“McKesson”, The Ghost Of New Rules Past?

* Ms. Pan is a partner in the EM practice group of Sughrue Mion, PLLC in Washington, DC. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author.

On October 31, 2007, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia preliminarily enjoined implementation of the U.S.P.T.O. New Patent Rules package announced on August 21, 2007.¹ Patent holders and practitioners breathed a collective sigh of relief as the burdens and constraints of the new Rules no longer had an overwhelming immediacy. Among the Rules enjoined was a regulation mandating disclosure of related applications and patents held by a common assignee, having at least one common inventor and whose effective filing dates fell within a prescribed timing window.² This Rule, if implemented, would have required a wholesale revision of docketing systems of many patent applicants. Despite the injunction of the Rules, the importance of