Intellectual Property

  • October 28, 2024

    Parts Manufacturer Tells Pa. Jury Competitor Poached Stats

    A lawyer for hardware manufacturer Penn Engineering & Manufacturing Corp. told a federal jury in Philadelphia on Monday that one of its competitors used performance data from Penn's products to boost its own line of parts, creating confusion among consumers.

  • October 28, 2024

    NASA Says Sensor Co.'s Contract Breach Case Should Fail

    NASA has said the U.S. Court of Federal Claims should throw out a sensor business's breach of contract suit over commercialization and licensing deals related to patented NASA technology, saying certain milestones couldn't be reached under the pact.

  • October 28, 2024

    Ex-Oracle Manager, Software Co. Face Trade Secrets Suit

    A new lawsuit by Oracle claims that a manager left the company for a competing venture-backed construction software tech outfit and "absconded with thousands of Oracle's trade secret[s]."

  • October 28, 2024

    Judge Leaves Patent Case After Fed. Circ. Undoes Ruling

    A Minnesota federal judge has recused himself from a patent dispute between Teleflex and Medtronic he has handled since 2019, saying he was "at a loss" on how to proceed after the Federal Circuit faulted his interpretation of terms in Teleflex's catheter patents.

  • October 28, 2024

    Calif. Court OKs $1.2M Award In Polo Club TM Fight

    A California federal judge has said a Santa Barbara County-based polo club is entitled to $1.2 million in fees, costs and interest as part of a trademark dispute over a "Beverly Hills Polo Club" logo following arbitration.

  • October 28, 2024

    Realtor.com Owner, CoStar Debate CFAA's Limits In Theft Suit

    An attorney for Costar urged a California federal judge Monday to reconsider a tentative ruling that would allow Realtor.com's parent company to amend a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim alleging its rival unlawfully accessed its computers, saying the company should be limited to arguing it suffered "technological harms."

  • October 28, 2024

    OpenAI Pushes To Consolidate Discovery In Copyright Cases

    Microsoft and OpenAI say that concerns from news outfits over consolidating discovery in their ChatGPT copyright lawsuits are "misplaced" and call a request to schedule more depositions "wholly unnecessary."

  • October 28, 2024

    Pfizer Urges Court Not To Ax Delay Defense In Vax IP Fight

    Pfizer and BioNTech have urged a Delaware federal judge to reject GlaxoSmithKline's attempt to toss claims that the COVID-19 vaccine technology patents GSK is accusing them of infringing are unenforceable because of an unreasonable delay in obtaining them.

  • October 28, 2024

    King & Spalding Adds White & Case Antitrust Litigator In NY

    King & Spalding LLP is expanding its business litigation team, announcing Monday it is bringing in a White & Case LLP litigator as a partner in its New York office to boost its antitrust capabilities.

  • October 28, 2024

    Medical Laser Co. Seeks Multiplier For Rival's 'Deceitful' Raid

    A medical laser company has asked a Boston federal judge to double or triple its $25 million verdict against a rival firm — and tack on attorney fees and $6.8 million in interest — for a "calculated and deceitful corporate raid" on its sales workforce.

  • October 28, 2024

    MVP: Quinn Emanuel's Victoria Maroulis

    Victoria Maroulis — co-chair of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP's national intellectual property litigation practice — beat back a major patent infringement case against Samsung Electronics in Texas and helped guide junior attorneys through an important cross-examination in patent proceedings on behalf of Juul Labs Inc., earning her a spot among the 2024 Law360 Intellectual Property MVPs.

  • October 25, 2024

    OpenAI, Authors Battle Over Execs' Texts And Proof Of Harm

    California labor law doesn't shield OpenAI from producing CEO Sam Altman's and President Greg Brockman's texts and social media messages relevant to a copyright infringement lawsuit, authors alleging OpenAI and Microsoft illegally used their copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence program ChatGPT have told a New York federal judge.

  • October 25, 2024

    Inari Wins Bid To Kill Plant Gene Patent At PTAB

    A Massachusetts-based plant breeding startup was able to show that a patent owned by a unit of a DowDuPont spin-off covering a plant gene resistant to weed killers wasn't patentable, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found.

  • October 25, 2024

    Vidal Warned Of 'Heightened' Burden, 'Loophole' In Seed Fight

    Two new petitions in front of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director say the patent administrative board created "a heightened new standard" in one instance and a trade secrets "loophole" in another in order to protect patents covering purportedly novel corn seeds developed by a unit of DowDuPont spin-off Corteva.

  • October 25, 2024

    9th Circ. Backs 7-Year Sentence Over Chip Exports To China

    The Ninth Circuit on Friday upheld the seven-year prison sentence imposed on a former University of California, Los Angeles, electrical engineering professor convicted of illegally exporting high-powered semiconductor chips to China, saying the district court did not err in holding that the conduct amounted to an evasion of national security controls.

