** INJUCTION ISSUED **

Reports are starting to come in that GlaxoSmithKline has prevailed and that the Patent Office has been enjoined from making the Final Rules on claims and continuations effective.

More to follow . . .

UPDATE: More post-mortem on the oral arguments from Gene Quinn (link) - Judge Cacheris did not make any statements about the likely merits of the case when making his ruling from the bench. He will, however, be issuing a formal written opinion which will be entered sometime this afternoon.

UPDATE2: Apparently, the PTO has no intention of backing down. Peter Lattman of the Wall Street Journal forwarded the following message from the PTO to Gene Quinn in response to inquiries he made regarding the rules being enjoined:

Interest shown by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress in patent modernization indicates that the system needs change. The USPTO continues to believe that the rules are an important component of modernizing the patent system. They are part of a package of initiatives designed to improve the quality and efficiency of the patent process and move American innovation and our economy forward. This multi-pronged approach is already showing results. Patent examination quality is at a record high. Nearly 97 percent of the patents issued in FY 2007 met stringent independent quality standards, up from about 93 percent in FY 2000. Additionally, last year USPTO’s board of patent appeals upheld examiners decisions to reject patents nearly 70 percent of the time, compared with only 51 percent of the time in FY 2000.

In other words, the PTO knows what's best - the rest of us are just to dense to appreciate the goodness that was bestowed upon us, prior to this litigation . . .