By Porter Wright on The Supreme Court issued two decisions Tuesday that will no doubt have interesting consequences for patent trolls and businesses that have been the target of patent trolls. Non-practicing entities (NPEs) are companies that do not sell a product or service, but instead acquire patents for the purpose of monetization by way of licensing and/or suing … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The sun sets on several new gTLDs The Sunrise period has ended, or will by the end of April, for the new gTLDs listed below. gTLD Sunrise Opens Sunrise Closes .watch 02/25/14 04/26/14 .cool 02/25014 04/26/14 .social 02/25/14 04/28/14 .futbol 02/26/14 04/28/14 .reviews 02/26/14 04/28/14 .wien 02/11/14 04/30/14 After Sunrise, gTLDs enter a Landrush period … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on If you believe that a former employee may have taken your trade secrets on his way out the door and you are considering court action to rectify the situation, it is important to have compelling evidence of the misappropriation. But as we discuss in this post, even with compelling evidence of misappropriation, the plaintiff’s failure … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The sun sets on several new gTLDs The Sunrise period has ended, or will by Monday, for the new gTLDs listed below. gTLD Sunrise Opens Sunrise Closes .red 03/11/14 04/11/14 .kim 03/11/14 04/11/14 .shiksha 03/11/14 04/11/14 .pink 03/11/14 04/11/14 .farm 02/11/14 04/12/14 .viajes 02/11/14 04/14/14 .codes 02/11/14 04/14/14 .blue 03/14/14 04/13/14 .wed 03/17/14 04/18/14 .zone … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on New to the delegation pool ICANN delegates new gTLDs daily, which keeps trademark owners on their toes. Since our last blog article, new gTLD delegations include: .gop .ryukya .yokohama .rest .saarland .consulting .vodka .haus .cooking .moe .rodeo .country .商城(xn--czru2d) – Chinese for “mall” .horse .fishing .vegas .miami .archi .black .ren .meet .sohu The most recent … Continue Reading
By Marty Miller on In a recent blog post, we reported that a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) had reaffirmed that appellate review of patent claim interpretations is de novo, without any deference to the trial court even for factual matters. As we stated in that post, the 6-4 en banc decision by the … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced this week at ICANN 49 Singapore that the number of new generic top levels domains (gTLDs) that have been “delegated” — i.e., designated as ready for launch — now tops 175. Recently delegated gTLDs include: .london .nyc .cologne .trade . 世界 (Chinese for “world/shijie”) .bid … Continue Reading
By Marty Miller on The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has once again reaffirmed that appellate review of patent claim interpretations is de novo, without deference to the trial court even for factual matters.1 The 6-4 en banc decision in Lighting Ballast Control LLC v. Philips Electronics N.A. Corp.,2 by the only appellate court having … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on You may have just recovered from all the patent law changes that have occurred since passage of the America Invents Act (AIA) a couple of years ago, but we now have a new wave of changes prompted by the Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012 (PLTIA), which became effective Dec.18, 2013. The PLTIA implements … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The new year is off to a fast start with a number of decisions addressing key e-discovery issues, including a decision from the Seventh Circuit regarding the Dec. 9, 2013 sanctions order issued by the district court in the In Re Pradaxa multi-district products liability litigation and a spoliation finding against the defendants in the … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on Its time for our ink jet printers to move aside and begin to collect dust because there is a new kid in town: 3D printers. 3D printers are not technically “new” technology; they have been used by engineers since the 1980s. However, they are new to everyday consumers, and they threaten to become mainstream in … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The U.S. Patent Act provides that an inventor is barred from obtaining patent rights for an invention, and the invention goes into the public domain, when a patent application is not filed within one year of certain activities of the inventor that make the invention available to the public. This is often referred to as … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on Many people have not yet heard or may not understand, but the Internet will expand vastly and quickly beyond the familiar .com, .org, and .edu top level domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched an initiative in 2008 to enable the introduction of new generic topic level domains (gTLDs). The … Continue Reading
By Jay L. Levine and Porter Wright on Can a group of defendants refuse to settle with a non-practicing entity (NPE)? Can they collectively refuse to license patents from a “troll”? Or does that refusal subject them to antitrust scrutiny? These are the issues at the heart of a Northern District of California case: Cascades Computer Innovation LLC v. RPX Corp. Cascades manages … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on China has passed a new trademark law that becomes effective May 1, 2014. The new law includes: A requirement that trademarks shall be registered and used “by the principle of honesty and credibility;” Some important changes to the trademark application and appeal processes; and As discussed here, several notable provisions designed to improve trademark enforcement … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The ability to register a trademark in the member countries of the European Union (currently 30) in a single application has been available under the Community Trademark system (CTM) since the mid-1990’s. The basic fee (900€, currently about $1,215US) for filing a CTM covers the cost of filing in up to three classes.1 The European … Continue Reading
By Jay L. Levine on In the second of this two part series, we dig a bit deeper on the FTC’s recently proposed study on patent assertion entity (PAE) activity. In Part 1, we covered some background on PAEs and why they are singled out separately from other types of patent holders. Here in part 2, we discuss potential antitrust concerns with PAE activity, what … Continue Reading
By Jay L. Levine on Executive Summary Almost half of all infringement actions brought these days are brought by patentholders that do not practice the invention, but rather by holders who seek to capitalize on the value of the patent through either licensing fees or via damage awards in infringement actions. While simply asserting patent rights cannot be an antitrust … Continue Reading
By Marty Miller on Many businesses outsource work such as website creation, software development or other creative tasks, engaging the services of companies or individuals experienced in these fields. Some are surprised to learn, often the hard way, that paying someone to create your website, develop software or produce other works of authorship does not mean you own the … Continue Reading
By Holly Kozlowski on The recent Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Leo Pharmaceutical Products, Ltd. v. Rea (Appeal No. 2012-1530, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 16610, decided Aug. 12, 2013) provides patent applicants and owners with some valuable ammunition in rebutting “obvious to try” based obviousness assertions against patent claims under 35 U.S.C. §103, both during patent prosecution … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on You received a threatening letter from what looks like a “patent troll” demanding a licensing fee and/or royalties but you can find little or no information about the party that sent the letter. The sending party may not even be the owner of record for the identified patent(s) at the USPTO. You may not even be … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on A recent decision from the Federal Circuit illustrates the perils of not following the requirements of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with respect to identifying information as confidential or trade secret. It is a good reminder that if you go to the trouble of preparing an NDA to protect your trade secrets, you need to follow … Continue Reading
By Holly Kozlowski on In a long-awaited and much-anticipated decision, the US Supreme Court today issued a unanimous opinion in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., involving the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes relevant to detection of increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The Court held that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature … Continue Reading
By Porter Wright on The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a jury verdict awarding $26.2 million in compensatory damages and $18.2 million in punitive damages for trade secret misappropriation of software that enabled oil and gas companies to “plan, procure and pay for complex services” online. See Wellogix, Inc. v. Accenture, LLP, Case No. 11-20816 (5th Cir. … Continue Reading
