Posts in District Courts

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Friday reversed a district court’s award of attorneys’ fees to Elysium Health, Inc., holding that the lower court erred in assessing the substantive strength of ChromaDex’s Section 101 position. The appeal is rooted in the CAFC’s 2023 decision affirming the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware’s grant of summary judgment for Elysium Health that the asserted claims of ChromaDex’s patent on an isolated form of vitamin B3 were directed to unpatentable subject matter under Section 101.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday in Google LLC v. Sonos, Inc., affirming a summary judgment of non-infringement entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The CAFC agreed with the district court’s constructions of the claim terms “utilized” and “private key,” each of which resolved one of Google’s two infringement theories.

Several owners of Elvis Presley compositions filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on October 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company copied copyrighted lyrics without authorization to train its Claude large language models (LLMs) and that Claude generated infringing versions of the songs. The complaint asserted claims for direct copyright infringement, circumvention of technological protection measures under Section 1201 of Title 17, and removal or alteration of copyright management information (CMI) under Section 1202.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed the dismissal of a pro se patent owner’s claims against Live Nation, Ticketmaster, Major League Baseball and several law firms, concluding that the plaintiff waived her appellate arguments by failing to oppose the defendants’ dismissal motions in district court.

For companies in many industries, their most valuable trade secrets reside not in a single formula or document, but in years of accumulated data, coordinated processes, and combinations of technical and commercial information from various internal sources. Engineering know-how (including negative know-how), integrated software features, and customer databases can reflect years of investment and work effort and give competitors a shortcut if acquired improperly and used. Compilation and combination trade secret protection helps safeguard that collective value, even when some individual components are publicly known or unprotectable standing alone.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday denied two petitions for writ of mandamus arguing the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia abused its discretion in transferring three related patent infringement suits to the Northern District of Illinois.

Many intellectual property rights peacefully coexist because they apply to distinct aspects of a product. Issues can arise when intellectual property rights that expire and intellectual property rights that do not expire protect the same or overlapping features of the same product. One example is design patents and trade dress rights, both of which apply to non-functional ornamental features.

An Ohio judge has ruled that Amazon must face trial on claims that its Merch on Demand service directly and vicariously infringed an apparel company’s copyrights, although the company’s contributory-infringement claim was dismissed. In an October 14 opinion, U.S. District Judge Douglas R. Cole of the Southern District of Ohio denied Amazon and plaintiff Weekend Warrior Clothing LLC—a T-shirt company founded by two brothers—summary judgment on most of their competing claims.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday affirmed a decision for Hulu, LLC that dismissed a patent infringement suit brought by Piranha Media Distribution LLC because the asserted claims were found to be patent ineligible. The opinion was authored by Judge Cunningham. Piranha claimed that Hulu infringed its U.S. Patent Nos. 10,986,403 and 11,463,768, which relate to systems for integrating advertisements in digital media. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted Hulu’s motion to dismiss the complaint, finding that the claims were not directed to patent eligible subject matter.

Today, the U.S. Copyright Office published a notice of inquiry (NOI) in the Federal Register soliciting public comment on issues related to music piracy threatening billions in U.S. domestic revenues generated by digital streaming. The Office’s NOI responds to a request into the prevalence of streaming fraud across the music industry issued by U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), who also voiced concerns about generative artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on the music industry.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued an order Tuesday in In re Google LLC, granting a petition for a writ of mandamus and directing the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (WDTX) to transfer a patent infringement case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (NDCA). The CAFC concluded that “the decision to deny transfer here was patently erroneous.”

In economic theory, corporate value creation can be attributed to many factors and conflicting preferences. Prioritizing different factors produces a set of different outcomes and the outcome that is seemingly most efficient becomes the accepted norm. Sometimes however, corporate actors rely on accepted business practices which, while taken in the pursuit of the most optimal outcome, facilitate market distortions. Hit by a compute-driven demand shock and faced with resource scarcity, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have opted to allocate production capacity in a way that has exacerbated an industry- wide memory card supply shortage. But to fully understand why the price of hardware components and consumer electronic devices has been steadily surging, we must first start with Nvidia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Truinject Corp. v. Galderma S.A., affirming a U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware judgment for Galderma S.A. on tortious interference, breach of contract, and trade secret misappropriation claims. The CAFC held that Truinject Corporation forfeited its arguments on appeal about the dismissal of its tortious interference claim and the summary judgment of no damages.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision Wednesday vacating and remanding a district court ruling that had denied Pen-Tech Associates, Inc.’s motion for sanctions and attorney’s fees due to Epic Tech, LLC’s allegedly frivolous infringement claims. The CAFC found the district court had provided “insufficient detail to permit meaningful review.”