Protecting Your Nanotechnology Inventions – Part 3: Enabling Your Invention

By Jonathan L. Kennedy

In granting patent rights, i.e., the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, and importing, the government requires that the inventors educate the public as to their invention by adequately describing it and enabling it. Enablement is a question of whether the application contains sufficient information so as to enable one skilled in the […]

Music Modernization Act Signed Into Law

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Earlier today, the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was signed into law. The MMA is a sweeping reform to music licensing and copyright related royalty payments and marks the first significant copyright legislation passed in decades. The House unanimously approved the bill in April followed by the Senate unanimously approving the legislation in September. The MMA […]

Ground Control to Robot Tom: Will U.S. Aerospace Corporations Move Into Unmanned Aerial Systems Innovation?

By Sarah M.D. Luth

Earlier this month the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Aviation held a hearing regarding the emergence of new aerospace technologies—particularly Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) — and how they can be incorporated into existing airspace systems. As unmanned aerospace innovation grows, regulatory agencies correspondingly must consider how to […]

Patent Eligibility: Hope from the PTO Director

By Kirk M. Hartung

On Monday, September 24th, the Director of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Andrei Iancu, stated in a speech to the Intellectual Property Owners Association that his agency is working on new guidelines that address the “mushed up” and “muddled” case law on patent eligibility under 35 USC 101. Once again, Iancu has acknowledged that […]

Can Starbucks Stop a Competitor from Using the Term “JEW BUCKS” After In re Slants?

By Christine Lebron-Dykeman

In 2014, SwordPen Publishers LLC filed a trademark application for the mark JEW BUCKS SMART MONEY. RICH COFFEE. for use in connection with restaurant services featuring coffee and espresso drinks. At that time the United States Patent and Trademark Office took it upon itself to stop the registration of this mark under the now defunct […]

Post Grant Review and Inter Partes Review At a Glance

By Blog Staff

Patent Office reviews known as a Post Grant Review (PGR) or Inter Partes Review (IPR) of issued patents are constitutional, Oil States Energy Servs., LLC v. Greene’s Energy Grp., LLC, 138 S. Ct. 1365, 1370 (2018), likely to avoid some sovereign immunity challenge, Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe v. Mylan Pharm. Inc., 896 F.3d 1322 (Fed. […]

Leftover Pizza? Domino’s Reheats Pizza Hut’s Invalidity Claim Against Ameranth Inc.

By Gregory Lars Gunnerson

Ameranth Inc. asserts it is a leading provider of wireless and Internet based solutions for the hospitality/gaming markets and that it has a very strong intellectual property portfolio including numerous strategic patents in technologies such as Wireless POS, Table Management, Reservations Management, Mobile Concierge, Electronic Menus, Guest Surveys, Inventory Management, Health Care Services and Enrollment […]

CRISPR: Broad Institute Holds onto its Piece of Pie, and it’s Delicious!

On Monday, September 10th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) upheld the decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on the interference between the Broad Institute and the University of California. The PTAB held, and the CAFC upheld, that given the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, one skilled in […]

Supreme Court to Decide Whether “Secret Sales” are Prior Art

By Michael C. Gilchrist

Prior art is any publication or activity that can be cited to find a claimed invention invalid as not new or as a merely obvious combination of existing elements. Until recently, the law had been settled that any sale (within the United States) of a product that included claimed features of an invention is prior […]

Bloody Shoes: Christian Louboutin Wins Battle Over Non-Traditional Trademark

By Nicholas J. Krob

“These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is bloody shoes.” Does this line, from Cardi B’s breakout single “Bodak Yellow,” call to mind a particular fashion brand? If not, the following line from Lil Uzi Vert’s “The Way Life Goes” might help you out: “My Louboutins new, so my bottoms they is redder.” For over […]