  • October 25, 2024

    Jury Mostly Sides With Woodland Tools On False Ad Claims

    A Wisconsin federal jury has largely found in favor of gardening toolmaker Woodland Tools on allegations that competitor Fiskars Brands made false claims about the design origin and cutting power of Fiskars products including pruners and shears.

  • October 25, 2024

    'Open AI' TM Owner Asks 9th Circ. To Nix Injunction

    A man accused by OpenAI of preventing the ChatGPT-maker from registering its name as a trademark urged the Ninth Circuit on Friday to vacate an injunction blocking him from using the "Open AI" mark while his case is pending, arguing he's the mark's senior holder and calling the injunction "extraordinary and unprecedented."

  • October 25, 2024

    VLSI Urges Fed. Circ. To Punish OpenSky After Vidal Didn't

    U.S. Patent Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal vowed to sanction OpenSky Industries "to the fullest extent of [her] power" for filing a bad faith patent challenge, but then imposed sanctions that, if anything, rewarded the misconduct, VLSI Technology has told the Federal Circuit.

  • October 25, 2024

    Trina Solar Seeks Import Ban On Solar Cells That Infringe IP

    Trina Solar Co. Ltd. has advanced its campaign to ban competitors' solar products from the U.S., calling on the U.S. International Trade Commission to prohibit the import of Canadian Solar Inc. products that purportedly infringe its intellectual property.

  • October 25, 2024

    Copyright Head Touts Claims Board, AI Studies At Conference

    As Shira Perlmutter completes four years as the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, she told attorneys Friday the agency dealt "with just a dizzying array of issues" — with artificial intelligence technology being ever present — but the Copyright Claims Board was one of her top accomplishments.

  • October 25, 2024

    Off The Bench: Toss-Up For Ohtani Ball, UFC Fighters' Payday

    In this week's Off The Bench, the three claimants to a historic baseball now know how much is at stake for the winner, a long fight against wage suppression for mixed martial arts fighters is a step closer to ending, and WNBA players want a bigger piece of a growing revenue pie.

  • October 25, 2024

    Pink Is Too Close To Purple, National Gypsum Judge Says

    Drywall manufacturer National Gypsum has convinced a Chicago federal judge that new shades of pink used by a company that makes shower wall niches broke the terms of an injunction that was issued after a jury sided with National Gypsum in a legal dispute over the use of the color purple in construction materials.

  • October 25, 2024

    AI Researchers Lose Bid For DMCA Anti-Hacking Carveout

    Researchers who want to look into whether generative artificial intelligence was producing content that was discriminatory or explicit won't be exempt from a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that bars circumventing digital locks on copyrighted material, according to a new rule.

  • October 25, 2024

    Masimo Infringed 2 Apple Watch Patents, Jury Finds

    Healthcare tech company Masimo Corp. was found to have infringed two of Apple Inc.'s patents Friday at the close of a five-day U.S. District Court jury trial in Delaware that put more future tech prospects than current cash on the line.

  • October 25, 2024

    Judge Wants More Clarity About Alex Jones Ch. 7 Asset Sales

    A Texas bankruptcy judge deferred ruling on a motion from the Chapter 7 trustee in the bankruptcy of right-wing media fabulist Alex Jones to conduct sales of certain of the estate's assets, saying he wants to know whether the parties to the case anticipate future litigation on the trustee's ability to sell the assets.

Expert Analysis

  • Breaking Down Director Review Timing At The PTAB

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    Attorneys at Fish & Richardson examine the complexities of director review of a Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruling, including timelines for requests and decisions, and how these factors influence related district court cases.

  • Calif. Bill, NTIA Report Illustrate Open-Model AI Safety Debate

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    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s balanced recommendations for preventing misuse of open artificial intelligence models, contrasted with a more aggressive California bill, demonstrate an evolving regulatory debate about balancing democratic access to this powerful new technology against potential risks to the public, say Stuart Meyer and Fredrick Tsang at Fenwick.

  • Behind 3rd Circ. Ruling On College Athletes' FLSA Eligibility

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    The Third Circuit's decision that college athletes are not precluded from bringing a claim under the Fair Labor Standards Act raises key questions about the practical consequences of treating collegiate athletes as employees, such as Title IX equal pay claims and potential eligibility for all employment benefits, say attorneys at Debevoise.

  • Patent Lessons From 4 Federal Circuit Reversals In July

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    The Federal Circuit’s July reversal of four cases, all of which were Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions, highlights lessons for patent practitioners regarding the scope of estoppel provisions, potential issues with obtaining certain substitute claims, and more, say Denise De Mory and Li Guo at Bunsow De Mory.

  • Video Game Release Highlights TM Pitfalls Of App Store

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    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.

  • 5 Credibility Lessons Trial Attys Can Learn From Harris' Run

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    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.

  • Patent Owner Estoppel Questions In The Wake Of SoftView

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    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.

  • Copyright Termination Opinion Departs From Long-Held Views

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    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.

  • 3 Patent Considerations For America's New Quantum Hub

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    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.

  • 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.

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