Intellectual Property

Last week a Federal Circuit panel in Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Hulu, LLC issued an important decision regarding inter partes review (IPR) before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on two questions concerning contingent motions to amend—(i) whether the Office has statutory authority to review the patentability of substitute claims after a final federal-court judgement of invalidity of those claims and, if yes, (ii) whether that review of patentability may include analyzing the substitute claims for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 

Entities with patent-related relationships with state universities scored a victory under the rarely implicated (at least for patent practitioners) doctrine of sovereign immunity.  For patent holders, sovereign immunity comes into play when a state actor, for example a state university, enters contracts related to patents, such as in Gensetix v. Baylor College of Medicine. 

Recently, in Packet Intelligence LLC v. NetScout Sys., Inc., No 19-2041 (July 14, 2020), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a jury verdict of $3.5 million in pre-suit damages and vacated the trial court’s enhancement of that award because licensees of the asserted patents failed to properly mark allegedly patent practicing products.

In the latest installment of our video series on trade secret litigation, Nick Armingtion provides an overview of the two types of relief available to parties who have had their trade secrets stolen – injunctions and damages. 

Companies across the United States quickly rolled out remote work arrangements in response to the COVID-19 health crisis, and as virus caseloads continue to climb, the trend is likely to continue. As working off-site becomes “the new normal,” companies can institute systems and policies to protect their valuable trade secrets.

In the second of a series of videos discussing developments in trade secret litigation, Mintz’s Adam Samansky discusses steps companies can take to implement reasonable protective measures to maintain secrecy of information in this remote work environment including confidentiality agreements, trade secret protection plans, and restricting access. 

The sharp upswing in trade secret litigation triggered by the global financial crisis of the late 2000s taught companies some hard lessons about trade secret theft and disputes.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) has designated two key institution decisions as “Informative.”  With these informative decisions, the PTAB has provided guidance on how the PTAB will apply efficiency and fairness factors that guide decisions to institute an inter partes review (“IPR”) when there is a fast-moving parallel district court litigation that may reach trial before the PTAB’s final written decision would be due.

Germany’s highest court has clearly and emphatically placed SEP implementers on notice that hold-out will not be tolerated, and that implementers must proactively share the burden and obligation to timely achieve a FRAND license.  An infringer’s conduct during FRAND negotiations is decisively important, and an infringer’s failure to undertake its burden and satisfy its obligations will preclude it from claiming that the patentee acted anti-competitively, or abused a dominant market position. 

An economic downturn usually leads to a rise in trade secret theft and litigation, and the current slump is likely to generate a major surge in cases due in part to the prevalence of remote work.

Recent oral arguments at the Fed Circuit suggest that the U.S. may be taking steps which would enhance its attractiveness for SEP patent holders looking to resolve licensing disputes.  The Federal Circuit heard oral argument on Monday, July 6th, in Godo Kaisha IP Bridge I v. TCL Commc’n Tech. Holdings Ltd., No. 19-2215, that may pave an easier path for owners of standard essential patents (“SEPs”) to prove literal infringement of products that comply with that standard. 

In a landmark decision, United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V., the Supreme Court of the United States, by an 8-1 vote, affirmed the lower court’s determination that Booking.com could register BOOKING.COM as a trademark. 

Judge Albright of the Western District of Texas (“WDTX”) recently rejected yet another attempt by Apple to transfer a patent case to the Northern District of California (“NDCA”). Judge Albright’s June 19, 2020 order describes how Apple—not plaintiff Uniloc—was attempting to forum shop by seeking to move essentially all of its cases filed in Texas to NDCA. 

The Federal Circuit recently reaffirmed a case where common sense was used to supply a missing element in a § 103 obviousness analysis.  On June 26, 2020, the Federal Circuit issued a decision in B/E Aerospace, Inc. v. C&D Zodiac, Inc., Nos. 2019-1935, 2019-1936 (Fed. Cir. Jun. 26, 2020) (“B/E Aerospace”) affirming a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) final written decision finding patent claims invalid in view of a combination of prior art and common sense.

On June 26, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, in VLSI Tech. LLC. v. Intel Corp, No. 18-0966-CFC, denied VLSI’s motion for leave to amend to add claims for willful infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,212,633 (the “’633 patent”) and 7,523,331 (“the ’331 Patent”) based on pre-suit activity but granted it as to alleged post-suit infringement (which Intel did not oppose).

In the first of a series of videos discussing developments in trade secret litigation, Mintz’s Nick Armington explains why the volume of trade secret litigation in state and federal courts is expected to greatly increase over the next five years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In a rare reversal, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) reassessed the Fintiv factors in a decision on a petition for rehearing of a previous decision denying institution of an inter partes review (“IPR”).  

On June 16, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released final rules (the “Rules”) implementing changes to how Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is calculated in certain circumstances in view of Supernus Pharms., Inc. v. Iancu, 913 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2019). 

A design patent protects the visual ornamental characteristics of an article, including consumer and industrial products, medical devices and related tools, sports equipment, jewelry, product packaging, and even web-based and mobile graphical user interfaces and icons.

Last week, the Federal Circuit invoked the Kessler doctrine in ruling that a district court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s patent infringement suit against Amazon barred the plaintiff’s subsequent lawsuits against Amazon and its customers in In Re PersonalWeb Technologies, Inc.