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Intellectual Property
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December 17, 2024
Ex-Ga. Tech Prof 'Lucky' To Beat Criminal Charges, Judge Says
A Georgia federal judge appeared unsympathetic on Tuesday to a former Georgia Tech professor who said he was the victim of a mishandled internal audit that led to his indictment on racketeering charges, telling the professor's civil attorney his client was "lucky that he's not in prison."
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December 17, 2024
TM Group Weighs In On Preclusion In 2nd Circ. Winery Fight
A trademark group has said a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decision upheld by a New York federal court in an Italian winemaker's fight against a Napa Valley, California, rival over similarly named wines is at odds with a separate board decision in a dispute that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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December 17, 2024
Judge Cuts Upper Deck's Disney Card Game Suit
A Washington federal judge has pared down a toy company's suit accusing a competitor of improperly luring away a former contractor and infringing copyrighted material in making a Disney-branded game, partially letting claims involving unfair competition and fraudulent misrepresentations proceed while dismissing others.
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December 17, 2024
PQA Wants Members' Identities Kept From VLSI, Public
Patent Quality Assurance LLC has disclosed its members to a Virginia federal court after initial resistance, but urged the judge to keep that information under seal, saying the company suing it would likely "harass and smear" its members.
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December 17, 2024
Canadian Gets 2 Years For Stealing Secrets Tesla Bought
A New York federal judge on Monday sentenced a Canadian businessman to two years in prison after he pled guilty to charges he helped his Chinese business partner use trade secrets from his former employer that was acquired by Tesla in 2019.
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December 17, 2024
Kat Von D Defends Tattoo Copyright Win At 9th Circ.
The reality TV tattoo artist Kat Von D has told the Ninth Circuit that a photographer who mounted a failed copyright lawsuit over a photo of the jazz great Miles Davis is now ignoring "most of the facts" by appealing the jury verdict that rejected the infringement case.
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December 17, 2024
Miss America-Tied Ch. 11 Tossed Amid Ownership Spat
A Florida bankruptcy judge on Tuesday dismissed the Chapter 11 case of an entity connected to the Miss America pageant, after the debtor noted it realized it owns none of the operations or debt associated with the competition, punting questions over who owns pageant-related assets to a state court.
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December 17, 2024
Laser Maker Loses Bid To Trim Patent Suit In Mass.
A Massachusetts federal judge has shot down laser maker NKT Photonics' bid to dodge allegations it infringed one of the patents asserted in a lawsuit from a company owned by a University of Michigan professor.
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December 17, 2024
Win For Ole Miss Coach In Copyright Suit By 'Serial Litigant'
A lawsuit accusing University of Mississippi football coach Lane Kiffin of copyright infringement over a social media post was thrown out by a Mississippi federal judge, who scolded the plaintiff for making Kiffin the latest stop on his "traveling litigation show.''
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December 17, 2024
The Biggest Copyright Decisions Of 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court made it possible for copyright plaintiffs to pursue damages for periods longer than three years — while leaving lawyers speculating about how long the ruling will stand — and the Second Circuit put an end to a free digital library. Here are Law360's picks for the top copyright decisions of 2024.
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December 17, 2024
Biden Enacts Law Setting Exception To Some USPTO Fines
President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Tuesday that gives the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office the ability to waive fines for patent applicants who falsely claim they are entitled to fee reductions, if the error was made in good faith.
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December 17, 2024
Stanford Profs Say Roche's Trade Secret Claims Time-Barred
Stanford University's trustees and three of its professors have asked a California federal court to dismiss trade secret theft claims bought by subsidiaries of F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, arguing that the allegations are time-barred because the companies were on notice of the purported misappropriation for over three years before filing suit.
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December 17, 2024
Rival Says In-Flight Internet Provider Gogo Foils Competitors
SmartSky Networks LLC is seeking more than $1 billion in damages in a new lawsuit accusing Gogo Business Aviation LLC of blocking its entry in the market for internet service on business flights, building on an intellectual property dispute between the companies.
