Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the patent exhaustion case, Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., Docket No. 15-1189. The Supreme Court’s decision in this case could significantly affect patent and patent-related transactions both domestically and internationally. Generally speaking, under the “patent exhaustion” doctrine, also known as the “first sale” doctrine, […]
Three years ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced a study of “patent assertion entities” (“PAEs”): “businesses that acquire patents from third parties and seek to generate revenue by asserting them against alleged infringers.” The FTC’s purpose was to gather information about PAEs in order to make informed policy decisions regarding “the role of PAEs in […]
In Octane Fitness v. ICON Health & Fitness (2014), the Supreme Court changed the standard for recovering attorneys’ fees in patent litigation. Rejecting a “rigid and mechanical formulation,” the Court adopted a looser “totality of the circumstances” test. Earlier this year, a Ninth Circuit panel held that the Octane Fitness standard did not apply in […]
You encounter a website that looks very similar to your company’s website. The similarities make clear that your website was copied. Even worse, it was copied by a competitor. Please see this article that discusses the remedies you may have under intellectual property laws.
In Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (“USPTO’s”) standard for construing patent claims in an inter partes review (“IPR”), a post-grant proceeding used to challenged patent validity. In a 6-2 decision, the Court also affirmed that the USPTO’s decision whether to institute an IPR […]
The Seagate two-part test for enhanced patent infringement damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284 — (1) objectively, infringement was not a close call, and (2) subjectively, the defendant knew or obviously should have known that — is gone. So too is the patentee’s burden to prove entitlement to enhanced damages by clear and convincing evidence. The […]
Monday the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear cases on patent laches, SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag et al. v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC et al., and copyright protection for clothing, Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. In SCA Hygiene, the Supreme Court will review the Federal Circuit’s decision that laches remains a viable […]
Last week, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed into law HB 2386, known as the “Arizona Patent Troll Prevention Act.” Modeled after similar legislation passed by other states, the Act prohibits bad faith demands of patent infringement and gives the Attorney General authority to enforce the Act. Arizona now joins 27 states that, since 2013, have […]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held this week in In re Queen’s University that some communications between patent applicants and non-attorney patent agents are legally privileged, recognizing, for the first time by that court, a “patent-agent privilege.” The court overturned the Eastern District of Texas’s order compelling production of communications between […]
The Supreme Court will continue to shape patent law in 2016, addressing critical components of the widely-popular Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and examining the standard for willful patent infringement in district court actions. IPR proceedings provide a streamlined avenue for invalidating issued patents. In the first two […]
