US Courts Tripping over TRIPS This summer, the Australian Federal Court went the other way in Sequenom, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. than the US, finding that the method of detecting fetal DNA in maternal blood to be eligible subject matter and that the patent was valid and infringed. While the Federal Circuit described the invention as “truly meritorious” and […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
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, […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
IP Legal Considerations for Live Streaming By 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 […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →
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 […] Continue Reading →