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Inflation Reduction Act
Only You Can Prevent Forum Shopping
Recently, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the best time for forum shopping is before a dispute. The Supreme Court frowns on parties seeking to shop for a forum once a dispute develops but recognizes parties' right to agree to...
Re-Calculating Patent Term Adjustments Once Again
The Federal Circuit has adjusted the way we calculate Patent Term Adjustments (PTA) once again with its holdings in Novartis and Exelixis . 1 The Federal Circuit held that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been incorrectly...
Supreme Court Delivers a Jolt to Patentees in Medtronic
Yesterday, in Medtronic, Inc. v. Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC , 571 U.S. ___ (2014), the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that a patentee has the burden of proving infringement in a declaratory judgment suit brought by a licensee. As...
Copyright Owners: Keep Your Eye on the Road
Copyright owners need to stay alert! If you have an infringement, ownership interest, or other claim to assert in a copyrighted work and fail to do so within the three year statute of limitations you risk being barred from asserting...
FTC Broadens Notification Requirements for Transfers of Pharmaceutical Patent Rights
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revised the rule for determining when a transfer of exclusive rights to a patent in the pharmaceutical industry (including biologics and medicine manufacturing) results in a potentially reportable asset acquisition under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR)...
No Claims, No Drawings, No Problems
As part of efforts to unify international procedural rules for patent applicants, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently released new rules that have important procedural consequences generally deemed to be quite favorable for patent applicants and owners...
Fantastic .Voyage: The Launch of First 9 New gTLDs
The first nine new generic top-level domain name spaces (gTLDs) in English 1 are expected to go live on or around October 29, 2013. These first nine domain spaces to join existing gTLDs like .com and .net are: .camera, .clothing...
Bad Faith Patent Litigation Is Bad News For Plaintiffs
Affirming a $1.6 million dollar award for attorney fees against a non-practicing entity (NPE) for pursuing and maintaining patent litigation in bad faith, the Federal Circuit has served notice that patent litigants "must continually assess the soundness of pending infringement...
High Court Finds Antitrust Scrutiny Applies to Pay-for-Delay Settlements
On June 17, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust challenge to a reverse payment settlement agreement between drug manufacturers, otherwise known as a “pay-for-delay” deal, may go forward, reversing the Eleventh Circuit’s dismissal...
Beyond Trolling the Trolls: White House Acts to Curb Abuse by Patent Assertion Entities
Earlier this year, President Obama addressed frivolous patent suits in a Google+ hangout session, commenting that Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) "don't actually produce anything themselves" and assert patents "to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they...
Texas Puts its Lone-Star Spin on Trade Secret Protection
Effective on September 1, 2013, trade secret owners in Texas will have a statutory framework for litigation in an actual or threatened misappropriation of trade secrets. 1 Texas recently joined the other forty-seven states 2 in implementing a version of...
Batting Practice with DNA Patents at the U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in Association of Molecular Pathology vs. Myriad Genetics (Docket 12-398) regarding the patent eligibility of isolated DNA sequences. More specifically, they probed both parties in search of the line demarcating the patent eligibility...
Key Trademark Rights Protection Mechanism for New Top-Level Domains Opens March 26, 2013
The first of hundreds of new generic top-level domain name (gTLD) registries 1 are expected to launch in the summer of 2013. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the NGO that regulates the domain name space, published...
Shot Down by the Gunn: The Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Leaving Malpractice Cases Involving Underlying Patent Issues with State Courts
On February 20, 2013, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Gunn v. Minton. 1 The heart of this matter is whether the state-based malpractice action based upon an underlying patent infringement lawsuit may be heard in...
Terrorizing patent practitioners: Highlights from oral argument at the Supreme Court for Gunn v. Minton
On January 16, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Gunn . 1 The heart of the matter is whether the state-based malpractice action may be heard in state court or whether it must be...