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GAO Sustains For Failure To Set Aside For Small Business

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.20.04

In Information Ventures, Inc. (Oct. 8, 2004), GAO sustained a pre-award protest of an unrestricted procurement because the agency failed to take reasonable efforts to ascertain whether at least two small businesses were capable of performing the work, and, in fact, that the agency ignored known information that there were at least two small businesses that could have done so. Lesson learned from this case is that small businesses should carefully monitor the issuance of unrestricted procurements and object prior to the submission of proposals (due to strict GAO timeliness rules) if they believe that multiple small business are capable of performing the work.

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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)....