Assignment 8: Extra Credit Blog Post 1: Reading through a Patent

Hi all! So there has been a lot of talk about patents in general (their purpose, function, etc) , and in class, we have read through and analyzed claims for certain patents. I think this is an extremely important skill and I wanted to practice it myself more.

The patent that I chose to analyze is titled, "Portable blood filtration devices, systems, and methods," and can be found in the link below.  The reason I chose this patent was that I was at an event this Wednesday where co-founders of start-ups were pitching their companies. One co-founder talked about his product, the chemofilter, which is a catheter based filter that can be placed into a vein that is draining a target organ (i.e. liver) to be able to trap all the excess toxic chemo drugs before they go back to the heart and are pumped to the rest of the body. Since this reduces systemic toxicity, it allows the doctor to deliver a high dose of chemotherapy. The thing that stood out to me was that the co-founder mentioned something along the lines of how most patents in the market were for putting things in the body, and since they were dealing with flow going away from the organ, they could file a broad patent, which is extremely useful. I also thought it was interesting how he mentioned this fact in his pitch to a VC, because it shows  how much of an advantage broad patents can give you.

Okay, now to analyzing a few claims of this patent. Here are some key points that I learned/ ideas and questions that went through my head:

1. The abstract shows that this patent protects a "device, system, and method"[1]. To me, a device and a system are very similar (or perhaps there is a difference?). I also wondered why they didn't have two separate patents-- one for the device and one for the method.
2. I also noticed the use of more ambiguous wording, such as "selectively remove or reduce" [1].
3. While it is important to define certain aspects of the product, it is also important to keep it general. So for example, they needed to define the unwanted substance that needs to be filtered. However, the patentees did not want to limit themselves in doing so. Thus, they said, "The unwanted substance includes one or more of a pathogen, a toxin, an activated cell, and an administered drug" [1]. Notice how they cannot use words such as "etc." because that is too ambiguous and anything can fall underneath that category.
4. There was a "FIELD" section that was one sentence long and basically mentioned that this patent involved "the selective removal of unwanted components" [1]. If I worked at the USPTO and had to read through many patents, this would be a good section for me to come to first when initially sorting through patents.
5. There was a "BACKGROUND" section that talked about why this is important. I think this section is good for the general reader, because it mentioned why this product is important, and talked about sepsis (blood infection) that can lead to organ dysfunction, death, and limb amputation.  So, why is it important to include a section like this? I think it makes it easier for those who are judging the validity of a patent to see how important or vital it is in the larger scope. Yes, they could have looked up this information themselves online, but most of the jury will not have the motivation to do so. It is important to note that most of the jury, especially in certain courts, are less educated and also less interested. Some people just serve on the jury because it is a requirement for them, and not because they are genuinely interested in the case.
6. After reading the claims on the patent, some important aspects are:
1. This protects a method for extracorporeal treatment, meaning the blood is filtered outside the body
2. To filter, a microfluidic channel is used, and the channel has microsieve wall filters.
3. The shape of the microfluidic channel is rectilinear. I thought it was interesting how the dimensions were stated: depth of no more than 200 microns and width of at least 10x the depth. Thus, this patent protects a range of dimensions.
4. The removal of unwanted substances can also be done using cascade filtration with multiple membranes of different pore sizes or using an adsorbent.
5. I realized many of the claims, especially claims 4 to 13, consisted of filtration methods that already existed, but to make this new, they linked it to the earlier claims, saying "The method of any of the above claims, …" For example, extracting by binding the unwanted substance to an adsorbent has already been done before and is most likely patented.
6. At the very beginning of this blog, I mentioned that this patent protects a device, system, and method. While claims 1-14 are all on the method, claim 15 is, "A device configured to implement any of the foregoing methods" and claim 16 is "A system for implementing any of the foregoing methods".

Overall, I think I am getting slightly better at reading patents, or maybe I just happened to find this patent not so difficult to decipher. I also think it is a really good exercise to continue!

Link:

https://www.google.com/patents/WO2011133287A1?cl=en&dq=chemofilter&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-nA-U_LDKo_jsATfjoLYBQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA