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On its own initiative in a pending appeal, the Federal Circuit has ordered supplemental briefing concerning the patentability of process claims and the Federal Circuit's 1998 decision in <i>State Street Bank &amp; Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.</i>, which eliminated the 'business method exception' to patentable subject matter.

Registered Trademark Owner's Remedies Not Limited By Types of Goods<br>Domain Name with 'e' before Famous Mark Is Dilution<br>Failure to Produce Written Copyright Transfer Does Not Prevent Standing<br>Electing Statutory Damages For Counterfeit Mark Use Precludes Some Fees

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Do Internet postings constitute 'printed publications' that are available as prior art under 35 U.S.C. &sect;102(b)? Most practitioners and examiners behave as though this were a settled question. It is not. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently addressed this issue in <i>SRI International v. Internet Security Systems and Symantec</i>,. After much discussion of the principle of 'public accessibility,' the majority of the panel determined that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether a paper that SRI posted on its Internet server was a printed publication.

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In <i>Boston Duck Tours, LP v. Super Duck Tours, LLC</i>, the District Court of Massachusetts ruled that sponsored linking qualifies as 'use in commerce' for purposes of trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. Although the court ultimately found no likely consumer confusion in this case, in holding that sponsored linking falls within the purview of the Lanham Act, the court joins a growing number of circuits and districts that have failed to take a cue from well-settled, and clearly analogous, offline-trademark principles. Rather, these courts seem inexplicably intent on reinventing the wheel and expanding the scope of Lanham Act protection to include Web-based activities that are virtually imperceptible to consumers.

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Will you be able to secure evidence that could clear your client when it is located outside the reach of U.S. courts? It's a salient question for today's e-commerce counsel. The defense of white-collar crime increasingly involves the need to obtain evidence from witnesses located abroad. Without careful planning, exculpatory evidence may remain beyond the reach of a defendant for whom such evidence is the only thing standing between him or her, and a prison sentence.

This article examines three Federal Circuit rulings that have set important new guidelines for which kinds of licensees will have independent standing to sue infringers, which will be compelled to join their patentees, and which will be left out in the cold.

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Bullies used to be fairly easy to identify: Bigger than most of us, intimidating and often vicious. While bullies haven't disappeared, they have become more difficult to detect, launching scathing attacks behind the relative anonymity of the Internet. Such acts, known as cyberbullying, are becoming easier to carry out with text-messaging, blogs and interaction through social-networking sites. And they're a growing concern not only for the victims, who can be targeted round-the-clock, but also for educators, parents and lawyers.

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The U.S. Supreme Court created a bit of a problem when it ruled that commercial speech is entitled to limited First Amendment protection, but failed to clearly identify what commercial speech is. So, it often comes down to this: If a business elects to engage in a debate on important social issues, its principals ' and counsel ' have no way of knowing the level of constitutional protection that speech will receive. This issue is becoming especially important to owners of blogs.