Latest News & Alerts

Live by the Sword; Die by the SHIELD

(Which sounds like it should be the title of an old He-Man episode from the 1980s, but is not nearly as exciting). We’ve spoken before about the Saving High–Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act a/k/a SHIELD Act, which would add a “(patentholder) loser pays” provision in computer hardware and software patent cases in instances where the...

What Price Efficiency?

We are sympathetic to the plight of federal judges. Many U.S. district courts have overcrowded dockets, unfilled judgeships, and underfunded judges. In administering a busy court, efficient case management can be paramount, and judges should and do look for ways to streamline case management by consolidating cases. They have the authority under Federal Rule of Civil...

Gunned Down By the Supremes

The Supreme Court has issued another patent–related opinion, which causes all patent–related lawyers to prick up their ears… In Gunn v. Minton, the issue on appeal was whether a patent litigation malpractice case “arises under” the federal patent laws for purposes of exclusive federal jurisdiction. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court found that it did not....

Court Listens To Trademark Plaintiff’s Confused Cries from Yelp

Evan Brown’s Internet Cases blog points us to an interesting, if potentially problematic, rulingfrom central Florida in a trademark dispute. In ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction, the court considered evidence of customer confusion—one element of proving a trademark infringement claim—based on postings by users of the ratings website, Yelp. The court noted that not only...

POTUS on Patent Trolls

In the aftermath of his State of the Union address this week, President Obama weighed in on the state of the patent system and patent reform. As reported by Reuters, Obama directly addressed the proliferation of patent assertion entities a/k/a non–practicing entities a/k/a patent trolls in recent comments as part of an online Q&A. In discussing the challenge...

First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Legal Research Services…

On the lighter side—and at the risk of delving a bit too close to inside jokes for IP lawyers—we found amusing the following press release from Thomson Reuters, regarding its flagship online legal research service, Westlaw. For those of you who have dabbled in the law (or set foot onto a law school campus), you will already...

Betting the Bank

As alert readers are no doubt already aware, the authors of this blog are keenly interested in the outcome of the Federal Circuit’s en banc consideration of the CLS Bank appeal, which squarely considers the patent eligibility of computer–implemented inventions. Just a short note that—as of last Friday—oral arguments have been heard in CLS Bank. Now all that is left is to wait, and to...

Notes of News

The weekly news round–up reveals the following of interest to our readers… First, Cisco’s “best–defense–is–a–good–offense” strategy of hitting patent troll Innovatio IP Ventures with federal racketeering charges, based on Innovatio’s campaign of writing letters to approximately 8,000 of Cisco’s wi–fi customers, suffered a setback yesterday. Judge Holderman found that Innovatio’s petitioning activity was constitutionally protected (ed.—however distasteful).  Second, the ill–fated and...

Silver Linings Transfer Playbook

The Eastern District of Texas remains the number one patent venue in America. The old normal was that patent–owning plaintiffs would file a single lawsuit against many, many unrelated defendants in that court. Then the America Invents Act—prohibiting joinder of unrelated defendants in a single case based solely on the fact that they are all...

Shopping Cart Upended

The shopping cart—a staple of retail stores since at least the 1930s—was patented in 1940, as the “Folding Basket Carriage for Self–Service Stores,” a brainchild of Sylvan N. Goldman (Piggly Wiggly). No doubt, it was an innovative idea, and a welcome relief for weary housewives. Once the wheels of the shopping cart were set in motion,...