MVS Working Remotely By Blog Staff McKee, Voorhees & Sease, is closing its physical office to ensure the health and well-being of our employees. Employees are operating remotely, and it will be business as usual in providing our clients with the outstanding service and legal counsel they have come to expect from MVS. If you have any questions, please contact us […] Continue Reading →
MVS Preparedness and Response to COVID-19 By Heidi Sease Nebel McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC (MVS) recognizes the increasing disruptions, anxiety, and suffering caused by COVID-19. Our deepest sympathy, thoughts and prayers of calm and strength go out to all who have been personally affected around the world. Our firm monitors information released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of State and […] Continue Reading →
Iconic Green Jacket Is A Golf Trophy and A Registered Trademark By Kirk M. Hartung The famous green sports coat given each year to the winner of the prestigious Masters golf tournament is now a registered trademark. On March 3, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued registration number 6000045 to Augusta National, Inc., which filed the registration application on February 21, 2019. The mark includes three gold buttons on […] Continue Reading →
UK to Back Out of the UPC By Julie L. Spieker Last year, this blog brought news of the impending Brexit vote and the supposed impact of Brexit on intellectual property laws in the UK. Brexit was thought to have largely no effect on patent law because European and UK patents are governed by the European Patent Convention (EPC) which is a non-EU agreement. Further, the European Patent […] Continue Reading →
Who Owns the Copyright? Work-Made-For-Hire Edition By One of the questions we regularly receive tends to be something along the lines of, “If I pay someone to build a website/take a picture/make a video/create marketing content/design a t-shirt/etc., don’t I own the copyright in that work?” The short answer is, probably not unless you have a written agreement with them. The more […] Continue Reading →
Early Computer Programming Guru Passes Away By Kirk M. Hartung The inventor of the ubiquitous “cut- copy- paste” function for digital documents, Larry Tesler, passed away on Feb. 16 at the age of 74 at his home in Portola Valley, California. Tesler, who grew up in the Bronx, became interested in computers in the 1950’s, as a new emerging technology, when he saw them as […] Continue Reading →
2019 U.S. Patents Hit All Time High By Kirk M. Hartung he U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a record number of patents in 2019. The 333,350 patents granted in 2019 was a 15% increase over 2018. As usual, IBM led the way with 9,262 new patents in 2019. This is the 27th consecutive year that IBM was the #1 patentee for U.S. patents. The other top […] Continue Reading →
Disappointment for DABUS as the EPO and UKIPO Conclude Artificial Intelligence Cannot be Named an Inventor By Blog Staff The European Patent Office (EPO) and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) recently tackled an issue that has sparked much discussion involving artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. Two patent applications were recently filed via the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, China, Korea, and Taiwan, naming DABUS—an AI machine—as […] Continue Reading →
U.S. and Mexico Patent Offices to Collaborate By Kirk M. Hartung Yesterday, January 28,2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) signed an agreement which is expected to expedite issuance of patents in Mexico for owners of US patents. The two agencies will now cooperate in a process that lets the IMPI have access to USPTO examination […] Continue Reading →
2019 Trade Secret Law Developments By Jonathan L. Kennedy Since the passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) in 2016, there have been questions as to how the law would be applied in trade secret litigations. 2019 provided indicators on some trends in the application of the law as well as its interplay with state trade secret claims. Two issues of particular relevance […] Continue Reading →