The PTAB recently designated as precedential its 2013 decision that assignor estoppel is not a defense for patent owners in IPR proceedings in Athena Automation Ltd. v. Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., IPR2013-00290, Paper 18 (P.T.A.B. October 25, 2013) (designated precedential August 2, 2017).
On July 14, 2017, in a stunning reversal of fortune, a federal court in San Jose, CA, which had previously set aside a $200 million jury verdict in favor of Merck, has now awarded accused infringer Gilead Sciences $13,857,106 in attorneys’ fees.
Knobbe Martens, one of the nation’s leading intellectual property and technology law firms, recently announced that senior partner Gerard von Hoffmann has relocated from Irvine to the firm’s San Diego office in Del Mar Heights.
On July 18, 2017, after two years of litigation and a jury trial, a Texas federal court ordered Eli Lilly & Co. (“Eli Lilly”) to pay Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR (“UroPep”) $20,000,000 in damages and over $930,000 in pre-judgment interest for patent infringement.
On July 18, 2017, the United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) instituted a covered business method (“CBM”) patent review for U.S. Patent No. 8,955,029 (“the ’029 patent”) on grounds of unpatentability under 35 U.S.C. § 101.[1]
For many students in the United States, the first day of school is less than a month away. This means the back-to-school shopping season has started. Teenagers, middle schoolers, and fashion conscious parents of elementary school children will visit malls and outlets in search of new clothing, shoes, and accessories. Many of these shoppers will also visit the websites of retail stores and e-commerce websites.
In Shipping and Transit, LLC v. Hall Enterprises, Inc., a district court recently held that a patent infringement case was “exceptional” under 35 U.S.C. § 285 and the defendant was entitled to recover attorney fees and costs from the plaintiff. The court’s ruling was in part because the plaintiff’s position was “objectively unreasonable” with regard to the validity of asserted claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
On remand from the Federal Circuit, the PTAB granted Veritas’s Supplemental Motion to Amend for one substitute claim and denied the motion with respect to a second claim in Veeam Software Corporation v. Veritas Technologies LLC, IPR2014-00090, Paper 48 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 17, 2017).
On July 13, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Tremfya (guselkumab), a biologic manufactured by Janssen Biotech, for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis patients who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy.
Trademark law is an important form of protection for the fashion and beauty industry. It protects both brand owners and consumers by regulating the registration of brands, or source identifiers, of fashion and beauty products. Historically, it has been difficult to federally register marks that might be deemed “offensive” to others because the Lanham Act, the federal statute governing trademarks, includes a ban against registering marks that are immoral, scandalous, or disparaging. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has been inconsistent in its application of the statute over the years.
