Intellectual Property

  • November 04, 2024

    Justices Skip TM Challenge To BofA's Virtual Assistant 'Erica'

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Tenth Circuit decision that found Bank of America Corp. did not infringe a movie website owner's trademark with its virtual financial assistant "Erica."

  • November 01, 2024

    Lack Of Alcohol License Frees Co. From 'Surfside' TM Suit

    A D.C. federal judge has freed an Illinois food and beverage holdings company from a Mexican restaurant operator's trademark infringement lawsuit accusing it of distributing canned vodka beverages donning the restaurant's "Surfside" mark, saying the holdings company didn't even have a license to sell alcohol.

  • November 01, 2024

    Wheeling & Appealing: The Latest Must-Know Appellate Action

    One circuit court will hold an oral argument for the history books, with dizzying logistics and stakes surpassing almost anything on the U.S. Supreme Court's calendar. Other circuit showdowns will delve into the high court's latest opinions and flesh out fascinating feuds involving big beer brands and emerging theories of "administrative state" overreach. All that and more is making November a month of exceptional appellate intrigue.

  • November 01, 2024

    Patent Case Sent To Albright Over Qualcomm's Objections

    A federal judge in Del Rio, Texas, agreed Friday to pass along a patent lawsuit to the crowded docket of fellow Western District of Texas U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, despite objections from Qualcomm Inc. that doing so went against the purpose behind efforts to limit the Waco judge's vast and controversial patent docket.

  • November 01, 2024

    Fired Exec's Claims Cut From Aerospace Trade Secrets Case

    An aerospace company's ex-president, who alleged defamation and unlawful termination in counterclaims against his former employer in a lawsuit accusing him of stealing its trade secrets to launch a rival business, saw all his claims get dismissed Friday in New Jersey federal court.

  • November 01, 2024

    Fitbit Knocks Out Cellspin Litigation Campaign At Fed. Circ.

    Fitbit and others defeated a pair of appeals on Friday in patent litigation over ideas involving programming automatic social media posts, with the Federal Circuit ruling to reject arguments that a California federal judge should have decided patent suits differently and should have recused herself anyway because of her husband's ties to Fitbit parent Google.

  • November 01, 2024

    No New Trial For Akoustis After $39M Trade Secret Case Loss

    A federal judge has refused to give Akoustis Technologies Inc. another trial after jurors earlier this year told it to pay wireless company Qorvo Inc. nearly $38.6 million for trade secrets and infringing misappropriating acoustic wave resonator patents.

  • November 01, 2024

    Unisys Settles Trade Secrets Dispute with Ex-Execs

    Information technology firm Unisys Corp. has agreed to settle claims that two former executives swiped confidential information and trade secrets before departing to work for a competitor.

  • November 01, 2024

    IBM Settles $19.5M EDTX Case Over 'Blockchain' Software

    IBM told U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap on Friday that it has reached a settlement in principle with an Oklahoma litigation outfit that won a $19.5 million patent verdict from a federal jury in Marshall, Texas, back in September.

  • November 01, 2024

    Hip-Hop Artist Madlib Says Biz Manager Is Holding IP Hostage

    Hip-hop producer Madlib has filed suit in California state court alleging his longtime business manager has engaged in "rank self-dealing" and is now holding the artist's music and intellectual property rights hostage.

  • November 01, 2024

    Fracking Services Co. Nitro Gets OK For $3M Equipment Sale

    Oil and gas fracking services provider Nitro Fluids LLC received approval Friday for a $3.25 million sale of some of its assets to stalking-horse bidder KLX Energy Services LLC.

  • November 01, 2024

    2nd Circ. Agrees Ed Sheeran Didn't Rip Off 'Let's Get It On'

    A Second Circuit panel on Friday said Ed Sheeran's hit "Thinking Out Loud" did not rip off Marvin Gaye's Motown classic "Let's Get It On," affirming a lower court's summary judgment order that concluded the musical building blocks of Gaye's song were not original enough to be protectable.

  • November 01, 2024

    Jury To Decide Timing Issue In Insulin Patch Trade Secret Row

    A Massachusetts federal judge has refused to trim some allegations in Insulet Corp.'s suit alleging that a South Korean insulin pump patch manufacturer stole trade secrets, while finding that a jury needs to decide when the clock started to tick on a federal trade secrets claim.

  • November 01, 2024

    'Shark Tank' Sweatshirt Biz Wants Rival Sanctioned

    The startup company behind The Comfy, a large and heavy sweatshirt featured in an episode of "Shark Tank," asked an Arizona federal judge to sanction the founder of a company it won an $18 million verdict against for infringing multiple design patents and trademarks for allegedly continuing to sell his enjoined products.

  • November 01, 2024

    College Athletes' Attorney Rebuffs NIL Settlement Critics

    A key architect of the landmark antitrust settlement forcing the National Collegiate Athletic Association to pay over $2.7 billion and set up a revenue-sharing system for athletes defended the deal against a slew of objectors Friday, explaining that the arrangement delivers a windfall for the athletes as quickly as possible.

