GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY v. RAYTHEON TECHNOLOGIES CORP.
Before Lourie, Reyna, and Hughes. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: A party has standing to appeal an adverse IPR decision if it has concrete plans for future activity that creates a substantial risk of future infringement.
Royal Philips NV acquired BioTelemetry, Inc. for $2.8 billion US dollars. Headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, BioTelemetry provides cardiac diagnostics and monitoring tools that, according to the press release, are expected to add to Philips’ line of hospital-based patient monitoring solutions.
In July 2020 the Court of Justice the European Union’s (CJEU) Schrems II decision declared the EU-US Privacy Shield Protections inadequate for the protection of European data. On November 10, 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) released “Recommendations 01/2020 on measures that supplement transfer tools to ensure compliance with the EU level of protection of personal data.” The recommendations provide a framework for data exporters to analyze the protections afforded to European Union residents’ person data and ensure that throughout the data lifecycle data receive the protection demanded by EU privacy law as embodied in the GDPR and other regulations.
SIONYX LLC v. HAMAMATSU PHOTONICS K.K.
Before Lourie, Reyna, and Wallach. Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Summary: A party who discloses confidential information pursuant to a NDA may be entitled to ownership of U.S. and foreign patents filed by the receiving party when the patents arise from confidential information provided by the disclosing party, and the terms of the NDA provide that any patents arising from confidential information are owned by the disclosing party, even if employees of the receiving party contribute to the patented invention.
On November 17, 2020, the Canadian House of Commons introduced the Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020 (“DCIA”), which includes the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (“CPPA”), a privacy focused arm of the legislation. The full text of the Bill can be found here. The CPPA would act as an update and expansion to the pre-existing federal, privacy law.
On October 27, 2020, the District Court in the Western District of Texas issued its Final Judgment in L’Oreal USA Creative, Inc. v. Drunk Elephant, LLC, 1:18-cv-00982 (W.D.Tex.), which approved the Joint Stipulation of Dismissal in view of the settlement between L’Oreal USA Creative Inc. (“L’Oreal”) and Drunk Elephant, LLC (“Drunk Elephant”) thereby officially ending the two-year legal battle between the parties.
VIDSTREAM LLC V. TWITTER, INC.
Before Newman, O’Malley, and Taranto. Appeal from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Summary: Evidence of a prior art reference’s publication date submitted after an IPR petition may be appropriately considered by the Board if the evidence is a legitimate reply to a challenge by the patent owner.
When they launched “Call Her Daddy” in 2018, Sofia Franklyn and Alexandra Cooper were relatively unknown. They were two New York City friends candidly dishing about dating and sex without any euphemisms on the internet. Barstool Sports saw promise in their content, and signed the two to a three year contract. Now, each has a million Instagram followers (plus or minus) and together they have built a strong brand and a loyal audience by unabashedly offering their commentary and advice on modern relationships. Podcast listeners, self-identified as #DaddyGang, affectionately refer to Franklyn and Cooper as the “Founding Fathers.” To Barstool Sports, who signed Franklyn and Cooper to deliver their self-launched podcast on the Barstool platform, the duo were simply employees.
It well known that there are, unfortunately, many data breaches that frequently put private citizens’ data privacy in jeopardy. States have passed a variety of statutes aimed at addressing this problem in an attempt to provide data breach victims with some form of redress. Nonetheless, even where there has been a data breach, a plaintiff must meet certain requirements in order to have standing to bring a lawsuit in an Article III court. One such requirement, as the case described below illustrates, is that a plaintiff must have sufficiently pleaded injury-in-fact in his or her complaint.
VECTURA LIMITED v. GLAXOSMITHKLINE LLC
Before Prost, Bryson, and Wallach. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware
Summary: Distinguishing prior art based on the structure of the particles, not the process used to manufacture them, does not import a process limitation into the claims.
