Intellectual Property

  • July 23, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Gives Netflix 2nd Chance To Challenge Broadcom IP

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board must reconsider Netflix's petitions challenging the validity of a Broadcom unit's software performance monitoring patent, the Federal Circuit held Tuesday, finding flaws in the board's refusal to invalidate claims. 

  • July 23, 2024

    The Biggest Trademark Rulings Of 2024: A Midyear Report

    The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a California attorney's arguments that registering "Trump Too Small" as a trademark constituted speech protected by the First Amendment, and a split Ninth Circuit concluded district courts have the power to cancel trademark applications during litigation. Here's a look at some of the most notable trademark decisions so far this year.

  • July 23, 2024

    Full Fed. Circ. Won't Undo TD Ameritrade's One-Word IP Win

    The full Federal Circuit on Monday denied a patent owner's en banc rehearing petition challenging a one-word ruling in favor of stockbroker TD Ameritrade in a high-stakes patent fight and effectively rejected an amicus party's legal challenge to the court's rule allowing one-word affirmance decisions.

  • July 23, 2024

    Litigation Funder Says Apple Doc Request Is 'Mere Suspicion'

    Apple Inc. is trying to make an "end run" around a California trial court by demanding that Omni Bridgeway LLC turn over documents explaining its financial interest in patent litigation against Apple based on "mere suspicion," the litigation funder has told a Delaware federal judge.

  • July 23, 2024

    Senate Dems Roll Out Bill To Codify Chevron Deference

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., led a group of Democratic senators Tuesday in introducing a bill to codify the now-defunct doctrine of Chevron deference after it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month.

  • July 23, 2024

    Firm Says Rival's Trademark Merely 'Common Spanish Phrase'

    A Houston-based immigration law firm wants claims trimmed in a suit brought by a rival Washington state firm claiming unfair competition and trademark violation, also filing a counterclaim for declaratory judgment that calls the supposed trademark a "common Spanish phrase."

  • July 22, 2024

    Elon Musk's X Corp. Accused Of TM Infringement, Again

    Public relations firm Multiply on Monday accused Elon Musk's social media platform of ripping off its stylized "X" logo to create a substantially similar design, despite knowing Multiply already has a registered trademark, according to an infringement lawsuit in California federal court.

  • July 22, 2024

    Neo Wireless Deceived Patent Officials, Auto Giants Say

    Automakers accused of infringing Neo Wireless LLC's technology have urged a Michigan federal judge to keep alive their defense that Neo committed misconduct, arguing that the wireless company withheld information about a competitor's project that would have rendered the patents at issue obvious.

  • July 22, 2024

    USPTO Wins Dismissal Of Danish Co.'s PTSD Drug Lawsuit

    A Virginia federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appropriately rejected drugmaker Lundbeck's request for three additional months of patent exclusivity for a PTSD drug, saying the agency could dock those days due to the impermissible gray shading of some text in the company's patent application.

  • July 22, 2024

    VidStream Can't Block X Features That Allegedly Infringe IP

    VidStream can't block X Corp. from deploying features that allegedly infringe its patent over a system for receiving and distributing user-generated video, a Texas federal judge said Monday, finding that VidStream is unable to show the alleged infringement can't be remedied through monetary damages and therefore fails to show it will be irreparably harmed.

  • July 22, 2024

    LegalForce Says Legal Finance Group Is Infringing Its Logo

    LegalForce RAPC Worldwide PC has filed a federal trademark infringement suit against Law Finance Group Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area, accusing it of violating the firm's "LF" trademark in providing legal services.

  • July 22, 2024

    Jury Delivers $138M Verdict In Bitcoin Mining Consultant Suit

    A California federal jury unanimously found bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. liable for nearly $139 million in damages over allegedly breaching a consultant's contract when it cut him out of the deal he brought to the firm.

  • July 22, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Axes Claim In UNM Network Patent, Questions Others

    The Federal Circuit ruled Monday that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board wrongly upheld part of a University of New Mexico wireless communications patent challenged by network equipment maker Zyxel, and ordered the board to reconsider amended claims it had allowed.

  • July 22, 2024

    9th Circ. Backs Moving Video Game IP Suit To South Korea

    The Ninth Circuit on Monday said a federal judge correctly dismissed a copyright and trade secrets complaint from a South Korean video game developer against a rival because their country is a more convenient venue, rejecting plaintiff Nexon Korea Corp.'s arguments that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act should have prevented that from happening.

  • July 22, 2024

    Scanner Maker Tells 4th Circ. Contract Ends Honeywell Suit

    Laser technology company Opto Electronics urged the Fourth Circuit to overturn a jury finding that it was liable for ripping off Honeywell International over royalties for barcode scanners, arguing that a contract between the companies foreclosed the result as a matter of law.

