Welcome to the Snell & Wilmer intellectual property and technology litigation blog! Check here for useful news and information about patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, and other IP and technology litigation developments.
The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) received strong support from both the White House and the Senate on April 4, 2016. The White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy stressing the importance of trade secret protection to promote innovation and minimize “threats to American businesses, the U.S. economy, and national security interests.” Additionally, […]
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 Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee with broad bipartisan support. Currently, state law governs civil claims for trade secret misappropriation, generally under a particular state’s version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”), the application of which has been called “anything but uniform.” As amended, the DTSA would not […]
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 […]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held today in MCM Portfolio LLC v. Hewlett-Packard Co. that inter partes review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board are constitutional, rejecting MCM Portfolio’s bid to escape the PTAB’s earlier ruling that invalidated the company’s patent claims. The Federal Circuit rejected MCM Portfolio’s […]
Since 2004, Google has scanned, converted to searchable text, and indexed over 20 million books for the Google Library Project. In Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the Second Circuit held that such use is a fair use of the authors’ copyrights. The Google Library Project allows searchers to read short synopses about the books […]
The Ninth Circuit held last week in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (the “dancing baby” case) that a copyright holder must consider fair use before sending a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Without first considering fair use, the copyright holder cannot have formed the required subjective good faith belief that the […]
Laches remains applicable in the patent context to bar pre-suit damages after an en banc Federal Circuit ruling late last week in SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products. Last year in the “Raging Bull” decision (Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), the Supreme Court held that laches could not bar copyright infringement damages within the […]
The Ninth Circuit has affirmed Microsoft’s $14.5 million jury verdict against Motorola, upholding the first federal bench trial decision setting a fair, abortion reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing rate. Armed with the court’s FRAND guidance, the jury found Motorola violated its commitment to license its H.264 (video encoding) and 802.11 (WiFi) standard-essential patents (SEPs) under […]
