LJN Newsletters

Recent decisions have begun to fill in the gaps left by In re Seagate Technology, LLC. They suggest that a competent opinion is still an effective defense to a willfulness charge, and that a jury may consider a defendant's failure to obtain an opinion when determining the defendant's intent for purposes of willfulness and inducement. Also, legitimate trial defenses may be sufficient to establish that a defendant's actions at the time of infringement were not "objectively reckless.

This article provides an overview of how various courts have dealt with the question of post-verdict compensation in the wake of the eBay Inc. v. MercExchange L.L.C. verdict.

A patent can be held invalid for incorrect inventorship, and co-inventorship of one, even relatively insignificant, claim can entitle a co-inventor to an ownership stake in every claim of the patent. Moreover, failure to join all co-inventors/owners as plaintiffs can prevent the real party in interest from enforcing a patent. A recent decision by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Nartron Corp. v. Schukra U.S.A., Inc., is illustrative of such risks

In re Kubin, 2009 WL 877646 (Fed. Cir. April 3, 2009), now appears to be the first case in which a defined biochemical structure was found to be obvious despite the fact that the structure was previously unknown and unpredictable.

In April, when the federal judge overseeing the settlement involving Google's online book search service gave authors four more months to opt in to, or out of, the deal, many copyright insiders were surprised. Not Allan Adler. For Adler, vice president for legal affairs at the Association of American Publishers ("AAP"), U.S. District Court judge Denny Chin's decision to delay what was a May deadline until September marked just another twist on a long, bumpy road.

Searching for child pornography on the Internet and following links to make such images appear on a computer screen constitutes knowing possession or control of that material, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled.

Delivering a blow to bloggers' rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that a Washington state teacher's blog attacking co-workers, the union and the school district was not protected speech, and therefore she was not unlawfully demoted over it.

This article analyzes how courts are handling jurisdictional questions attendant to the next generation of technology, such as forms of "cloud computing," including virtual data rooms and social networks. As these technologies continue to develop and opportunities arise to increase revenue, companies risk having to defend themselves in far-off jurisdictions never before contemplated.