Intellectual Property

  • February 28, 2025

    Judge Denies OpenAI's Bid For Discovery In Meta's IP Fight

    A California federal judge rejected OpenAI's request to see discovery produced in Meta Platforms Inc.'s copyright battle with authors over its artificial intelligence tool, writing Thursday that the "broad swath of information" it requested is not proportional to the company's needs in its own case.

  • February 28, 2025

    Intel Wants License Question Settled Before VLSI Trial In May

    Intel Corp. is asking U.S. District Judge Alan Albright to hold that a license it has with Finjan Holdings also covers patents owned by its affiliates, meaning a jury would only decide whether its litigation foe VLSI Technology is one of those affiliates.

  • February 28, 2025

    Judge Refuses To Dismiss $500M Miss America Suit

    A Florida judge has denied the bulk of real estate developer Glenn Struab and two associates' attempt to escape a fraud and racketeering lawsuit that accuses them of conspiring to assert control and ownership of the company that runs the Miss America pageant and seeks $500 million in damages.

  • February 28, 2025

    Trump Admin Cuts Raise Trade Secret Security Concerns

    As the Trump administration reduces the size of the federal government, intellectual property attorneys are expressing concerns about the continued safeguarding of trade secrets that companies are required to disclose to certain agencies.

  • February 28, 2025

    'Moana' IP Theft Accuser Forged Evidence, Jury Hears

    Counsel for a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co. sought during cross-examination Friday to undercut the credibility of an artist claiming "Moana" ripped off his work, pointing out that the plaintiff doctored a key document in the case and offered money to potential witnesses.

  • February 28, 2025

    Dartmouth Wants Fed. Circ. To Ax Fees After Vitamin IP Loss

    Dartmouth College is appealing a Delaware federal court's $9.1 million fee award after losing a fight over milk vitamins patented by a biochemist at the school, telling the Federal Circuit that there is no reason it should have presumed that the patents it asserted were "worthless."

  • February 28, 2025

    Off The Bench: Trans Ban Recusal Bid, Wemby Spat, Fox Suit

    In this week's Off The Bench, a Colorado federal judge won't recuse himself from a case centering on a transgender athlete over his pronoun use, the sale of a high-profile Victor Wembanyama jersey will go forward despite feverish litigation and a sprawling harassment suit against Fox Sports is shuffled from federal to state court.

  • February 28, 2025

    ITC Judge Clears Dell, ASUSTeK, Acer On Search Indexing IP

    An administrative law judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has found that computer makers Dell Technologies Inc., ASUSTeK Computer Inc. and Acer Inc. didn't infringe an X1 Discovery Inc. patent for methods and systems for search indexing by importing products with Microsoft software.

  • February 28, 2025

    Amazon Sellers Don't Infringe Chair Patent, New Suits Say

    Two Amazon sellers have sued outdoor furniture maker ShelterLogic Corp. in Washington federal court, claiming the company used the commerce giant's Patent Evaluation Express proceedings to falsely accuse them of selling products that infringe its foldable chair patent.

  • February 28, 2025

    Software Engineer Faces Prison For Sharing Info With China

    A Southern California man has pled guilty to downloading sensitive technology from a former employer and using it to market his own competing business to a company in China, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • February 28, 2025

    USPTO Fires Some Probationary Workers, But Not Examiners

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has fired "a small number" of employees that were still on probation, but not patent and trademark examiners, the acting patent commissioner announced.

  • February 28, 2025

    Arnold & Porter Lands 2 IP Partners From King & Spalding

    Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP has added two attorneys from King & Spalding LLP to bolster its intellectual property practice through their extensive backgrounds handling life sciences and technology IP disputes.

  • February 28, 2025

    UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

    This past week in London has seen the billionaire Zakay brothers, founders of Topland Group, become embroiled in a legal dispute with each other, Unilever sue three major perfume companies over alleged illegal price-fixing, and the publisher of Vogue magazine file an intellectual property suit against Cornucopia Events. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

  • February 28, 2025

    Trump Admin's NIL Guidance Isn't Law, But Is A Title IX Threat

    When President Donald Trump's U.S. Department of Education recently rescinded late Biden-era guidance instructing that upcoming revenue distribution to college athletes should follow Title IX laws protecting equal opportunity for women, legal experts told Law360 it came as little surprise — but also carried very little legitimate legal force.

