Intellectual Property

  • July 18, 2024

    Fed. Circ. OKs Gilstrap's Alice Ax Of Background Check Patent

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday upheld Eastern District of Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap's invalidation of a background check patent for claiming only an abstract idea, as well as his refusal to award attorney fees to the small Texas city that prevailed in the case.

  • July 18, 2024

    Comcast Gets PTAB To Eye Patent Despite EDTX Trial

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board on Thursday said it will look into a petition by Comcast asking it to invalidate claims in a patent organizing "content on a display device" that is tied to a $338.7 million jury verdict and is being asserted in another case set to go to trial later this year.

  • July 18, 2024

    Google Warns Fed. Circ. Panel Backed Manipulating Damages

    The Federal Circuit's decision to make Google pay EcoFactor $20 million for infringing a smart thermostat patent clears patent owners to "manufacture a royalty rate" and ignore both market realities and apportionment, Google told the full court in a bid for rehearing.

  • July 18, 2024

    Ye Brazenly Stole DJ Khalil's Music For 'Donda,' Suit Says

    The musical artist formerly known as Kanye West has been slapped with a lawsuit in California federal court claiming that he stole music from DJ Khalil and three other artists for two leading tracks on his blockbuster album "Donda."

  • July 18, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Won't Deflate Air Mattress Patent Upheld At PTAB

    The Federal Circuit on Thursday affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's conclusion that no claims of a Sun Pleasure Co. air mattress patent are invalid based on the grounds asserted by a Chinese company.

  • July 18, 2024

    Invalid Patents Sink Tech Co.'s Claims Against Lenovo

    A North Carolina federal judge has cut claims in an infringement suit over data transfer patents by wireless and video technology company InterDigital against Lenovo, finding some of the challenged patents are invalid.

  • July 18, 2024

    Del. Judge Overrules ViaTech's $34M Jury Win Against Adobe

    A Delaware federal judge has concluded that Adobe Inc. could not have infringed a ViaTech technologies licensing system patent, and threw out a jury's $33.8 million infringement verdict.

  • July 18, 2024

    Tech Giants Can't Sink Slide-To-Unlock Patent At Fed. Circ.

    Samsung, Apple and Google failed on Thursday to persuade a panel of Federal Circuit judges to kill a patent covering the idea of sliding-to-unlock a phone, purportedly developed by a small Sweden smartphone developer over a decade ago.

  • July 18, 2024

    US Cheerleading Org. Loses TM Fight Over 'Worlds' Marks

    A Florida federal judge handed a pair of cheerleading organizations a summary judgment win Wednesday in a trademark infringement lawsuit by U.S. All Star Federation that alleged the rivals ripped off the competitive cheerleading organizational body's signature event's name, finding the contested "Worlds" marks are too generic to be protected.

  • July 18, 2024

    Pool Co. Wants To Dig Into Rival's Alter Egos For $16M Verdict

    Pool supply company Hayward Industries Inc. is looking to force responses from the alter egos of bankrupt rival Blueworks Corp. regarding their assets, bank accounts and property so that Hayward can collect on its $16 million false advertising and unfair business practices judgment.

  • July 18, 2024

    Rising Star: Robins Kaplan's Emily Niles

    Emily Niles of Robins Kaplan LLP helped lead the trial team that scored a $71.4 million jury verdict on behalf of Taiwanese Christmas lights company Willis Electric against a rival in Hong Kong that is the world's largest maker of artificial Christmas trees, earning her a spot among the intellectual property law practitioners under age 40 honored by Law360 as Rising Stars.

  • July 17, 2024

    T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon Accused Of Using Negotiating Cartel

    An intellectual property licensing business on Wednesday filed yet another suit against AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, this time accusing the telecommunications companies of wielding their market power and conspiring to refuse to license innovative 4G and 5G wireless communications system technology.

  • July 17, 2024

    Western Digital Owes $305M Over Hard Drive IP, Jury Told

    Hard drive goliath Western Digital owes $305 million for selling drives that infringe MR Technologies' patents for increasing storage capacity, MR's attorney told a California federal jury during opening statements Wednesday, while Western Digital's counsel said the patents are invalid and its products don't infringe anyway.

