1) The House Committee on Small Business conducted a hearing on the impact of the AIA earlier this month. Patently O’s Dennis Crouch was one of the witnesses. You can see more materials here: [Link]. Small companies develop 16 times more patents per employee than large firms.
2) The Federal Circuit sat en banc last Friday for oral argument in Berry v. Conyers, a merit systems protection board case. You can listen to that oral argument here: [here].
3) The BNA PTCJ ran an interesting article a few weeks ago that might interest readers. The article addressed three recently issued “informative opinions” by the PTAB that construed “processor” as a means plus function term. The author of the article is Andy Spence. You can access the article here [Link]. I’m not sure what the process is for designating a PTAB opinion as an informative opinion, as opposed to a standard opinion. By happenstance, all three opinions were by five judge panels.