With December here, it really ’tis the season to be jolly’, and with that, many employers indulge in the festive merriment with an annual tradition; the office Christmas party. The afternoon ‘Out of Office’ goes on, the sparkly attire comes out and, many an ear drum is burst as teams of Mariah aficionados compete to hit those harmonic high notes. Karaoke-keen or not, the office Christmas party is the perfect opportunity for employers to thank employees for their contributions over the last year, to bond, share a drink and relax into the holiday season. However, with a glass quickly turning into a bottle, the party can be (and often is) a recipe for disaster that creates consequences extending far beyond the next-day hangover. With many employers well underway in their planning of this year’s Christmas party, we provide a 5-point guide highlighting the steps that can be taken to help avoid any HR headaches.

Squire Patton Boggs welcomes Kerry Lee, the former Head of Group Intellectual Property of Walgreens Boots Alliance, as a partner in the Intellectual Property & Technology Practice in the Manchester and London offices. He has extensive experience in contentious and non-contentious IP enforcement and e-commerce matters in relation to trademark, design, patent, copyright, domain name and other IP matters across Europe, South East Asia and North America.

The Fed has been oblivious to the mechanisms of market economics and technology investment driven by the degradation of patent rights in recent years. While the Fed focuses exclusively on inflation and the labor market, they have ignored factors driving technology investment and the disintegration of the patent system that has underscored the declining business investment trend. With a degraded patent system, investors have shifted to other asset classes or markets rather than investing in technology.

On Thursday, December 14th, the commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will convene an open meeting to discuss several subjects, one of which is titled Restoring Internet Freedom. According to news reports, the FCC is likely to approve this order in a 3-2 vote along party lines to return the classification of broadband Internet access service to its prior classification as information service… Despite the high likelihood that the order will be passed by the FCC’s commissioners, or maybe more because of that likelihood, there has been a lot of recent press on how the FCC under current Chairman Ajit Pai has drawn the ire of net neutrality supporters.

Unfortunately, there’s every indication that today’s event at Brookings will feature more of the same kind of misguided rhetoric on perceived issues with the patent system which don’t truly exist. The evidence for this starts with the moderator for the day’s final roundtable discussion, titled Realigning Incentives to Increase Patent Quality. The moderator for this discussion will be Tim Lee, senior reporter of tech policy for Ars Technica. Lee has written in the past on the effects of “ridiculous patent litigation” and has given space to viewpoints which want to limit patentability in certain sectors, such as in business methods. Lee has also been very critical of appellate court decisions in patent cases in recent years to the point that assertions he’s made on case law regarding the patentability of software inventions border on the ridiculously absurd. This individual, who has a clearly anti-patent viewpoint, will be controlling the discussion during the final panel roundtable on patent policy.

Globally, a total of 3.1 million patent applications were filed with patent offices worldwide during 2016, an increase of 8.3 percent over 2015’s filing numbers and the seventh straight year in which saw a year-over-year increase in global patent application filings. About 1.3 million patent applications were filed with China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), a record number of patent applications received by any patent office in a single year. China’s 2016 patent application total is greater than the combined total of patent applications filed in 2016 in the United States (605,571), Japan (318,381), South Korea (208,830) and Europe (159,358). These five jurisdictions accounted for 84 percent of all patent applications filed during 2016.

On December 1st, Niwot, CO-based shoe manufacturer Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ:CROX) filed a motion for sanctions against Las Vegas, NV-based rival firm USA Dawgs Inc., which outlined a series of harassing legal moves in which Dawgs has engaged in recent years. Crocs is asking the District of Nevada to award Crocs costs and attorneys’ fees incurred by a lawsuit which Crocs alleges that Dawgs has pursued in bad faith.

AST, the leading provider of proactive patent risk mitigation solutions, has named Ray Strimaitis to the newly created role of Vice President, Corporate Development & Global Strategy. Strimaitis will report directly to Russell W. Binns, Jr., CEO of AST and will be based in Silicon Valley. Strimaitis joins AST after serving as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Yahoo!

A new study of proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) shows that, despite the initial reputation of Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings being that of patent killers, patent owners are winning more cases than ever. The study, conducted by law firm Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto, shows that the rate at which patent claims were found unpatentable by the PTAB fell significantly in 2016, while the volume of claims in dispute rose dramatically. The study found that in every quarter of 2016, the reviewed final written decisions resulted in more than half of the claims originally challenged in IPR proceedings surviving. By contrast, in the previous two years, the survival rate of such claims exceeded 50 percent only once. In the first quarter of 2014, in fact, less than 20 percent of such claims survived challenge.

Like other opinions in the IP arena, the Supreme Court’s decision in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands has created a new legal rule with limited practical guidance that will inevitably lead to less predictability in an already-murky area of copyright law.  Its new “imaginative separability” test for copyright eligibility for useful articles, such as footwear, clothing, and furniture, may be so easy that few designs will fail to qualify.  Yet, ultimately, Star Athletica may have the unimagined consequence of making copyright protection less desirable for qualifying designs. For those who seek the benefits of the Court’s undeniable expansion of potential copyright protection for useful designs, a bit of caution may be the appropriate response.

In late November, the legal dispute between San Diego, CA-based semiconductor developer Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Cupertino, CA-based consumer tech giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) over patents covering various electronic device components and features. A series of actions taking place in the Southern District of California shifts the focus of what has been an international squabble over patent infringement and antitrust claims back to American soil.

This week US Inventor, an inventor organization working in Washington DC and around the US to advocate for strong patent protection for inventors and startups, rolled out the U.S. Inventor Act in the House of Representatives… Early stage funding for U.S. startups has dropped 62%. We are at a 40 year low in new business formation. What used to be approximately 85% of all venture capital invested in U.S. startups is now about half invested in China’s startups. Not surprisingly, in communist China, the startup market is booming, growing by 23%. As a result, China has taken the lead in swaths of new technologies, including technologies critical to our national security like artificial intelligence (AI). AI runs not only our power grids, but our tanks and ships. We will soon be mired in the swamp of a national security disaster as China moves even further ahead and we are forced to purchase these products from them.

Native American tribes possess and exercise inherent sovereign immunity. It is also undisputable that such power may be abrogated, limited or qualified only by the express and unequivocal action of Congress. In Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma v Manufacturing Technologies, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly affirmed that no court or administrative agency may interfere with that power absent Congressional legislation… The Court again in Bay Mills reiterated that absent congressional limitations, tribes exercise unqualified immunity. The Court even went so far as to note that “a fundamental commitment of Indian law is judicial respect for Congress’s primary role in defining the contours of tribal sovereignty.”

The world of intellectual property law has been abuzz in recent months leading up to oral arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, a case which will determine whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) operates in violation of both Article III of the U.S. Constitution and…

It can be enormously difficult for inventors to describe their own inventions. This is true not because the inventor doesn’t know what they’ve invented, or even because the inventor is not in the best position to explain the invention. Indeed, the inventor of a new and useful invention is absolutely in the best position to describe the invention… Inventors are very good at describing how their inventions can be used and why their invention is superior from a usability standpoint. The trouble is describing how an invention can be used, while a prerequisite, will not distinguish a tangible invention from the prior art.