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December 17, 2024
Perkins Coie Hit With DQ Bid In Face Recognition IP Dispute
Perkins Coie LLP's representation of tech company Jumio Corp. in a patent suit is a "betrayal," facial recognition technology firm FaceTec Inc. said in a motion seeking to disqualify the law firm from the California case because it had previously represented FaceTec in many matters, including the patent currently in dispute.
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December 17, 2024
Another Rimon Atty Joins Colleagues At Potomac Law Group
Potomac Law Group has hired its fourth Rimôn PC partner in the past three months, the firm announced Monday. He focuses his practice on intellectual property, artificial intelligence and blockchain matters.
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December 16, 2024
Circuit-By-Circuit Guide To 2024's Most Memorable Moments
One judge said a litigant's position would cause "an effing nightmare," and another decried the legal community's silence amid "illegitimate aspersions." Public officials literally trashed one court's opinion, and fateful rulings dealt with controversial politicians, social media and decades of environmental policy. Those were just a few appellate highlights in 2024, a year teeming with memorable moments both substantive and sensational.
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December 16, 2024
USPTO Chief Of Staff Steps Up To Acting Deputy Director
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced Monday Shirin Bidel-Niyat, the agency's chief of staff, is its newest acting deputy director, stepping into the role as office leadership is shaken up by the departure of former Director Kathi Vidal.
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December 16, 2024
Fed. Circ. Vacates Centripetal Patent Win At PTAB
The Federal Circuit has thrown out a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision that found the Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks failed to show that a Centripetal Networks patent for a way to improve the flow of data was invalid, kicking the case back to the board.
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December 16, 2024
'Farmville' Maker Settles With IBM After $45M Trial Loss
IBM says it has reached a tentative settlement with the developer behind "Farmville" and other online video games, a few months after a jury in Delaware ordered the developer to pay $45 million in a patent case over programming online ads.
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December 16, 2024
Oracle's 'Copyright War' Will Go On, 9th Circ. Says
Ninth Circuit judges decided on Monday that a "pitched copyright war" going for over a decade between Oracle and a software company that markets third-party software support to Oracle customers has not gone on for long enough, finding that a Nevada federal judge turned out to be quite wrong about what constitutes a "derivative" work.
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December 16, 2024
Health Education Biz Infringed Training Materials, NJ Suit Says
A healthcare education company has accused a rival of infringing copyright-protected training materials for medical staff working in assisted living facilities, saying in a suit filed in New Jersey federal court that the copying is "blatantly obvious."
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December 16, 2024
9th Circ. Won't Revive Suit Over Starz Strip Club Drama
The Ninth Circuit on Monday refused to revive a playwright's lawsuit claiming that Starz Entertainment copied her stage musical for the strip club drama series "P-Valley," saying the works weren't substantially close to one another.
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December 16, 2024
Amazon Ordered To Pay Patent Biz For New Alexa Users Too
A Delaware federal judge says Amazon has to pay around 70 cents for every new Alexa user to a company that owns patents developed by a defunct voice technology startup, in addition to the $40 million it already owes after losing a jury trial last year.
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December 16, 2024
The Biggest Patent Decisions Of 2024
This year's notable patent decisions from the Federal Circuit provided clearer guidelines on double patenting and opened the door for new ways to invalidate design patents. Here's a look at the cases from 2024 that will shape patent litigation going forward.
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December 16, 2024
Allele, Regeneron Settle COVID Treatment Patent Suit
Allele Biotechnology and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals have settled litigation accusing the latter of infringing a patent used in developing treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, a New York federal judge said Monday.
Expert Analysis
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Video Game Release Highlights TM Pitfalls Of App Store
The upcoming release of poker video game Balatro in Apple's App Store underscores the tradeoff of keyword advertising and trademark protection for indie developers who, unlike corporate counterparts, lack resources but seek to maximize the reach of their game, say Parmida Enkeshafi and Simon Pulman at Pryor Cashman.
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5 Credibility Lessons Trial Attys Can Learn From Harris' Run
In launching a late-stage campaign for president, Vice President Kamala Harris must seize upon fresh attention from voters to establish, or reestablish, credibility — a challenge that parallels and provides takeaways for trial attorneys, says Ken Broda-Bahm at Persuasion Strategies.
