Knobbe Martens Associate Receives Patent and Trademark Office Society’s Annual Rossman Memorial Award

On February 7, 2018, Knobbe Martens associate Peter Hecker received the Patent and Trademark Office Society’s prestigious Rossman Memorial Award for his paper, “How an Old Non-Statutory Doctrine Got Worked into the § 101 Test for Patent Eligibility.”

Each year, a panel of three intellectual property judges award the Rossman Memorial Award to the author of an article published in the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society that they determine has “made the greatest contribution to the field of patents, trademarks, or copyrights.” The judges reviewed candidate papers with an eye for accuracy, depth of research, originality, readability, timeliness of the subject, and potential for impact on the existing intellectual property legal system. This year, the judges selected Peter’s article, which explores the origins of the inventiveness requirement for patentability included in the Supreme Court’s Mayo and Alice decisions of 2012 and 2014.

Established in 1972, the award is named after the journal’s longtime Editor-in-Chief Dr. Joseph Rossman.

Peter was honored at a special meeting of the Patent and Trademark Office Society held in Alexandria, Virginia, where he received a plaque and an award of $2,500.

Peter graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Jr. Law School, where he served as the executive editor of the BYU Law Review. Hailing from a science background, Peter earned a B.S. at Brigham Young University in Molecular Biology and holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His additional postdoctoral work was focused on cardiovascular metabolism. Peter began at Knobbe Martens as a summer associate in 2016 and joined the firm in 2017. He is based in the firm’s San Diego office.