Latest News & Alerts

2013 Year-End Estate Planning

Estate Planning Alert As we explained in our March 2013 client alert, Estate and Gift Planning after the 2012 American Taxpayer Relief Act, the federal estate tax planning landscape is stable for the first time in many years.  The 2012 American Taxpayer Relief Act (“ARTA”) established a $5 Million unified gift and estate exemption, indexed...

Federalism At Work

As readers may know, the FTC has initiated a study of patent assertion entities. Adding their voice to those who have responded is a recent letter of comment from the National Association of Attorneys General, signed by 42 of the states and Guam. Calling PAEs, or trolls, a “growing consumer protection problem,” causing a “kind of silent extortion”...

Back in the Limelight (Yes, We Have a Million of These Puns)

Patents and the Supreme Court go together like peanut butter and jelly these days. No sooner do wereport on the recent grant of the petition for cert in CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation than we learn that the US Solicitor General has recently come out in support of a petition for cert in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc. While...

Banking on Alice

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the end of CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation may be greatly exaggerated. After a greatly–muddled en banc Federal Circuit opinion added only confusion, rather than clarity, to the contentious issue of software patentability, the Supreme Court has granted a writ of certiorari to address the following issue: “Whether claims to computer–implemented inventions – including claims to systems...

Patent Reform…Taste It Again For the First Time

Who knew members of Congress could rally around patent reform (again) as a bipartisan issue? But Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s Innovation Act passed the House of Representatives yesterday by an overwhelming vote of 325–91. Provisions of interest include: A requirement that a patent infringement complaint identify what claims are allegedly infringed and how. Early disclosure of who owns...

District of Delaware Announces Patent Study Group

We’ve documented the rise of Delaware as a patent litigation venue—joining the Eastern District of Texas as the go–to jurisdictions for the majority of all patent cases filed in the country. Unlike the Eastern District of Texas, however, the District of Delaware has not adopted formal patent rules or otherwise taken steps to differentiate how patent cases...

B&I Attorney’s Article on Screening Potential Employees Featured by HR Hero

HR Hero Peter D. Lowe’s article, “Applicant’s Mug Shots May Be Just a Click Away” for the Maine Employment Law Letter, has been published nationally on the Technology for HR Blog of the HR Hero website. Lowe discusses the dangers employers can encounter when they venture onto the Internet to vet potential job applicants. Among...

A Patent Reform Primer

If you haven’t watched it already, “Henry Ford, Patent Trolling & The Innovation Act: A Patent Reform Primer” is an entertaining and well-done vignette from Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s office. (Although we could only wish it was preceded by the ‘Picture Pages’ theme song from the Bill Cosby educational show that ran during the 1980s). Posted by Stacy...

Happy Thanksgiving from IPWise

As we head off to our respective holiday gatherings, we at IPWise will leave you with some patents to accompany your pumpkin pies. Not to worry that it will interfere with your digestion, as we simply direct you to some of the best past compilations of wild and wacky Thanksgiving-related patents. Happy Thanksgiving! Posted by Stacy Stitham

(Forum) Shopping This Holiday Season

On the eve of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we write to discuss shopping of a different sort – forum shopping, and, more specifically, the practice of concentrating patent lawsuits in a few districts (Delaware, Eastern Texas, Central California, and, increasingly, Northern Illinois). Northern Illinois, it would seem, may be less than pleased at the...