IP Wise

What’s Your Damage, Apple?

The opinion of the Supreme Court is in, in Samsung v. Apple, and the news is not appetizing for Apple. Justice Sotomayor, writing for a unanimous Court, did just enough to (temporarily?) undo the $399–million verdict Apple had secured in this skirmish of the smartphone wars for infringement of its design patents. But the Court...

Federal Circuit Clips The Wings of Covered Business Method Review

In an opinion yesterday in Unwired Planet, LLC v. Google Inc., a three–judge panel of the Federal Circuit significantly limited the scope of Patent Office review of business method patents under the America Invents Act. The appellate court shrunk the universe of patents eligible for covered business method (CBM) review, a result which may please...

IP in 2017: Nothing To See (Yet) Amid The Fog Of Political War

‘Tis coming up on the season of crystal ball–gazing, when pundits and bloggers look into the future to see what the new year will bring in the fields they cover. The itch to peer into the future is even harder to resist in presidential election years, especially those in which a new president will take...

Vote Counts: Supreme Court Ties Make Everyone The Loser

Intellectual property law is not especially ideological—or at least not obviously so. While there are many vehement disputes in the field of IP law, few if any can be cast in R–vs.–D, right–vs.–left terms. That is one reason that patent law has been an area in which the Roberts Supreme Court has been able to...

Give Me A C….

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in the case of Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, a copyright case seeking resolution of the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a “useful article” is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act. Section 101 provides that “the design of a useful article” will be considered...

Government Supports Supreme Court Review Of Patent Exhaustion Dispute

For some, patent exhaustion is the feeling you get when you try to read the text of a patent and just can’t keep your eyes open. In the law, patent exhaustion is a legal doctrine that limits the scope of a patent–holder’s rights. The first valid sale of a patented product exhausts those rights, so...

FTC Issues Long–Awaited Patent Troll Study

The Federal Trade Commission today announced the publication of its formal study of the problem of patent trolls—which the Commission more politely refers to as “patent assertion entities” or “PAEs.” Using its investigative authority, the Commission examined non–public information for 2009–2014 from 22 PAEs, 327 PAE affiliates, and 2,100 holding entities. The FTC divided the...

Pleadings 2.0

Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires a “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” A decade ago, pleading a patent case was approximately as easy as: “You have a product/website/method/service and I have a patent. You owe me money.” With the Supreme...

Freedom of Software Speech

Intellectual Ventures is no stranger to filing appeals with the Federal Circuit when confronted with an unfavorable ruling at the district court level, though it may be kicking itself for having done so in its case against Symantec, where the Federal Circuit not only affirmed the district court’s decisions of ineligibility regarding two of the...

Supreme Court To Review Statute Against Disparaging Trademarks

Federal trademark law, specifically, 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a),  provides that the Patent and Trademark Office can refuse to register a trademark that disparages persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols. Last December, the entire Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held this disparagement provision to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, as we discussed at the...