Determining a “Joint Enterprise” in the Wake of Akamai’s Divided Infringement Standards

By Blog Staff

On December 19, 2017, the Federal Circuit released an opinion in Travel Sentry, Inc. v. Tropp, clarifying further the requirements for satisfying divided infringement, i.e. infringement involving multiple actors carrying out the claimed steps of a method patent where no single accused infringer has performed all the steps. The opinion stems from a series of […]

Patent Application Filed for ‘Take Me Home’ Spacesuit

Two weeks ago, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist Leonard David reported that the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts has filed a patent application (Serial No. 15/164,264) for a self-return system to ensure spacewalking astronauts are safe. Draper’s research into spacesuits is funded by NASA. David explains that the self-return system determines a precise location of the […]

Survey Shows Academic Intellectual Property is Growing

Academic research effort continues to grow according to results from the annual survey of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM). The recently released survey of 195 universities, hospitals and other research institutions reflects increases in many areas of inventive efforts. The number of invention disclosures in 2016 increased 8.7% since 2012, and provisional patent […]

Scandalous and Immoral Trademark Ban Ruled Unconstitutional

Earlier today, the Federal Circuit ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions striking down the Lanham Act’s ban on “disparaging” trademark registrations also means that barring “scandalous” or “immoral” trademarks is unconstitutional. The ruling came in a case filed by Erik Brunetti, who appealed to the Federal Circuit in late 2014 after the Trademark […]

Copyright Small Claims Bill Introduced

Copyright owners are one step closer to being able to pursue copyright infringement actions through a copyright small claims system. A new bipartisan House bill has introduced the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2017 (“CASE Act”). The CASE Act, H.R. 3945, was recently introduced by Congressional representatives to create a small claims court […]

Constitutionality of Inter Partes Reviews: A Look at Supreme Court Oral Arguments in Oil States

The enactment of the AIA in 2011, inter partes review (IPR), has been available as a method to challenge the validity of a patent in the US Patent and Trademark Office. A total of 6139 IPR petitions (92% of all petitions) have been filed with the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) since that time. […]

Hashflags

“It’s all a Twitter” If you spend a lot of time on Twitter… and these days it seems like everyone does, you have probably noticed an increase in the use of customized emojis/images—known as hashflags. The hashflag is automatically inserted by Twitter whenever a certain hashtag (#) is used, i.e., #ShareaCoke. Twitter first launched hashflags […]