Patent box is the catchy shorthand label that has been given to the tax incentive programs for intellectual property assets that have recently sprung up all over the world. While it may be descriptive of the British system, it is hardly descriptive of most tax regimes in other nations.
On Feb. 5, 2016, in TriVascular, Inc. v. Samuels, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the written decision of the PTABin an Inter Partes Review. In particular, the court affirmed the Board's conclusion that the '575 patent was not invalid as being obvious over the prior art of record despite the Board's initial institution of the IPR based on obviousness grounds.
The producers of the movie The Hurt Locker had a First Amendment right to fictionalize the experience of a U.S. Army explosives technician in the Iraq war, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled.
Fame, they say, is fleeting ' but the brands and value they create are not. Little wonder the adopted names of certain stars become not only brands in the popular imagination, but also legally defended rights and trademarks.
For the second time in three years, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to consider important questions under the Copyright Act at the behest of Supap Kirtsaeng, a tenacious Thai math professor. In 2013, the Supreme Court handed Kirtsaeng an important victory in a litigation brought against him by a major publisher, holding that a copyrighted work published and purchased abroad may be resold in the United States without the permission of the copyright holder.
The New Jersey Franchise Practices Act is a powerful tool for those businesses that qualify for its protections. Under the NJFPA, a franchisor cannot terminate a franchisee without good cause, even where doing so would be perfectly acceptable under the parties' contract. The NJFPA also prohibits a franchisor from imposing "unreasonable standards of performance" on a franchisee.
The implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, while not always a separate cause of action, depending on the jurisdiction, can be a powerful tool in a franchisee's arsenal to assert claims based on breaches of franchise agreements due to a franchisor's bad conduct. However, recent cases coming out of New York and Michigan demonstrate just how difficult it can be for a franchisee to make out a claim premised on the franchisor's poor behavior.
On Feb. 2, 2016, the U.S. Department of Commerce and European Commission unveiled a new framework for personal data transfers from European Union (EU) Member States to the U.S. The new framework ' dubbed the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield ' will replace the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor program, which was invalidated by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in 2015.
A Washington litigation boutique is embroiled in a fight with an electronic-discovery company over who should pay $3 million in fees for e-discovery services that a federal judge found 'unreasonable.'
Despite changes in patent law expected to curb the filing of lawsuits by non-practicing entities, NPE litigation increased significantly in 2015.