  • July 22, 2024

    Midyear Report: Surveying Vast NCAA Litigation Landscape

    While the NCAA has never been a stranger to high-stakes litigation, the past six months have seen a deluge of courtroom intrigue as college athletes flex their legal muscle amid a quickly shifting consensus on the organization's overall business model.

  • July 22, 2024

    Litigation Funder Sues Wyoming Co. With Same Name

    Litigation funding company Parabellum Capital LLC has filed a trademark lawsuit in Colorado federal court against a Wyoming company called Parabellum Capital Inc., but the Wyoming company appears to be backing down.

  • July 22, 2024

    Olympic Committee Hits Logan Paul's Drink Co. With TM Suit

    The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee has sued a sports beverage company co-founded by social media influencer and wrestler Logan Paul, Prime Hydration, alleging that it is infringing on Olympic trademarks with an ad campaign featuring NBA star and Team USA member Kevin Durant.

  • July 22, 2024

    1st Circ. Doubts Calif. Law Governs DraftKings Job Fight

    A former DraftKings executive seeking to undo his noncompete contract appeared to make little headway with the First Circuit on Monday as he argued that Massachusetts law should take a backseat in the dispute to California's more worker-friendly statute.

  • July 19, 2024

    Platform Sciences Hit With $19M Omnitracs Patent Verdict

    A California federal jury on Friday determined that Qualcomm spin-off Omnitracs is entitled to $19.3 million in lost profits and a $140,000 royalty after a former executive's new company willfully infringed one of its fleet management software patents, but cleared it of infringing two other patents.

  • July 19, 2024

    House IP Committee Heads Unveil Drug Pricing Bill

    Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., respectively the chair and top Democrat of the House intellectual property subcommittee, on Friday introduced a new bill that would change patent law to increase competition in the prescription drug market in order to lower patient costs.

  • July 19, 2024

    14 NBA Teams Hit With Copyright Suits Over Songs In Videos

    Fourteen NBA teams have been hit with complaints by several music companies that accuse the basketball franchises of using copyrighted songs in promotional videos without permission, according to lawsuits in Manhattan federal court.

  • July 19, 2024

    Jury Finds Booking.com Owes Ryanair $5K For Data Scraping

    Irish discount airline Ryanair has convinced a Delaware federal jury to find that online travel website giant Booking.com should pay $5,000 for using screen scraping software in a way that ran afoul of computer fraud laws, which the airline likened to "internet piracy."

  • July 19, 2024

    Judge Tosses Traders' Counterclaims In Trade Secrets Case

    A Manhattan federal judge has ruled that Millennium Management LLC and two of its employees cannot yet use the federal trade secrets law to claim attorney fees with their allegation that investment firm Jane Street Group LLC sued them in bad faith over a proprietary trading strategy.

  • July 19, 2024

    Boehringer Looks To Toss Inhaler Antitrust Case

    Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. urged a Massachusetts federal court to toss a proposed class action accusing it of blocking generic versions of two inhaler medications, saying it has valid patents protecting the products.

Expert Analysis

  • A Vision For Economic Clerkships In The Legal System

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    As courts handle increasingly complex damages analyses involving vast amounts of data, an economic clerkship program — integrating early-career economists into the judicial system — could improve legal outcomes and provide essential training to clerks, say Mona Birjandi at Data for Decisions and Matt Farber at Secretariat.

  • Measuring Early Impact Of Rule 702 Changes On Patent Cases

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    Since Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was amended to clarify the standards for admitting expert witness testimony five months ago, emerging trends in patent cases suggest that it may be easier to limit or exclude expert testimony, and hold key practice takeaways for attorneys, say Manuel Velez and Nan Zhang at Mayer Brown.

  • Protecting IP May Be Tricky Without Noncompetes

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    Contrary to the Federal Trade Commission's view, trade secret law cannot replace noncompetes' protection of proprietary information because intellectual property includes far more than just trade secrets, so businesses need to closely examine their IP protection options, say Aimee Fagan and Ching-Lee Fukuda at Sidley.

  • 8 Legal Issues Influencing Investors In The Creator Economy

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    The rapidly expanding digital creator economy — funding for which more than doubled in the U.S. in the first quarter — comes with its own set of unique legal issues investors must carefully consider before diving in, say Louis Lehot and Alan Pate at Foley & Lardner.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Recent Rulings On Text Message Data

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    Electronically stored information on cellphones, and in particular text messages, can present unique litigation challenges, and recent court decisions demonstrate that counsel must carefully balance what data should be preserved, collected, reviewed and produced, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • 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.

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