What is a Vegas Strip Steak?
Another example why intellectual property is valuable and important to protect.

The Patent.

Recently a meat specialist at Oklahoma State University rendered a 14 ounce cut of beef similar to a New York strip steak (only better according to the creator), from an area of a cow usually reserved for measly hamburger.

This cut was rendered using knife strokes apparently so unique, that OSU filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office! If the patent is granted, OSU and the patent’s stakeholders can potentially make a fortune charging license fees to butcher shops and packing plants that make and sell the cut.

What?! Patent a cut of meat? That’s crazy!

Meat by itself cannot be patented because it is a product of nature, but one could arguably claim a patent on the process of extracting a certain steak from the beef. To receive the patent, the applicant would have to prove that its process is novel and non-obvious. In patent law the standard is whether the process would be obvious to someone with ‘ordinary skill in the art’ at the time of the invention. Is it novel and non-obvious? We’ll have to wait and see.

The Trademark.

While this a case of first impression for the Patent Office that may eventually rule that the patent claim is invalid.  The trademark may be where the real money is in the Vegas Strip Steak.

While a U.S. Patent can allow a monopoly

Read more …

Well, Summer is over on the topside of this planet. Time to get back to work.