Google Pushes Fed. Cir. to Save Rejected Parental Control Patent

Federal Circuit Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore hammered into whether the US Patent and Trademark Office rightly rejected a Google patent application for parental control content filters on Thursday, drilling into the agency’s decision to combine two pieces of prior art that it then used to reject Google’s designs.

During oral arguments, held at the Eastern District of Pennsylvania’s ceremonial courtroom, Moore said she saw a “fundamental disconnect” between the patent examiner’s combination of the references that led to the rejection and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s reasoning in upholding the rejection, as well as a “later disconnect” in ...