Posts in Guest Contributors

Unfortunately, we are going through another period where many see the triumvirate of big government, big business and big labor guiding an economy stuck at a 2% growth rate as preferable to the messy “creative destruction” of free enterprise capitalism. The emphasis on making sure the existing economic pie is fairly distributed rather than grown leads to increased hostility to the intellectual property system. We see arguments that patents harm rather than stimulate innovation and hear how much better it would be if they were placed in the public domain or licensed non-exclusively to be more fair. Many have forgotten that our prosperity is the result of inventions that in just a few decades created a standard of living previously unimaginable.

PTAB decisions are predominately given one of three classifications: precedential, informative or routine. Only precedential decisions are to serve as binding authority. Informative decisions may serve as an authority but are not binding. Routine decisions may be cited as relevant but are not to be cited as an authority. Recent research indicates that, of the 20,631 ex parte appeal decisions issued in fiscal years 2013 or 2014, less than 0.04% (more specifically, 7 of the 20,631) were precedential or informative.

The United States Supreme Court is commonly known to resolve difficult issues of law. Yet, Alice v. CLS Bank[ii], last year’s unanimous Supreme Court decision, has caused confusion about whether computer-implemented business methods and software innovations are patentable under 35 U.S.C. §101. The question of patentability of software-related innovations – even those involving merely implementations of business-related innovations – seemed…

We’ve all been there. The Marketing team comes up with a shortlist of branding ideas for the latest product or service – and at the top of the list is a brand which is descriptive. As trade mark lawyers, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs properly if we didn’t explain that the descriptive brand will be more difficult to register as a trade mark than a made-up, distinctive name (in the UK anyway). Plus, it’ll be harder to enforce. However, the appeal of a descriptive brand (simple and clear) can’t be denied, especially with internet searching and online sales now so important. In this post, we’ll take a look at a few obstacles to enforcing a descriptive brand in the UK and Europe, and how to overcome them.

Summit 6 LLC (“Summit”) sued Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC (collectively “Samsung”) and others alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,765,482 (“the ’482 patent”), which relates to the processing of digital photos and other digital content before being transmitted over a network by client devices (e.g., cell phones). Summit’s expert testimony and the license resulting in settlement for another defendant, RIM, supported the damages verdict. The RIM license was comparable because both RIM and Samsung sell camera phones having the accused MMS functionality.

Astornet sued NCR Government Systems, MorphoTrust, and BAE Systems Inc., alleging that they supplied the Transportation Security Administration (“TSA”) with certain boarding pass scanning systems, and that TSA’s use of the equipment infringed or would infringe its patent. The complaints alleged that the defendants “induced (and contributed to) direct infringement by TSA by virtue of TSA’s use of equipment supplied by the defendants.” The Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal based on 28 U.S.C. § 1498 barring the suits by limiting Astornet’s remedy to an action against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims.

Mark Towle owns Gotham Garage, which manufactures and sells replicas of automobiles featured in famous motion pictures and television programs. Gotham Garage specifically sold fully constructed cars as well as kits which allow customers to modify their car to look like the Batmobile, and advertised its replicas as “Batmobiles” while marketing its business via the domain name batmobilereplicas.com. In May 2011, DC Comics filed suit against Towle for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition arising out of Towle’s marketing and sale of Batmobile replicas. Towle countered that the Batmobile – at least as it appeared in the famous 1966 television series and the 1989 motion picture, the main inspirations for Gotham Garage’s designs – was not subject to copyright protection.

A very troublesome flaw in Talent Wants to be Free is that the author frequently conflates non-compete agreements with two other very common forms of employee restraints: confidentiality (or nondisclosure) agreements and invention assignments. As most practitioners can readily appreciate, there is a world of difference between the first one and the other two, and they typically are not joined in a single document. Non-competes stop someone from taking a job with a competitor, and their use is restricted in many places and illegal in a few, like California.

In February 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded a 29-second video of her son dancing in her kitchen to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” to YouTube. Universal Music Group, Prince’s publishing administrator responsible for enforcing his copyrights, objected to the otherwise-innocuous video, and sent YouTube a warning to remove the video, claiming that it constituted copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Stephanie Lenz sued, arguing that Universal’s takedown request targeted permissible fair use, which generally permits the use of copyrighted material in limited conditions, such as when used in connection with criticism, parody, commentary or news reporting.

Since the inception of the search engine, trademark owners, advertisers, search engine providers, and the courts have struggled with the issue of the use of third-party trademarks in keyword advertising and search returns, and whether such trademark use is likely to confuse consumers when they are searching for information regarding a particular brand. Despite an array of holdings on this issue over the years, following the 2011 decision in Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced System Concepts, Inc., the Ninth Circuit and other courts have generally held that the potential for “mere diversion” of a consumer caused by the use of a third party’s trademark in connection with sponsored keywords or search results does not constitute trademark infringement unless a trademark owner can demonstrate that particular search returns or sponsored keyword advertisements are likely to cause confusion based on the specific use or presentation of a trademark in a search return.

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont (The Green Mile; The Shawshank Redemption) brought the The Walking Dead TV show to life. He wrote, directed, and produced the pilot episode, and served as the showrunner and executive producer (often-synonymous positions) for its smash-hit first season. It was surprising then, when AMC suddenly fired Darabont while Season 2 was in production, and after sending him to promote the series at Comic-Con. Darabont sued in New York State Court in December of 2013, and recently amended his complaint to include the lack of accreditation and profits allegedly owed him from AMC’s “companion series,” Fear the Walking Dead.

Most people are familiar with the four-finger KitKat bar which has been produced by Nestlé in the UK since 1935. In 2010 Nestlé decided to apply to register the four-finger shape of the KitKat bar as a trade mark. Cadbury, fearing Nestlé would be able to establish a monopoly on four-fingered chocolate products, raised an objection to the application. Nestlé were initially successful in their application but, following Cadbury’s legal challenge, the case escalated to the High Court and the CJEU where the shape was subjected to further scrutiny and ultimately rejected as a trademark.

The Federal Circuit disagreed, holding that “record evidence establishe[d] a genuine dispute over whether a person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to add a vent to Hoang’s disinfecting cap.” The Court also held that “the tradeoff between the desire to retain cleaning agent and the patents’ disclosure regarding drying is a factual matter left to the factfinder.”

While patents protect innovations that are novel, nonobvious and useful, data exclusivity protects the extensive preclinical and clinical trial data required to establish new therapies as safe and effective. Regulatory data protection safeguards this data for a limited period of time, preventing competing firms from free-riding on the data that was generated at great expense. Specifically, biosimilar firms seeking regulatory approval are required to produce their own preclinical and clinical trial data to establish safety and efficacy, or wait the set period of time after which they are able to utilize the innovator’s prior approval in an abbreviated regulatory approval, eliminating the need for independently generated data.

What may be less well known is that Octane was not itself a “patent troll” case. Rather, Octane involved another kind of abusive patent litigation; namely, a large company asserting a patent it pulled “off the shelf” against a small start-up competitor. While patent trolls gain economic advantage through economies of scale, large companies have economic advantages over smaller competitors by virtue of their size and resources, and can similarly abuse the system. They can use the high cost to defend patent litigation as a competitive weapon, either to force the smaller competitor to exit the market, discontinue a product line, or pay an unwarranted royalty (thereby hindering the competitor in the marketplace). On remand, the District Court in the Octane case recognized just this sort of economic coercion, and found the case exceptional warranting a fee award. And last week, the District Court awarded almost $2 million in fees and costs to Octane, the prevailing accused infringer.