Litigation

Features

In the last decade, the ITC has been an increasingly popular forum for litigating IP rights, largely because it offers a quick and forceful remedy in the form of an exclusion order, which can exclude infringing products from the U.S. market. In recent months, several important decisions have caused some to question the continuing vitality of the ITC as forum.

Columns & Departments

Federal Circuit: Only Patent Owner May Appeal a PTAB Reexamination Decision <br>Federal Circuit: Clones Not Patentable Subject Matter<br>Federal Circuit: PTO's Decision Not to Initiate <i>Inter Partes</i> Review Is Not Appealable

Features

Policing and enforcing trademark rights in social media requires a brand owner to reexamine some of the basic premises about infringement. It is black letter law that trademark maintenance requires a trademark owner to maintain control over the quality of the goods and services associated with its mark. In the infringement context, this has generally been interpreted as an obligation to prevent any uses that are inconsistent with the brand's image. However, social media has altered this fundamental assumption.

Features

Search-engine results have become the lodestar of the Web for most users. Whether the user constructs a narrowly-tailored query designed to exclude inapplicable results, or a broad search designed as an introduction to a given topic, the algorithmic apparatus fueling search engines will usually produce pertinent information. As a matter of fact, this article on search results was in part fueled by using results acquired from a search engine.

Features

Whether designing and constructing a new retail center, a tenant finish-out or a renovation project, retail real estate developers, property managers and tenants interact with construction contracts, contractors, architects and other construction industry professionals on a regular basis. Those interactions may include lengthy, sophisticated contracts, very basic contracts or no written contract at all. This article addresses some of these common issues from the perspective of protecting the owner of the project.

Features

Authors and other creators of copyrighted works scored a major victory in May when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a significant barrier to recovering damages for copyright infringement.

Features

One practical aspect of disclosure-only settlements that has received little attention is the practice of providing lengthy individual mailed notice of the disclosure-only settlement to class members, which results in additional (and largely unnecessary) costs that, depending on the number of beneficial owners requiring notice, can exceed tens of thousands of dollars.

Features

Rights in pre-Feb. 15, 1972, sound recordings ' which are protected by state law, rather than federal copyright law ' are hotly litigated in the digital music era. On April 17, for example, major record labels sued the music-streaming service Pandora in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit alleges common-law copyright infringement and unfair competition from Pandora's use of pre-1972 recordings.