A patent attorney and vociferous blogger is issuing “A Call To Arms” to drugmakers and patent attorneys to support Glaxo in its freshly filed lawsuit against the US Patent Office over its forthcoming rules. The issue at hand is a bit arcane to those unfamiliar with patent law and the PTO’s procedures, but Glaxo charges the new rules will hinder its ability to protect discoveries and ongoing research.

For the record, the new PTO rules, which go into effect on Nov. 1, concern continuating patent applications. What’s that? Well, current US patent law allows an inventor to file several different types of patent applications to cover new improvements to their inventions, or to cover different aspects of their inventions. One type is a continuation. As Glaxo sees it, the PTO will make it harder to make such filings, therefore threatening its investments. So Gene Quinn is using his blog to egg on pharma’s patent lawyers to file friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Glaxo’s position.

“If you are a company with a patent line item in your budget, then you really need to call your patent law firm of choice today and request that they prepare and file a well reasoned amicus brief on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline,” writes Quinn on his PLI Blog. Spending some of your patent budget for this cause will pay dividends later if the suit is successful. Trust me, you don’t want to do nothing now. If the Patent Office gets away with this one what do you think future rulemaking will look like? I can’t even bear to think about it.”

By the way, Quinn tells us he doesn’t have any pharma or biotech clients. “I am not being paid anything by anyone (other than PLI) to write,” he tells us. “I just believe that this mess is just that, a mess.” Stay tuned. Perhaps his message will be heeded and the entire industry will square off against the Patent Office bureaucracy.