







Headquartered within steps of the USPTO with an affiliate office in Tokyo, Oblon is one of the largest law firms in the United States focused exclusively on intellectual property law.

1968
Norman Oblon with Stanley Fisher and Marvin Spivak launched what was to become Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, LLP, one of the nation's leading full-service intellectual property law firms.

Outside the US, we service companies based in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and farther corners of the world. Our culturally aware attorneys speak many languages, including Japanese, French, German, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese.

Oblon's professionals provide industry-leading IP legal services to many of the world's most admired innovators and brands.

From the minute you walk through our doors, you'll become a valuable part of a team that fosters a culture of innovation, client service and collegiality.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued final rules implementing the inventor's oath or declaration provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) on August 14, 2012.
by Sana Tahir, Law Clerk and Andrew Ollis, Partner
by Andrew Ollis, Partner and Sana Tahir, Law Clerk





IP Watchdog
Sameer Gokhale is quoted in the NVTC magazine The Voice of Technology in an article entitled: "Deep Learning." This article is featured in the July 2020 issue.
The Voice of Technology - NVTC
In 2013, the U.S. enacted the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act ("BPCIA"), 42 U.S.C. § 262 to allow for abbreviated biologics license applications ("aBLA") to be filed for complex products which are biosimilar to/interchangeable with FDA-licensed biologics.
Assignments are important and necessary because they protect the ownership interests in inventions and provide the right to prosecute patent applications and enforce patent rights. But many issues can arise with the assignment of inventions and patent rights and even more issues arise in the era of COVID-19 social distancing.
As is common with a blockbuster drug, AbbVie's Humira faced an antitrust challenge from third-party payers. The third-party payers filed an antitrust action claiming AbbVie's patent strategy stifled competition by forcing prospective competitors to settle on terms allowing Humira to enjoy a monopoly long after patent protection should have ended. The complaint alleges that AbbVie cornered the market for Humira and its biosimilars by obtaining a thicket of patents which allowed it to gain the market power it needed to prevent competitors from entering the U.S. market (violation of Sherman Act section 2). It used this market power to enter into settlement agreements with potential competitors to keep their products out of the U.S. market in return for early launch dates in Europe, also an important market which they termed a pay-for delay and market division (violation of Sherman Act section 1). Judge Shah, of the Northern District of Illinois, dismissed the complaint without prejudice on June 8, 2020. The opinion begins with a discussion of three reasons Humira might hold its commanding position foreshadowing his decision. First, the more than one hundred Humira-related patents made it difficult if not impossible to seek a non-infringing competing product. Second, the FDA lengthy approval process imposes further costs on would-be competitive products. And, third, the "expansive, complicated, and expensive patent infringement litigation that often follows on the heels of FDA approval." Page 1 of slip opinion.
Although long overdue, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released its Final Rule Patent Term Adjustment Reductions in View of the Federal Circuit Decision in Supernus Pharm., Inc. v. Iancu (85 Fed. Reg. 36335-36342, June 16, 2020). Unfortunately, the Final Rule does not fully address Supernus.
