juries and and bench trials, it really comes down to the the jurisdiction. However, for the most part, pre trial events are still occurring. briefing is occurring. Most of these district courts have electronic filing system setup. So briefings occur all the time. So that's if it can be filed electronically. It's still going on. Some courts have eliminated the paper filing requirements at or at least suspended them. In some jurisdictions, depositions and hearings are still going on. Depositions are still going on via video conference. And hearings are occurring the same way through telephone, telephone conferences, and sometimes video conferences, to discovery still being produced. But however, everyone's aware of what's going on. So extensions have been granted in these cases. I do want to bring up the International Trade Commission. This is kind of a is a federal branch that's semi jurisdictional that handles a lot of the importation of goods in the United States. So they do have Patent and Trademark cases that come before it. At this point in time that employees there are working remotely. Investigations are still going on by the employees. However, there are no in person meetings. The hearings that occur at the ITC have been postponed at this point in time. However, similar to what's going on in the district court levels, discovery is still ongoing. And it's really a case by case basis. Now, the appellate courts, which are the circuit courts and Supreme Court, just for an overview for those people aren't familiar with it. This is not true. This is not the same as what you would have at the district court level. There are really no trials that are going on. There's a lot of briefing, and they're focusing on the outcomes that occurred at the lower courts. There's no new evidence has been presented. It's really just focusing on oral arguments and the briefing. So there's no jury and it's basically comes, you present your case to the panel of judges, the Court of Appeals, it for example, the Federal Circuit, you have three judge panels, however, in certain situations you can have on bunk panels which is They bring in more judges, they want to have more judges present for these cases. It's, you know, for example, of 11, judges are brought forth on bank decisions at the ninth circuit. And the Supreme Court has a panel of nine judges, I am pretty sure we've all heard how many people are on the Supreme Court at this point in time, especially over the past couple of months. So what's been the impact of COVID-19, their extensions have been granted to file appeals. For example, the Supreme Court is given 150 days to file at this point in time off of appeals from lower courts, court buildings are not open to the public. A lot of the court of appeals have eliminated paper filing requirements, for example, at the Federal Circuit, used to used to require or required paper filings in a certain format. And and they've actually allowed individuals now to file those electronically. As far as hearings, they've been either postponed or being done by video conference, or telephone. And, for example, the Supreme Court, in the last couple of cases on their calendars have been hearing all of this via telephone conference. It's changed the nature to a certain extent on how the oral hearings have gone forth. Specifically, it what traditionally had been done in the Supreme Court as if someone when someone is presenting their arguments, the judges kind of ask questions whenever they wanted to, there was no real order, at least no order that we could tell. But since everything is being done remotely at this point in time on telephone, or via telephone, the judges have agreed to ask questions in order. So instead of having to answer different judges questions at different times, the questions seem to be coming from the judges in in a list fashion. It's also led to some embarrassing moments. I don't know if anybody else heard about this. But back in November, I believe there was an oral hearing at the Supreme Court where you can actually hear someone going to the restroom, or at least flushing the toilet. So it has led to some it has pulled back the curtain a little bit on the Supreme Court. They're still issuing opinions, though. And as you can see here on the slides, you can hear any of the audio from the arguments from oral arguments, as well as reading the pitch opinions issued by the Supreme Court at the Supreme Court websites there. Now, has it led to a has COVID-19 led to any type of impact on patent cases in and of themselves. We've seen an uptick in 2019. There are 3500 patent infringement cases were filed. Now, through September of this past year, 3000 have been filed. Why is that occurring? There's several thoughts as to why we've seen the number increase something COVID-19 has led to it you know, it's the there's no question that COVID-19 has led to some type of impact on the economy. And sometimes when the economy hits a downturn, you do see lawsuits increasing. So that could be one of the factors there. Also, some new legal findings have made it a little bit more favorable for patent owners to file cases. And also, there's been an increased number of patents that have been issued over the past year. There's also been a big player that's filed a lot of suits Joule company, the e cigarette manufacturer, has filed several different lawsuits this year. So that might have something to do with the big increase there. Now, have there been any cases filed specifically dealing with COVID-19? And patents themselves? Well, yes, just recently, the alley biotechnology and pharmaceuticals company filed two different suits one against Regeneron, in the Southern District of New York, and then also simultaneously one against Pfizer and biotech in the Southern District of California. From and I'll let Charlie talk a little about it a little bit more if he wants to as far as the technology itself, but from my understanding, the patents really deal with the marker that it was used to come up with some of the COVID-19

Speaker 3  39:30  
vaccinations. So the plaintiff in these cases, it's interesting was, seemed to be a little bit more lenient towards Regeneron because they only asked for damages. Whereas against Pfizer and biotech they asked for, there's language in the complaints that lead one to believe that they could ask for an injunction as well as damages there. The public readiness and emergency preparedness act could though provide some On form of defense for the defendants in these cases, it'll be interesting to see these were just filed within the last month or two. So we haven't really gotten too far down the road in those cases. And with that, I am going to turn it over to Charlie to talk about some of the other impacts.