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Patent Owner Estoppel Questions In The Wake Of SoftView
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's seldom-litigated Rule 42.73(d)(3) on Patent Trial and Appeal Board estoppel was recently brought to the forefront in the Federal Circuit's SoftView v. Apple decision, highlighting uncertainties in this aspect of patent practice, say David Haars and Richard Crudo at Sterne Kessler.
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Copyright Termination Opinion Departs From Long-Held Views
In Vetter v. Resnik, a federal court recently held for the first time that termination rights under Section 304 of the Copyright Act recapture domestic and foreign rights where the original grant was for "worldwide" rights — misinterpreting a basic principle of international copyright treaties, say Rebecca Benyamin and Eric J. Schwartz at Mitchell Silberberg.
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3 Patent Considerations For America's New Quantum Hub
Recent developments signal an incredibly bright future for Chicago as the new home of quantum computing, and it is crucial that these innovators — whose technology has the potential to transform many industries — prioritize intellectual property strategy, says Andrew Velzen at McDonnell Boehnen.
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Fed. Circ. Ruling Creates New Rule For Certification Marks
The Federal Circuit's decision last month in Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac v. Cologne & Cognac Entertainment is significant in that it establishes a new standard for assessing evidence of third-party uses of a certification mark in deciding whether the mark is famous, say Samantha Katze and Lisa Rosaya at Manatt.
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A Preview Of AI Priorities Under The Next President
For the first time in a presidential election, both of the leading candidates and their parties have been vocal about artificial intelligence policy, offering clues on the future of regulation as AI continues to advance and congressional action continues to stall, say attorneys at Mintz.
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11 Patent Cases To Watch At Fed. Circ. And High Court
As we head into fall, there are 11 patent cases to monitor, touching on a range of issues that could affect patent strategy, such as biotech innovation, administrative rulemaking and patent eligibility, say Edward Lanquist and Wesley Barbee at Baker Donelson.
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Why India May Become A Major Patent Litigation Forum
India is reinventing itself with the goal of becoming a global hot spot for patent litigation, with recent developments at the Delhi High Court creating incentives for plaintiffs to assert patent rights in India, say Ranganath Sudarshan at Covington and IP litigator Udit Sood.
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Opinion
To Lower Drug Prices, Harris Must Address Patent Thickets
If Vice President Kamala Harris is serious about her pledge to address high drug prices, she must begin by closing loopholes that allow pharmaceutical companies to develop patent thickets that can deter generic or biosimilar companies from entering the market, says Tahir Amin at the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge.
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How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations
Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.
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5 Ways To Confront Courtroom Technology Challenges
Recent cybersecurity incidents highlight the vulnerabilities of our reliance on digital infrastructure, meaning attorneys must be prepared to navigate technological obstacles inside the courtroom, including those related to data security, presentation hardware, video playback and more, says Adam Bloomberg at IMS Legal Strategies.
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The Fed. Circ. In August: Secret Sales And Public Disclosures
Two recent Federal Circuit rulings — Sanho v. Kaijet and Celanese International v. ITC — highlight that inventors should publicly and promptly disclose their inventions, as a secret sale will not suffice as a disclosure, and file their patent applications within a year of public disclosure, say Sean Murray and Jeremiah Helm at Knobbe Martens.
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Trending At The PTAB: Obviousness In Director Reviews
Three July decisions from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office favoring petitioners indicate a willingness by the director to review substantive issues, such as obviousness, particularly in cases where the director believes the Patent Trial and Appeal Board provided incorrect or inadequate rationale to support its decisions, say attorneys at Finnegan.
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AI Art Ruling Shows Courts' Training Data Cases Approach
A California federal court’s recent ruling in Andersen v. Stability AI, where the judge refused to throw out artists’ copyright infringement claims against four companies that make or distribute software that creates images from text prompts, provides insight into how courts are handling artificial intelligence training data cases, say attorneys at Skadden.