  • July 17, 2024

    'Hot Girl Walk' Says Rival Infringed, Set An 'Army' On Brand

    Hot Girl Walk, a social media-fueled walking organization, sued the founder of a group called Hot Walk Indy in Indiana federal court on Tuesday, claiming trademark infringement and a plot to "aggressively bully" and "take down" its brand.

  • July 17, 2024

    Zoho Gets PTAB To Cut Bulk Of Conference Call Patent Claims

    Several Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions have wiped out claims in patents covering ways of coordinating conference calls online, following a challenge from a major Indian software company that's facing an infringement lawsuit over the patents in Texas.

  • July 17, 2024

    PTAB Tears Down Roof Measurement Patent On Remand

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found that Nearmap was able to show that all the challenged claims of an EagleView Technologies Inc. patent on measuring roofs were invalid as obvious, a move that came after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's director remanded the case.

  • July 17, 2024

    Dykema Faces Sony Sanctions Bid In Baseball Game TM Suit

    Sony has urged a Texas federal court to sanction a baseball training company and its counsel in a trademark dispute over the digital giant's use of the phrase "future star series" in a popular video game, claiming they launched a lawsuit without investigating material facts and refused to eliminate false allegations.

  • July 17, 2024

    ITC Affirms Lab Equipment Co.'s Patent Wasn't Infringed

    The U.S. International Trade Commission has upheld an administrative law judge's finding that a California biotechnology outfit did not infringe a German laboratory equipment supplier's patent.

  • July 17, 2024

    Many AI Patent Eligibility Issues Still Hazy After Guidance

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's new guidance on patent eligibility for inventions involving artificial intelligence provides some helpful details for patent applicants, but attorneys say it leaves unanswered questions that will likely require court decisions or legislation to sort out.

  • July 17, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Tells ParkerVision To Close Fla. Case Before Appeal

    The Federal Circuit has ordered ParkerVision and Qualcomm to make a Florida federal judge explicitly end counterclaims in long-running infringement litigation between the two before continuing with ParkerVision's appeal.

  • July 17, 2024

    CBP Clears Vilox Tiles Of Infringing Patents In Import Dispute

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection has ruled Vilox has shown its licensees' vinyl floor panels do not infringe Mohawk Industries Inc. patents and can be imported into the U.S.

  • July 17, 2024

    Steve Madden Raises IP, Libel Claims In Sandal Feud

    Steven Madden Ltd. has filed suit alleging Danish "affordable luxury" brand Ganni A/S falsely claimed two of the U.S. company's shoe designs infringed Ganni's intellectual property.

  • July 17, 2024

    Investigator Argues Mogul's Hacked Data Aren't Trade Secrets

    A private investigator accused of taking part in an international hacking conspiracy targeting airline mogul Farhad Azima is looking for a win after a protracted discovery battle, saying Azima has failed to prove the allegedly stolen data contained his trade secrets.

  • July 17, 2024

    Yet Another Patent Owner Wants High Court To Review Alice

    A small Alabama company that claims to have invented a new way of "processing returned mail" is the latest to complain to the U.S. Supreme Court about the state of patent eligibility law after the company was unable to enforce its patent against the U.S. Postal Service.

  • July 17, 2024

    Boehringer Wants Inhaler Antitrust Case Moved To Mass.

    Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. has urged a Connecticut federal court to transfer a proposed class action accusing it of blocking generic versions of two inhaler medications, saying a similar case was filed in Massachusetts several weeks earlier.

Expert Analysis

  • How Copyright Office AI Standards Depart From Precedent

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    The U.S. Copyright Office's recent departure from decades of precedent for technology-assisted works, and express refusal to grant protection to artificial intelligence-assisted works, may change as the dust settles around ancillary copyright issues for AI currently pending in litigation, says Kristine Craig at Hanson Bridgett.

  • IP Considerations For Companies In Carbon Capture Sector

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    As companies collaborate to commercialize carbon capture technologies amid massive government investment under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a coherent intellectual property strategy is more important than ever, including proactively addressing and resolving questions about ownership of the technology, say Ashley Kennedy and James De Vellis at Foley & Lardner.

  • Does Expert Testimony Aid Preliminary IPR Responses?

