Posts in District Courts

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.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision Friday in The Receivership Estate of AudienceScience Inc. v. Google LLC, affirming a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that granted Google LLC and YouTube LLC judgment on the pleadings on patent ineligibility grounds under 35 U.S.C. Section 101.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a minute order on September 18, in Perlmutter v. Blanche, staying the lawsuit brought by Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter until December 18, 2026. Judge Timothy J. Kelly pointed to the House of Representatives’ June passage of the Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act, H.R. 6028, which would designate the Register of Copyrights as an officer “appointed by the President” with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Online counterfeiting has become ubiquitous. A seller located anywhere in the world can create a digital storefront, copy a brand owner’s photographs and product descriptions, adopt a business name that reveals nothing, and begin selling into the United States before the brand owner even knows the account exists. If the seller is discovered and enforcement begins, the listing disappears, the money moves out of the country and beyond the practical reach of the court system, and a new account surfaces under a different name. Then the entire process repeats.

Representative Darrell Issa introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) on Monday, a bill aimed at creating an expedited judicial mechanism for copyright owners to obtain orders blocking access to certain foreign piracy sites. While the official text of the bill has not yet been published, several groups have responded based on their review of a draft of the bill that was circulated to stakeholders in May 2025.

In a precedential decision issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) vacated a patent infringement judgment against Nine Energy Service Inc., holding that the Western District of Texas court incorrectly construed two terms of NCS Multistage’s patent and that an earlier sale relied upon by NCS did not qualify as a public disclosure under the America Invents Act (AIA).

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling in AlterWAN, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. affirming a stipulated final judgment of noninfringement entered by the District of Delaware and dismissing AlterWAN’s challenges to the district court’s construction of claims directed to wide area network (WAN) implementation. Dissenting to the majority opinion was U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, sitting by designation from the Southern District of New York, who took issue with the majority’s judgment resting on non-claim terms inferred as limitations from vague specification language and irrelevant prosecution history.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision Friday in Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., affirming a district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement, its construction of the claim term “universal,” and its denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) of infringement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a decision today in Viavi Solutions Inc. v. Platinum Optics Technology Inc., affirming a Northern District of California ruling that awarded attorney’s fees to Platinum Optics Technology Inc. (PTOT) after finding Viavi Solutions Inc. litigated its patent infringement claims in a manner that met the standard for an “exceptional” case under 35 U.S.C. Section 285.

On September 1, a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio J.M. Smucker Co.‘s trademark and trade dress claims over its crustless, crimped-edge peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The ruling allows that was filed last October against Trader Joe’s private-label “Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches” to proceed to discovery and, potentially, a merits determination on whether a sealed, circular sandwich shape can function as a protectable trademark.

On September 1, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Statement of Interest urging the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to hold that using copyrighted written works to train large language models (LLMs) is fair use, arguing that a contrary result would distort copyright law, suppress innovation and weaken U.S. competitiveness and national security. The statement was filed in reference to the multidistrict copyright litigation against OpenAI, although it specifically addressed claims by The New York Times and said its reasoning also applies to the related cases involving book authors and publishers.