On March 31, 2017, Forever 21 was sued by Puma over its “Fenty” line of shoes. The “Fenty” label has become popular, in part, due to the influence of music artist, Rihanna as the label’s brand ambassador. In its complaint, Puma claims that it keeps the volume of the “Fenty” label products small and limits sales to increase the label’s desirability.
Petitioner Unified Patents, LLC filed an IPR petition challenging 29 claims of US Pat. No. 8,640,183 owned by Convergent Media Solutions, LLC. Unified’s numerous inter partes review (“IPR”) petitions rarely reach a final written decision, but here the Board issued such a decision and invalidated all of the remaining challenged claims.
In a final written decision in Duncan Parking Tech., Inc. v. IPS Group Inc., IPR2016-00067, Paper 29 (P.TA.B. Mar. 27, 2017), the PTAB evaluated whether a prior art reference alleged to anticipate the challenged patent under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) was a patent “by another.”
“Orphan drug” is a designation given to certain pharmaceutical and biological products (drugs) that would likely not be developed due to a relatively small patient population and limited potential for profitability. In the U.S., the Orphan Drug Act and subsequent regulations define an orphan drug as intended to treat a disease or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 persons in the U.S.
The USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has released its February 2017 statistics. After a spike in new petition filings for January 2017, new filings returned to a more typical pace in February.
In an ongoing set of disputes in Oregon between farmers and corporations that hold GMO patents, farmers may be given a new tool. Oregon House Bill 2739[1] “allows a cause of action against the patent holder for a genetically engineered organism present on land without permission of the owner or lawful occupant”.
The technical nature of a claimed improvement is central to the evaluation of claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Two recent district court opinions illustrate that whether or not the claims describe an improvement in the functioning of a computer itself can be determinative.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued their opinion on Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands on Wednesday, March 22. Should fashion designers rejoice or be fearful? That depends. Designers who repeatedly have original fashion designs copied by others should start rejoicing. On the other hand, those designers that make their bread and butter by copying others fashion designs may need to revamp their business plan.
Nearly 40 years ago, the Supreme Court held in Diamond v. Diehr that while patent claims directed solely to abstract ideas, such as mathematical formulas, are not patent eligible, a claim containing a mathematical formula would be patent eligible if it “implements or applies that formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which that patent laws are designed to protect.”
The PTAB issued an order applying collateral estoppel to determine that one purported owner of U.S. Patent 7,215,752 and U.S. Patent 7,844,041 (the “challenged patents”) had no authority to act as the patent owner in Microsoft Corp. v. Global Technologies, Inc., IPR2016-00663 and IPR2016-00669 (P.T.A.B. March 21, 2017).