  • February 27, 2025

    Meta's Held-Back Docs In AI Suit Merit Discovery, Authors Say

    The California federal judge overseeing a proposed class action claiming Meta Platforms Inc. is using copyrighted material to train its large language model product said Thursday he will consider allowing the author plaintiffs more discovery in response to the tech giant's assertion that it had "inadvertently" held back up some 18,000 documents.

  • February 27, 2025

    Expelliarmus! Warner Bros. Aims Wand At Harry Potter Dupes

    Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is pursuing a slew of online merchants it says are selling counterfeit "Harry Potter" products on Amazon, Temu, Walmart and other e-commerce platforms, telling an Illinois federal judge Thursday that the unauthorized merchandise deceives consumers and hurts the motion picture company's reputation and wallet.

  • February 27, 2025

    VW Urges Fed. Circ. Not To Revive 3D Glasses Patent Suit

    Volkswagen urged the Federal Circuit on Wednesday to uphold a lower court's dismissal of patent-holding company VDPP LLC's patent suit against it, arguing that VDPP "failed to investigate facts, pressed unreasonable positions, disregarded court orders and rationales, 'lied,' and committed innumerable careless errors."

  • February 27, 2025

    Liquidia Challenge To UTC's Tyvaso Exclusivity Fails

    United Therapeutics Corp. is entitled to exclusivity over its blockbuster lung disease treatment Tyvaso through May, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was right to hold off approving a competitor until then, a D.C. federal judge said Thursday.

  • February 27, 2025

    Lewis Brisbois Foe Urges 5th Circ. To Let TM Feud Go To Jury

    The main defendant of a group that was found liable for willfully stealing Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP's name for its mediation business has told the Fifth Circuit that a Texas federal court committed more than a dozen abuses of discretion and that the trademark dispute should go before a jury.

  • February 27, 2025

    Food Startup Owes $575K In TM Fight With Jaden Smith's Co.

    A disagreement over how food startup Eat Just capitalized on the word "Just" in branding will cost it over half a million dollars after a California federal court decided its conduct went against the company's agreement with the Just Water brand started by celebrity Jaden Smith and his actor dad, Will Smith.

  • February 27, 2025

    Artist Immediately Knew 'Moana' Was A Ripoff, Jury Hears

    An artist testified in California federal court Thursday that he was "shocked" upon taking his stepson to see "Moana" in a movie theater in 2016, saying he was certain the first time he saw the blockbuster film that The Walt Disney Co. had copied his own animated work.

  • February 27, 2025

    Alsup Halts 'Illegal' Firings Of Probationary Federal Workers

    U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Thursday temporarily blocked the mass firings of probationary federal employees ordered by President Donald Trump's administration, determining that the Office of Personnel Management illegally directed government agencies to terminate the probationary employees without authority to do so from Congress.

  • February 27, 2025

    OpenEvidence Says Rival's Attack Targeted Its AI 'Blueprint'

    Medical artificial intelligence company OpenEvidence accused a Canadian competitor of launching cyberattacks on its system, executing dozens of attempts to trick the platform into handing over some of the technology's most valuable code, according to a Massachusetts federal lawsuit.

  • February 27, 2025

    No Sanctions For Atty As TM's Incontestability Status Axed

    The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has declined to refer Great Concepts LLC or its former attorney for potential discipline for submitting a filing with false information for incontestability of its mark in 2010, saying too much time has passed.

  • February 27, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Upholds Netflix PTAB Win Over Chip Patent

    Netflix persuaded the Federal Circuit to sign off Thursday on another one of the streaming company's wins at the patent board in its fight with a Broadcom subsidiary over chip technology.

Expert Analysis

  • Curious Case Of FTC's Amicus Brief In Teva Fed. Circ. Appeal

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    Attorneys at BCLP explore the Federal Trade Commission's backing of Amneal's Orange Book-delisting efforts on Teva ahead of a key Federal Circuit hearing in a case between the two pharmaceutical companies, and wonder if the FTC amicus brief indicates a future trend, especially in the next administration.