Speaker 2  40:18  
So what we'd like to talk about now is just how it's affecting licensing and collaborations. So if you can see it says mergers in 2015 through 2019, the average was 111. And already so far in 2020, the average is 67. So there's a big uptick in mergers. partnership deals that exclude mergers in 2015 through 2019, was about 745. In this year, we've already had 609. So again, there's a lot more activity going on in the healthcare space. Nearly a quarter for 33 of innovation deals between February and July 2020 are directly related to COVID-19. And the status available in Nature Reviews, drug discovery, the citation is at the bottom, I commend it to you, it's got a lot of good information and statistics in it.

Speaker 2  41:28  
Okay, so some representative granted patents. So what I did was I just did a Boolean search on the USPTO website for COVID-19 to see if anything is granted and so far 29 patents that recite COVID-19 have granted 37 published applications right now cite or recite COVID-19. So I would I was thinking there would be a lot more but I think maybe there are just some that just haven't published yet so we can see them. One of the patents that granted was to Regeneron. And it is to the antibodies that bind the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID 19. And I believe that these are the antibodies that are in the cocktail that they have made available to treat people with COVID-19. The interesting thing is it was filed as a tract one application as Matt described earlier, it granted it just a few months, it was filed June 2520 20 And granted September 19 2020. So we can really see that the patent office is really trying to help get these patents that are related to COVID-19. Out and granted. Another patent is for detection assay is a PCR assay for detecting source code to and it was filed on 2020. And granted on October 27 2020. Again, this is a track one patent. And finally the to the University of Pittsburgh, they we got the first that I could find of a COVID-19 Prioritize examination request that Brandon has a patent that claims antibodies to the virus that causes COVID. It was filed on May 14 2020. And granted November 3 2020. Again, you can see how rapidly these patents are being granted. Last we have a patent that is to a assay for detecting the virus. It's a point of care assay that can provide results in one hour. I haven't heard much about this in the media. But this has to come from what I can tell a private inventor so inventor, and it was filed on May 18 2020, rather November 24 2020. Again, really, really quick turnaround time. It was also filed as a COVID-19 prioritized examination request.

Speaker 2  43:57  
All right. So let's talk about some vaccines. Now. There are a lot of vaccines that are in the works. And there's a lot of different ways that these vaccines are being produced. The ones that are right now that are in the media, the Pfizer. biontech vaccine is a messenger RNA vaccine and is a messenger RNA is a nucleic acid that encodes the viral spike protein of the virus. And it's delivered in what are in it's wrapped up in lipids. So it looks it's a bunch of oil second oil drop, and inside it has the messenger RNA. The problem with this one is it has to be kept at minus 94 degrees or minus 70 C, but its efficacy is 95% which is fantastic. modernise vaccine is similar. It's another mRNA virus. And the good thing about it is it can be stored at minus 20 degrees but it's also highly effective.

Speaker 2  45:11  
And then technical difficulties here. Okay. Just for some completeness, there's some other people that are developing vaccines. And this is a DNA based vaccine. So basically, this is probably some kind of ad, no vector that's injected to you. So the advantages of the messenger RNA vaccine is that it doesn't really incorporate into your DNA. It is. It is transcribed in your cells by your machinery, but it eventually degrades quickly. So it doesn't stay around in your in your system fair long. Well, it's just a little bit different from viral vectors, which can create immune responses that you don't want. Another vaccine is being delivered by skin patch. And there are many, many, many more, but I just wanted to give you a few samples.

Speaker 2  46:09  
Okay, so what are some representative treatments. One of them is remdesivir, which is a nucleoside antiviral, and is one of the few that are approved for treating COVID-19. Another is a synthetic drug, first discovered while assessing the viral activity for chemical agents act against the influenza virus. The next one is one that's been developed by Emory University and is an oral medication originally developed to treat the flu. Another treatment is convalescent plasma. And what that is, is that's a kind of plasma from people who have recovered from the infection. And the plasma contains antibodies that are directed to the virus. And that has been used to treat people who are very, very ill from it. There's also a lot of antibody treatments. There's one from Eli Lilly.

