Walking Alone: Liverpool FC Fails to Obtain Namesake Trademark

By Nicholas J. Krob

English Premier League soccer club Liverpool FC may have scraped by with a victory against Sheffield United last weekend, but that luck does not appear to have extended to the U.K. Intellectual Property Office.  Earlier this year, the club announced that it had submitted an application with the IPO to register LIVERPOOL as a trademark […]

A Trademark Is Insurance, Not Property

By Gregory Lars Gunnerson

It is widely accepted patents and copyrights confer a Constitutional exclusive right. See the Intellectual Property Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I. § 8, cl. 8. Unlike patents and copyrights, the constitutional foundation for trademarks is the Commerce Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Thus, the trademark right may conceivably be a property right, while patents and […]

A Simple Fix to §101 with Arbitration

By Kirk M. Hartung

This summer’s decision by the Federal Circuit in Athena Diagnostics, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, LLC, highlights the consensus that something needs to be done regarding the current state of the law of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C §101. In particular, the judicially created exceptions to patentability under 101 are laws of nature, natural phenomena, […]

Playing the Numbers Game on U.S. Patent Office Appeals and Trials

Numbers don’t always tell the story, but they can provide interesting highlights. The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) tracks various statistics of patent appeals and trials. The mid-year statistics in 2019 provide an interesting look at the direction of the USPTO. Appeal results remain largely the same, with a longer look at trial […]

IP Legal Considerations for Live Streaming

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If you’re one of the millions of people that log into a social media platform each day, it’s highly likely that you have encountered a rapidly growing number of live streams. Now that live streaming is available to anyone with a smartphone, the potential legal issues and concerns are much more relevant to the average […]

Claim Construction Must be Resolved Before Making Eligibility Determinations

By Blog Staff

On August 16, 2019, in MyMail, Ltd. v. ooVoo, LLC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) vacated and remanded a decision made by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California because the court failed to resolve a claim construction dispute before making a patent eligibility determination at […]

Patent Judges Agree that Patent Eligibility Law Needs Fixing: Part 2

By Kirk M. Hartung

In the first part of this series posted last week, I discussed the majority and concurring opinions in Athena v. Mayo decided by the Federal Circuit Court on July 3, 2019. In part 2 of the series, I will review the four dissenting opinions for this case. In the first dissent, Judge Moore (joined by […]

Patent Judges Agree that Patent Eligibility Law Needs Fixing: Part 1

By Kirk M. Hartung

On July 3, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an interesting, though not surprising, opinion discussing patent eligibility for inventions and discoveries. In Athena Diagnostics, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, LLC, all 12 judges of the Court considered whether the full court should rehear an appeal of a patent regarding […]

IPR Proceedings to Pre-AIA Patents is not an Unconstitutional Taking

By Blog Staff

On July 30, 2019, in Celgene Corp. v. Peter, the Federal Circuit (CAFC) held that “retroactive application of IPR proceedings to pre-AIA patents is not an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment.” A provision of the Fifth Amendment, known as the “takings clause”, provides that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without […]

3 Reasons to Build your Patent Portfolio

By Kirk M. Hartung

A strong patent portfolio provides many benefits to the owner. Patents are an asset that have value, and that value can come in different forms. 1. Patents force competitors to design around the patented invention. As your company spends resources, including time and money, in research and development (R & D), the resulting inventions are […]