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A-76 Mix And Match Faulted By GAO

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 08.16.04

In Career Quest (Aug. 2, 2004), GAO sustained a protest of the GSA's decision under OMB Circular A-76 that it was more economical to continue performance of services in-house at the National Customer Support Center, as the agency evaluated the in-house offeror's technical performance plan based on a higher level of staffing than the same offeror included in its cost of performance. Inconsistencies between in-house offerors' staffing levels for compliance with work requirements and those it uses for calculating the cost of performance remain a persistent problem in A-76 competitions, and this decision sends the message that GAO will be alert to such shell games.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25

Design Patent Application Drawings & Prosecution History Must Be Clear (Merely Translucent Won’t Suffice!)

Design patents offer protection for the ornamental appearance of a product, focusing on aspects like its shape and surface decoration, as opposed to the functional aspects protected by utility patents. The scope of a design patent is defined by the drawings and any descriptive language within the patent itself. Recent decisions by the Federal Circuit emphasize the need for clarity in the prosecution history of a design patent in order to preserve desired scope to preserve intentional narrowing (and to avoid unintentional sacrifice of desired claim scope)....