Latest News & Alerts

Taking Trademark Infringement Personally

Today’s entry is a cautionary note to corporate officers about trademark infringement. The Chicago IP Litigation Blog highlighted a recent decision from a federal court in Chicago concluding that an individual acting as a corporate officer can be held personally liable for trademark infringement he or she was personally involved in or aware of. The...

When The Game Is Not Worth The Candle

We’ve spoken as to the merits of creative case management before—particularly when the cost of the defense appears to be driving the litigation train. In a recent scheduling order set in the case of Brandeis University & GFA Brands, Inc. v. East Side Ovens Inc. et al. (the “et al.” standing in for a number...

Prometheus Rebound

The Supreme Court issued its opinion today in the case of Mayo v. Prometheus, which asked the Court to determine whether a diagnostic process that employed a law of nature could be patented. After an oral argument which left many of the justices uncertain where to draw the line between patentable processes and unpatentable laws...

The (Patented) Ide(a)s of March

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of the upcoming patent infringement battle looming between Yahoo! and Facebook, on the eve of Facebook’s IPO. It seems everyone has something to say on the topic (seemingly with the ironic exception of Yahoo!’s Facebook page). Irony coming in twos, one of those with something...

Will This Opinion Drive The Supreme Court To Abstraction?

As we’ve previously reported, in August 2010, a federal district court in Los Angeles ruled that a patent–holder’s claims against Hulu and WildTangent had to be dismissed because the patent asserted was directed at the abstract idea of requiring visitors to view advertisements before being able to access free online content. In September 2011, the...

Unlucky Horseshoes for Patent Plaintiff

The usual rule in American civil litigation is that each side pays its own attorneys regardless of who wins in the end. The patent statute provides, however, that a losing party will have to pay the winning party’s fees in an “exceptional” case. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has set the bar high for...

Perfect 10 Put to Bed

Just a brief follow up on our post last August about softcore porn website Perfect 10, which was denied a preliminary injunction by the Ninth Circuit against Google, following Google’s display of thumbnail images of Perfect 10’s photographs. The news of note at the time was the Ninth’s Circuit’s adoption of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange,...

Invalidity Begins At Home

In what we hope will come as a refreshing change of pace, today’s blog features neither a legislative amendment nor a judicial opinion, but, rather, a recent article in Slate.com relating to the success of Article One Partners, a firm that has turned the traditional world of prior art searches on its head. The phrase...

Patent–Owner Force–Feeding Facebooking Presidential Candidates Its Patent Medicine

We couldn’t help but notice a patent complaint filed by an outfit called EveryMD in a Los Angeles court naming Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum as defendants. According to the complaint, it appears that Newt, Mitt, and Rick are Facebook business account holders (along with 4,000,000 others). And by using...

Forms That No Longer Function

Patent litigation runs on rules—specifically, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the local rules of individual federal courts where patent cases are filed. When two rules collide, what gives? To state a claim for patent infringement (or any other civil claim), a plaintiff must make a short plain statement of the claim under Fed....