Speaker 2  47:12  
There's Regeneron antibody cocktails. There's steroids such as dexamethasone that are anti inflammatories, and there are others that have not had a lot of data to support that they're very effective. So I left those out

Unknown Speaker  47:35  
what happened that?

Speaker 3  47:44  
Don't know, let me let me see what's going on. Is that the last? Had you reached the last slide, Charlie?

Unknown Speaker  47:49  
I think so. But there was one that said questions.

Unknown Speaker  47:53  
Okay, well, I'll share that real quick then.

Speaker 2  48:09  
All right. There we go. Okay, that's it. So if we have any questions, we'd like to hear from you.

Unknown Speaker  48:21  
Yep. See if we have any.

Speaker 3  48:30  
So I will say I, you know, I was interested to see, you know, Charlie, you said you took a look at some of the applications that have been filed based upon just COVID 19. While you were doing that, I took a look just real quickly at the USPTO website, looking on tests, the Trademark Electronic Search System to see how many applications have been filed. With COVID-19. In the name an entry today, there have been 131 trademark applications that have been filed that have COVID 19. And in the mark, only one of them has been registered. At this point in time, I couldn't really see if anybody had. It's not readily apparent of anyone who was using the COVID 19. prioritized examination for the trademarks on that side. But I was surprised to see how many had filed it on the patent side and how quickly that was, you know, the one that you were talking about for Regeneron. Was that three months?

Unknown Speaker  49:31  
Yeah. Fantastic.

Speaker 3  49:33  
That is that's incredible. So, but no, I mean, it's it's interesting to see what's going on here. I think that you know, as far as the on the trademark side, it was interesting to see how many had been filed there. And some of the rejections had that have already come through. They're basically being rejected under some being merely descriptive of certain types of services. So that's, it's interesting to see the pitfalls of this people are willing to at this point. Okay.

Speaker 3  50:13  
All right. Well, um, so, Charlie, on that Regeneron application, did you were you able to take a look at that and see? What was the prosecution history on that? Was that just a one? Just one office action that was issued in that time? They

Speaker 2  50:30  
had a preliminary amendment, and they interviewed it, and another amendment and it was granted. Okay.

Speaker 3  50:37  
So that was pretty quick. With the other the other one from the University of Pittsburgh. That was a six month timeline, it looked like.

Speaker 2  50:44  
Yeah, I think, though, I don't know. Some of them were not interviewed as quickly as Regeneron did. So I think that that was a big difference.

Speaker 3  50:58  
Have you? What is you kind of shifting gears a little bit? During this time period? What is your general or what have examiners stated as far as how they feel things have been going on at least with their job at the USPTO Derring COVID?

Speaker 2  51:15  
I think many of them that I've been interacting with are people that are remote working. So they're not going into the into the building. And I think the pressure is still the same for them, because they only have a limited number of time to examine each each application. So I just got another case out yesterday. So I think it's just fine. You know, they're just doing well. Yeah.

Speaker 3  51:42  
Some of the examiners. Same thing that you were saying they I mean, I like that a lot of them were feeling I think somewhat like what attorneys feel like at this point in time that, you know, I've talked to other colleagues where they feel like they're actually working more right now during COVID-19 than previously because they there is no line of demarcation between work between your office time and your time at home. At least a couple of examiner's have brought that up to me, as well, some of my colleagues do. Well, I wanted to see if doesn't look to be that there any questions at this point in time? Is there anything else? Interesting, you might want to add, Charlie, are you think it's good to sign off at this point?

Unknown Speaker  52:32  
I think that's it.

Speaker 1  52:35  
Excellent. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. On behalf of autumn, I would like to thank you both Charlie and Matt, as well as everyone for attending today. We hope that you found the overall information to be informational and that you've learned some new details about how COVID has impacted the eip process. As a reminder, a recording of the webinar will be available for viewing within a few days of the event and access to the recording is included in your registration fee. You can visit the autumn website to view the recording or purchase a past webinar that you may have missed earlier this year. If you'll be claiming CLE for the webinar, you will need to log into the autumn Learning Center to complete your CLE survey and obtain your certificate and if you need assistance cleaning CLE please feel free to contact me directly. And finally, as a reminder, please complete the webinar evaluation which will pop out when you pop up when you close out of the webinar. This helps us to serve your needs in the future. Thank you again for joining us and have a great rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai