Features

Blockchain Domains: New Developments for Brand Owners
Blockchain domain names offer decentralized alternatives to traditional DNS-based domain names, promising enhanced security, privacy and censorship resistance. However, these benefits come with significant challenges, particularly for brand owners seeking to protect their trademarks in these new digital spaces.
Features

Trade Secret Protection Plans Provide Certainty to Employers
The protection of trade secrets has long been understood to be a legitimate business interest, and, traditionally, companies have used non-competition clauses to protect their trade secrets. Now, with non-competition agreements in doubt and facing greater scrutiny, companies will need to rely on other protection mechanisms.
Features

Early Impact of the CHIPS Act
This article describes certain key developments in the period from passage of the CHIPS Act through the present day, and provides a brief survey of key grantmaking and investment activity by U.S. government agencies since passage of the Act.
Features

Beyond Language: How Multimodal AI Sees the Bigger Picture
The possibilities for patenting innovative applications of multimodal models across industries are endless.
Features

All the News That's Fit to Pinch
The emerging cases by authors and copyright owners challenging various generative AI programs for using copyrighted materials are certain to create new troubles for the courts being asked to apply the fair use doctrine to this important new technology.
Features

Can Artificial Intelligence Patents Survive Alice?
Part One of a Two-Part Article Under the current Alice framework, those attempting to patent AI innovations face an uphill battle. But, as the caselaw demonstrates, inventors and patent drafters can take steps to reduce the risk of AI patent claims being invalidated as abstract ideas.
Features

Director Vidal's Impact On the PTAB: Big Changes and More On the Way
Perhaps the largest impact that Director Vidal has had upon the PTAB is has been via Director Reviews. The U.S. Supreme Court mandated Director Reviews to correct procedural defects in the way that administrative patent judges are appointed to the PTAB.
Features

Federal Circuit Imperils Term-Adjusted Patents
The Federal Circuit recently upheld the Patent Office's decision to reject claims in four separate reexamination cases due to obviousness-type double patenting (ODP).
Features

The Presumption of Irreparable Harm After the Trademark Modernization Act Of 2020: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
This article explores developments (both positive and negative) in the post-TMA world in which courts have wrestled with implementation of the presumption of irreparable harm in trademark cases.
Features

How Far Can You Reach? The Territorial Limits of Lanham Act Infringement and False Designation of Origin Claims
On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court set new geographic limits for infringement and false designation of origin claims raised under Sections 1114 and 1125(a) of the Lanham Act. Given the global nature of business today, the decision highlights the need for trademark owners to continually reassess and, perhaps, expand their international trademark registration strategy as product lines and brands become more international in scope.
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