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Features

Patent Eligibility Remains Uncertain — Especially for the Life Sciences — Even After Recent Federal Circuit Decisions and Efforts By the USPTO to Bring Clarity Image

Patent Eligibility Remains Uncertain — Especially for the Life Sciences — Even After Recent Federal Circuit Decisions and Efforts By the USPTO to Bring Clarity

Susan M. Gerber & A. Patricia Campbell

Part One of a Two-Part Article Congress is empowered to create a patent system to promote the useful arts, and it has enacted laws to create a patent system that encourages innovation. Balancing that power, however, the courts in recent years have tried to rein in the scope of the patent right by limiting the scope of patent-eligible subject matter.

Features

Use of Arbitration In Place of Inter Partes Review Proceedings Image

Use of Arbitration In Place of Inter Partes Review Proceedings

David L. Newman

An IPR might be more efficiently accomplished through arbitration than through a PTAB proceeding, so it should be considered by practitioners.

Columns & Departments

IP News Image

IP News

Jeff Ginsberg & Hui Li

Obviousness-Type Double Patenting Does Not Invalidate Section 156 Patent Term Extension <br>Federal Circuit Holds Assignor Estoppel Does Not Apply in IPR Context<br>Federal Circuit Reverses District Court Holding of Patent Ineligibility of Computer Security Patent

Features

The PTAB's New Claim Construction Standard: Will the Real Impact Please Stand Up Image

The PTAB's New Claim Construction Standard: Will the Real Impact Please Stand Up

Justin Oliver

Beginning on Nov. 13, 2018, the USPTO will cease to apply the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) standard for newly-filed IPR, PGR, and CBM trials under the America Invents Act (AIA). Instead, the USPTO will begin "using the same claim construction standard that would be used to construe the claim in a civil action …."

Features

The 'New NAFTA' and How It Will Affect Intellectual Property Law Image

The 'New NAFTA' and How It Will Affect Intellectual Property Law

Lawrence E. Ashery 

The stage is set for the 24-year-old north American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to end and the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has implications for intellectual property, to take its place.

Features

The High Bar for Challenging an Improperly Revived Patent Image

The High Bar for Challenging an Improperly Revived Patent

Scott D. Locke

The recent <i>In Re Rembrandt Technologies</i> decision is a reminder of both the potential consequence of a patent holder's disingenuous assertion of unintentionality and the challenges that defendants face when raising the improper filing of a petition to revive a lapsed patent as a defense.

Features

Non-Traditional Trademarks: The Elusiveness of Branding a Trend Image

Non-Traditional Trademarks: The Elusiveness of Branding a Trend

Olivera Medenica

A look at several unique trademark cases where the plaintiff fashion brand proactively sought to invalidate a competitor's non-traditional trademarks, an action which reflects a push back on increasingly aggressive litigation tactics by fashion brands seeking to blur the lines between a non-protectable fashion trend and a protectable trademark.

Features

Patent Eligibility of User Interfaces Image

Patent Eligibility of User Interfaces

Lawrence H. Aaronson & James L. Korenchan

<b><i>Advances in UI Design Can Provide Key Competitive Differentiation and Advantage, Which Makes Protecting Them Critically Important from a Business Perspective</b></i><p>Advances in UI design can also provide key competitive differentiation and advantage, helping to distinguish otherwise commoditized products and services such as computers, Web services, wearables, and appliances. Given this advantage, protecting advances in UI design can also be critically important from a business perspective.

Features

How Disney Qualified for Design Patent for Marvel's Captain America Shield Image

How Disney Qualified for Design Patent for Marvel's Captain America Shield

Lawrence E. Ashery

Fans of movies about fictional superheroes are probably familiar with Captain America and his miraculous shield. Recently, however, his shield showed up in a most unlikely place: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Features

Foreign Lost Profits Recoverable for Patent Damages Image

Foreign Lost Profits Recoverable for Patent Damages

Elizabeth B. Hagan

The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that a patent owner may recover lost foreign profits for infringement under 35 U.S.C. §271(f)(2). The holding in <i>WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical</i> rejects the Federal Circuit's categorical exclusion of lost profits damages for foreign sales, and expands the potential for increased damages from domestic competitors operating in foreign markets.

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MOST POPULAR STORIES

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    “Baseball arbitration” refers to the process used in Major League Baseball in which if an eligible player's representative and the club ownership cannot reach a compensation agreement through negotiation, each party enters a final submission and during a formal hearing each side — player and management — presents its case and then the designated panel of arbitrators chooses one of the salary bids with no other result being allowed. This method has become increasingly popular even beyond the sport of baseball.
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    Insiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.
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