  • E-Discovery Quarterly: Recent Rulings On Metadata

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    Several recent rulings reflect the competing considerations that arise when parties dispute the form of production for electronically stored information, underscoring that counsel must carefully consider how to produce and request reasonably usable data, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • When 'Patented' Goes Beyond Inventorship In False Ad Cases

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    The Federal Circuit's recent false advertising holding in Crocs v. Effervescent is significant because it offers a nuanced yet realistic understanding of what false claims about a product's status as "patented" can mean, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • The Fed. Circ. In October: Aetna And License-Term Review

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    The Federal Circuit's recent decision that Aetna's credit card licensing agreement with AlexSam did not give the insurer immunity from patent infringement claims serves to warn licensees to read their contracts carefully, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

  • Opinion

    PREVAIL Bill Is Another Misguided Attempt To Restrict PTAB

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    The decade-long campaign against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board — currently focused on the PREVAIL Act that's slated for markup in the Senate — is not really about procedural issues, and it is not aimed at securing more accurate patentability decisions, says Clear IP's Joseph Matal, former acting director at the USPTO.

  • Striking A Balance Between AI Use And Attorney Well-Being

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    As the legal industry increasingly adopts generative artificial intelligence tools to boost efficiency, leaders must note the hidden costs of increased productivity, and work to protect attorneys’ well-being while unlocking AI’s full potential, says Ed Sohn at Factor.

  • Fleetwood Facts: Art Imitating Life, Or Infringing Copyright?

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    A new lawsuit in New York federal court over Broadway's "Stereophonic" play tests copyright's limits, as copyright law poses significant hurdles when it comes to real-life stories, and the line between fact and fiction isn't always clear-cut, says Aaron Moss at Greenberg Glusker.

  • Empathy In Mediation Offers A Soft Landing For Disputes

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    Experiencing a crash-landing on a recent flight underscored to me how much difference empathy makes in times of crisis or stress, including during mediation, says Eydith Kaufman at Alternative Resolution Centers.

  • Series

    Being An Artist Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My work as an artist has highlighted how using creativity and precision together — qualities that are equally essential in both art and law — not only improves outcomes, but also leads to more innovative and thoughtful work, says Sarah La Pearl at Segal McCambridge.

  • Reading Tea Leaves In Fed. Circ. Deep Dive On Review Scope

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    Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer investigates why a recent Federal Circuit opinion spent six pages explaining its unsurprising conclusion on proper scope of review — that no deference need be afforded to the trial court in a case dismissed for failure to state a claim.

  • Consider The Impact Of Election Stress On Potential Jurors

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    For at least the next few months, potential jurors may be working through anger and distrust stemming from the presidential election, and trial attorneys will need to assess whether those jurors are able to leave their political concerns at the door, says Ken Broda-Bahm at Persuasion Strategies.

  • How Judiciary Can Minimize AI Risks In Secondary Sources

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    Because courts’ standing orders on generative artificial intelligence and other safeguards do not address the risk of hallucinations in secondary source materials, the judiciary should consider enlisting legal publishers and database hosts to protect against AI-generated inaccuracies, say attorneys at Lankler Siffert & Wohl.

  • 3 Steps For Companies To Combat Task Scams

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    On the rise in the U.S., the task scam — when scammers offer a victim a fake work-from-home job — hurts impersonated businesses by tarnishing their name and brand, but companies have a few ways to fight back against these cons, says Chris Wlach at Huge.

  • False Patent Marking Claims Find New Home In Lanham Act

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    While the Patent Act may have closed the courthouse doors for many false patent marking claims, the Federal Circuit, in its recent decision in Crocs v. Effervescent, may be opening a window to these types of claims under the Lanham Act, says John Cordani at Robinson & Cole.

  • A Look At Calif. Biz Code And The Fight Over Customer Lists

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    To ensure Uniform Trade Secret Act security, California staffing agencies and their attorneys should review Section 16607 of the state Business Code, which prohibits contracts that restrain employees from engaging in other lawful types of business, to understand the process for determining whether a customer list constitutes a trade secret, says Skye Daley at Buchalter.

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