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    Dechert attorneys analyze six years of patent owners' preliminary responses to inter partes review petitions to determine whether the elimination of the presumption favoring the petitioner as to preinstitution testimonial evidence affected the usefulness of expert testimony in responses.

  • Rebuttal

    Double-Patenting Ruling Shows Terminal Disclaimers' Value

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    While a recent Law360 guest article seems to argue that the Federal Circuit’s Cellect decision last year robs patent owners of lawful patent term, the ruling actually identifies how terminal disclaimers are the solution to the problem of obviousness-type double patenting, say Jane Love and Robert Trenchard at Gibson Dunn.

  • Series

    Swimming Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Years of participation in swimming events, especially in the open water, have proven to be ideal preparation for appellate arguments in court — just as you must put your trust in the ocean when competing in a swim event, you must do the same with the judicial process, says John Kulewicz at Vorys.

  • How Courts Are Interpreting Fed. Circ. IPR Estoppel Ruling

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    In the year since the Federal Circuit’s Ironburg ruling, which clarified the scope of inter partes and post-grant review estoppel, district court decisions show that application of IPR or PGR estoppel may become a resource-intensive inquiry, say Whitney Meier Howard and Michelle Lavrichenko at Venable.

  • Should NIL Collectives Be Allowed Tax-Favored Status?

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    Arguments are being made for and against allowing organizations to provide charitable contribution tax deductions for donations used to compensate student-athletes, a practice with impacts on competition for student-athletes and overall tax fairness, but ultimately it is a question for Congress, say Andres Castillo and Barry Gogel at the University of Maryland School of Law.

  • What 100 Federal Cases Suggest About Changes To Chevron

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    With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn or narrow its 40-year-old doctrine of Chevron deference, a review of 100 recent federal district court decisions confirm that changes to the Chevron framework will have broad ramifications — but the magnitude of the impact will depend on the details of the high court's ruling, say Kali Schellenberg and Jon Cochran at LeVan Stapleton.

  • Patent Damages Jury Verdicts Aren't Always End Of The Story

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    Recent outcomes demonstrate that patent damages jury verdicts are often challenged and are overturned approximately one-third of the time, and successful verdict challenges typically occur at the appellate level and concern patent validity and infringement, say James Donohue and Marie Sanyal at Charles River.

  • Manufacturers Should Pay Attention To 'Right-To-Repair' Laws

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    Oregon’s recently passed "right-to-repair" statute highlights that the R2R movement is not going away, and that manufacturers of all kinds need to be paying attention to the evolving list of R2R statutes in various states and consider participating in the process, says Courtney Sarnow at Culhane.

  • Why High Court May Have Rejected IP Obviousness Appeal

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    Attorneys at Womble Bond analyze possible reasons the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Vanda Pharmaceuticals' request to review the Federal Circuit’s reasonable expectation of success standard for determining obviousness, including that the court was unpersuaded by the company's argument that Amgen v. Sanofi places a bind on drug developers.

  • Opinion

    Viral Deepfakes Of Taylor Swift Highlight Need For Regulation

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    As the nation grapples with addressing risk from artificial intelligence use, the recent circulation of AI-generated pornographic images of Taylor Swift on the social platform X highlights the need for federal legislation to protect nonconsenting subjects of deepfake pornography, say Nicole Brenner and Susie Ruiz-Lichter at Squire Patton.

  • A Guide To Using The DTSA For Misappropriation Recourse

    Excerpt from Practical Guidance
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    Nicholas Armington at Mintz explains the ins and outs of drafting a misappropriation complaint under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and how and why companies should think strategically about federal and state law when filing a claim.

  • How Cos. Can Protect IP In Light Of FTC Noncompete Rule

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    While several groups are challenging the Federal Trade Commission’s recently approved rule banning noncompetition agreements, employers should begin planning other ways to protect their valuable trade secrets, confidential information and other intellectual property, says Thomas Duston at Marshall Gerstein.

  • The Fed. Circ. In April: Hurdles Remain For Generics

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    The Federal Circuit’s recent Salix v. Norwich ruling — where Salix's brand-name drug's patents were invalidated — is a reminder to patent practitioners that invalidating a competitor's patents may not guarantee abbreviated new drug application approval, say Sean Murray and Jeremiah Helm at Knobbe Martens.

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