  • November 01, 2024

    UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

    This past week in London has seen two industry magnates take on the Gambling Commission, Ordinance Survey hit with a claim from a Swiss GPS maker, and China's largest oil company PetroChina face a claim from a Polish documentary maker. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

  • November 01, 2024

    Off The Bench: Horse Racing Ruling Halted, Fla. Betting Deal

    In this week's Off The Bench, supporters of the organization overseeing federal horse-racing laws got a helping hand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the feud between a Florida tribe and state casino interests ends in a truce, and the NBA wants the details of its disputed media rights deal kept out of the public eye.

  • November 01, 2024

    Chinese National Stole Investment Firm's Code, Feds Say

    A Chinese national has been indicted on charges he stole trade secrets from his employer, an unnamed global investment management company in Boston, to set up his own firm in China.

  • October 31, 2024

    Ex-Citadel Reps Can't Escape Trade Secrets Suit

    A New York federal judge has greenlighted most claims in Citadel Securities' lawsuit accusing a Swiss cryptocurrency trading firm founded by two of its former employees of stealing its trade secrets, while tossing those asserted against the firm's French angel investor for lack of jurisdiction.

  • October 31, 2024

    1st Amendment Protects 'Nevermind' Album Art, Judge Told

    The First Amendment protects Nirvana's 1991 "Nevermind" album art, the Recording Industry Association of America has told a California federal court in an amicus brief, warning that allowing child pornography claims by the man featured naked as a baby in the artwork threatens to broadly chill artistic expression.

  • October 31, 2024

    IP Forecast: Another Apple Watch Trial Kicks Off In California

    Apple and Masimo will face off next week in their long-running feud over whether the tech giant misappropriated Masimo's trade secrets for some of the health-monitoring features used in newer versions of the Apple Watch. Here's a spotlight on that case — plus all the other major intellectual property matters on deck in the coming week.

  • October 31, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Backs PTAB Invalidation Of 3 Centripetal Patents

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday upheld a set of Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions that found three Centripetal Networks patents that cover detecting network threats were invalid, agreeing they were too obvious to warrant patent protection.

  • October 31, 2024

    Jury Awards Synopsys $550K In IP Suit Against Software Rival

    A California federal jury has awarded software company Synopsys Inc. nearly $550,000 in damages after its competitor, Real Intent Inc., was found to have breached contractual agreements by copying certain commands from Synopsys' software — but the defendants' counsel considers the damages award a victory.

  • October 31, 2024

    Tribal Nonprofit Says Employees Divulged Trade Secrets

    A Native American nonprofit is suing an Oregon environmental consulting firm, alleging that its founder and chief executive officer divulged the trade secrets information of tribes and others and made false accusations to donors that it was mismanaging funds.

  • October 31, 2024

    'Extraordinary' Fed. Circ. Ruling Revives Seirus Invalidity Row

    Seirus Innovative Accessories Inc. will be able to pursue its defense that a Columbia Sportswear clothing design patent is invalid as obvious "under the new, less-rigid approach" established by the Federal Circuit in an "extraordinary" decision earlier this year, a California federal judge ruled.

Expert Analysis

  • Fed. Circ. Ruling Creates New Rule For Certification Marks

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    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.

  • A Preview Of AI Priorities Under The Next President

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    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.

  • 11 Patent Cases To Watch At Fed. Circ. And High Court

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    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.

  • Why India May Become A Major Patent Litigation Forum

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    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.

  • Opinion

    To Lower Drug Prices, Harris Must Address Patent Thickets

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    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.

  • How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations

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    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.

  • 5 Ways To Confront Courtroom Technology Challenges

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    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.

  • The Fed. Circ. In August: Secret Sales And Public Disclosures

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    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.

  • Trending At The PTAB: Obviousness In Director Reviews

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    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.

  • AI Art Ruling Shows Courts' Training Data Cases Approach

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    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.

  • FTC Focus: What Access To Patent Settlements Would Mean

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    Settling parties should adopt a series of practice tips, including specifying rationales to support specific terms, as the Federal Trade Commission seeks to expand its access to settlements before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, say Shannon McGowan and David Munkittrick at Proskauer.

  • Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles

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    Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.

  • Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.

  • Takeaways From UPC's Amgen Patent Invalidity Analysis

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    The Unified Patent Court Central Division's decision in Regeneron v. Amgen to revoke a patent for lack of inventive step is particularly clear in its reasoning and highlights the risks to patentees of the new court's central revocation powers, say Jane Evenson and Caitlin Heard at CMS.

  • How Cos. Can Leverage IP In Corporate Bankruptcy

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    In light of an increase in year-to-date Chapter 11 filings, businesses must understand the importance and value of intellectual property in corporate bankruptcy and restructuring, from contributing to enterprise value, to providing leverage in negotiations and facilitating recovery, says Gregory Campanella at Ocean Tomo.

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