Posts in IP News

This week in Other Barks and Bites: Will Page’s Global Value of Music Copyright report shows that industry revenues have doubled since 2015 despite slowing growth as pandemic impacts are no longer felt; the Federal Circuit rules that it lacks jurisdiction to hear an appeal of an $8 million bond set under an Idaho state law prohibiting bad faith patent assertions; Micron expects the market for high-bandwidth memory chips to reach $100 billion by 2018; and more.

On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued its opinion in Micron Technology v. Longhorn IP. As reported earlier, the CAFC held that it lacked jurisdiction to hear Longhorn’s appeal from a district court order that required Longhorn to post an $8 million bond to proceed with a patent infringement case. In imposing the bond, the district court had relied on Idaho’s “anti-troll” statute, which outlaws assertions of patent infringement made in “bad faith.” Also under that statute, if a court finds a “reasonable likelihood” that a patent owner has made a bad faith assertion, the court must require the patent owner to post a bond equal to its opponent’s estimated litigation costs and damages.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a precedential decision in Micron Technology, Inc. v. Longhorn IP LLC, dismissing an appeal from a district court’s order imposing an $8 million bond under the Idaho Bad Faith Assertions of Patent Infringement Act. The opinion was authored by Judge Lourie and joined by Judges Schall and Stoll.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have introduced a bill to streamline the copyright registration process for visual artists, such as photographers, illustrators and graphic artists. According to a press release issued by Blackburn yesterday, “the [copyright] registration process is so bureaucratic and complicated that the time and expense of compliance is too high for high-volume creators like photographers, illustrators, and graphic artists.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a mixed, split, precedential ruling in Wonderland Switzerland AG v. Evenflo Company, Inc., reversing a permanent injunction and granting a new trial for willful patent infringement in a case between two child car seat manufacturers. The court found a district court judge abused his discretion both in granting an injunction based on speculative harm and in excluding a key email chain that asked how to “ingeniously” avoid a patent. The opinion was authored by Chief Judge Moore and Judge Reyna concurred-in-part and dissented-in-part.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a nonprecedential ruling in Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc. finding that the Eastern District of Texas did not abuse its discretion in denying third party Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) motion for permissive intervention in patent infringement proceedings. Applying Fifth Circuit rulings on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 24(b), the Federal Circuit agreed that EFF did not timely move to unseal summary judgment briefs surrounding infringement under the relevant cable data transmission standard.

In a Progress Statement published Monday, the UK Government said that its ongoing consultation on copyright and AI has drawn over 11,500 responses, 10,112 of which were submitted via an online survey service, and that 88% of those who responded online supported requiring licenses to use copyrighted works for AI training in all cases.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I have a conversation about patent eligibility with patent attorneys and IPWatchdog Advisory Committee members John Rogitz and Clint Mehall.  There can be little doubt that the U.S. patent system is at an inflection point. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating, and there is a growing understanding that dominating AI technologies is a matter of national and economic security. But as important as everyone seems to recognize AI innovation to be, there is widely diverging handling of AI innovations within government, with almost astonishingly different views between the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch, with the Legislative Branch simply missing in action.

On Friday, December 12, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced an update to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) Trial Practice Guide implementing a requirement for parties to participate in a pre-hearing conference 15 days prior to America Invents Act (AIA) oral hearings in cases instituted by the USPTO Director. According to a USPTO press release, the purpose of the pre-trial hearing conference will be for the Board to guide the parties as to which issues they should address, as well as to give parties a chance to explain the issues they would like to focus on at the oral hearing.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied certiorari to MSN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., a case that asked the Justices to clarify U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) precedent around using “after-arising technology” to hold a patent invalid in the context of patent-infringement suits. The case arises from a  January 2025 precedential CAFC decision reversing a district court’s determination that certain claims of a patent for Novartis’ heart failure drug Entresto were invalid for lack of written description, and affirming a finding that the claims were not shown to be invalid for obviousness, lack of enablement, or indefiniteness.

The “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act” (H.R. 6028), which was introduced in November and would require the Librarian of Congress to be appointed by a bipartisan commission of congress, as well as remove the Librarian’s authority over the Copyright Office, is reportedly on a path to be fast-tracked. Re:Create, an organization with the stated mission of fighting for “a balanced copyright system that is pro-innovation, pro-creator, and pro-consumer,” along with seven other copyright and consumer advocacy groups, sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Administration Committee on December 11 urging Committee Members to slow their consideration of the bill, citing reports that “the House is considering swift passage…possibly on the suspension calendar or through other expedient means.”

This Week in Other Barks & Bites: the EU’s General Court reduces a fine levied against Intel for anticompetitive behavior in the microprocessor market by €140 million; Disney signs a landmark character licensing deal with OpenAI while also warning Google to stop infringing uses of its copyrights via Google’s AI platforms. and more.

Companies face substantial liability for trade secret misappropriation. Jury awards this year have reached staggering amounts…. On November 21, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Computer Sciences Corp. v. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., __ 5th Cir. __, 2025 WL 3249148 (5th Cir. 2025), affirmed $56 million in compensatory damages, $112 million in punitive damages, a permanent injunction, and a 10-year monitorship against TCS… The Computer Sciences decision provides critical guidance on trade secret handling under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), clarifies what constitutes “willful and malicious” misappropriation, and establishes that exemplary damages may be awarded even where the plaintiff suffers no harm beyond lost profits.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday dismissed an appeal from Zuru Inc. in its ongoing copyright and trademark dispute with the Lego group, finding that the court lacked appellate jurisdiction. Lego A/S, Lego Systems, Inc., and Lego Juris A/S first brought claims against Zuru Inc. in 2019, alleging that Zuru’s “First-Generation” toy figurines infringed on the copyright and trademark rights of Lego’s Minifigure. The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut granted Lego’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which enjoined Zuru from manufacturing or selling the infringing First-Generation figurines and “any figurine or image that is substantially similar to the Minifigure Copyrights or likely to be confused with the Minifigure Trademarks.”

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