Justia Intellectual Property Opinion Summaries

Anjinomoto’s 655 patent claims E. coli bacteria that have been genetically engineered to increase their production of aromatic L-amino acids, such as L-tryptophan, during fermentation, as well as methods of producing aromatic L-amino acids using such bacteria. Ajinomoto filed a complaint against CJ with the International Trade Commission, alleging that CJ was importing certain products that infringed the patent. CJ used several strains of E. coli to produce L-tryptophan products, which it then imported into the United States. The Commission determined that CJ’s earlier strains did not infringe but that CJ’s two later strains did, and that the relevant claim of the 655 patent is not invalid for lack of an adequate written description. The Federal Circuit affirmed, upholding the Commission’s construction of “replacing the native promoter . . . with a more potent promoter.” The court rejected CJ’s claim of prosecution history estoppel and held that the 655 patent expressly provides four examples of “more potent promoters,” so that the Commission supportably found that a skilled artisan could make relatively predictable changes to the native promoter to arrive at a more potent promoter. View "Ajinomoto Co., Inc. v. International Trade Commission" on Justia Law

SportFuel registered its first “SportFuel” trademark for “food nutrition consultation, nutrition counseling, and providing information about dietary supplements and nutrition,” which became “incontestable” in 2013 (15 U.S.C. 1065). SportFuel later registered the trademark for “goods and services related to dietary supplements and sports drinks enhanced with vitamins.” Gatorade, created in 1965, is more widely known and is the official sports drink of the NBA, PGA, MLB, MLS, and other organizations. In addition to its traditional sports drinks, Gatorade now customizes its sports drinks by selling formulas that are tailored to the nutritional needs of individual professional athletes and sells other sports nutrition products. It began to publicly describe its products as sports fuels in 2013. In 2016 it registered the trademark “Gatorade The Sports Fuel Company.” Gatorade disclaimed the exclusive use of “The Sports Fuel Company” after being advised that the phrase was merely descriptive of its products. SportFuel sued for trademark infringement, unfair competition, and false designation of origin in violation of the Lanham Act. Gatorade sought cancellation of SportFuel’s trademark, moved to exclude SportFuel’s expert’s testimony and survey evidence concerning the likelihood of consumer confusion from Gatorade’s use of the slogan. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Gatorade, finding that SportFuel failed to produce evidence that demonstrated a factual dispute on any of the three elements of Gatorade’s fair use defense. Gatorade descriptively used the term “Sports Fuel” in its slogan fairly and in good faith. View "SportFuel, Inc. v. PepsiCo, Inc." on Justia Law

The parties dispute the validity of a copyright in a full-body banana costume. The Third Circuit applied the Supreme Court's decision in Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc., 137 S. Ct. 1002 (2017), and held that the banana costume's combination of colors, lines, shape, and length (i.e., its artistic features) are both separable and capable of independent existence, and thus are copyrightable. The court held that the merger doctrine did not apply in this case, because copyrighting Rasta's banana costume would not effectively monopolize the underlying idea because there are many other ways to make a costume resemble a banana. Furthermore, the scenes a faire doctrine was inapplicable. Therefore, the district court did not err when it held that Rasta was reasonably likely to prove ownership of a valid copyright. View "Silvertop Associates Inc. v. Kangaroo Manufacturing Inc." on Justia Law

The Federal Circuit affirmed the decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board sustaining Hybrid Athletics' opposition to Hylete's trademark registration application. Hylete's application sought to register a design mark for a stylized letter "H" in International Class 25 for athletic apparel. The court held that Hylete waived the arguments on which its appeal relies because it raises new issues that could have been raised and were not considered. In this case, Hylete waived its argument that Hylete's mark is sufficiently different from Hybrid's "composite common law mark" to avoid a likelihood of confusion as to the source of the athletic apparel sold bearing those marks. View "Hylete LLC v. Hybrid Athletics, LLC" on Justia Law

VirnetX appealed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decision related to three inter partes reexaminations maintained by Apple and Cisco. In this case, the PTO concluded that Apple was not barred from maintaining its reexams by the estoppel provision of the pre-America Invents Act (AIA) version of 35 U.S.C. 317(b), and the Board affirmed the examiner's determination that the claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 7,418,504 and 7,921,211 are unpatentable as anticipated or obvious over the prior art of record. The '504 and '211 patents describe systems and methods for establishing a secure communication link between a first computer and a second computer over a computer network, such as the Internet.The Federal Circuit held that there has been a final decision entered against Apple that it has not sustained its burden of proving invalidity, and thus section 317(b) estoppel applied to the Apple reexams. Therefore, the court vacated the Board's decisions in the Apple reexams with respect to claims 1–35 of the '504 patent and claims 36–59 of the '211 patent and remanded with instructions to terminate. The court affirmed the Board's decision on all remaining claims of both patents in the Apple reexam not subject to section 317(b) estoppel and fully affirmed the Board's decision regarding the claims of the '211 patent in the Cisco reexam. View "VirnetX Inc. v. Apple Inc." on Justia Law

The parties dispute the ownership of copyrights in 44 articles written by the film critic Stanley Kauffmann, which first appeared in The New Republic magazine and now have been republished in an anthology. The Estate appealed the district court's dismissal of the complaint against RIT for copyright infringement based on RIT's publication of the anthology. RIT asserted the defense that the Estate did not own the copyrights, arguing that the articles were works for hire and that the magazine was the author of the works with ownership of the copyrights.The Second Circuit held that Kauffmann's articles were not works for hire because the letter agreement (which stated that his articles were works for hire) was signed long after the works were created, and no special circumstances even arguably warrant applying the written agreement. Therefore, Kauffmann was and remains the author of the 44 articles and his Estate, as his successor, was the owner of the copyrights in them. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's judgment and remanded for further proceedings. View "The Estate of Stanley Kauffmann v. Rochester Institute of Technology" on Justia Law

A teratogen is an agent known to disturb the development of an embryo or fetus. Teratogenic drugs, such as thalidomide, can cause birth defects or other abnormalities following fetal exposure during pregnancy. Celgene’s 501 and 720 patents are generally directed to methods for safely distributing teratogenic or other potentially hazardous drugs while avoiding exposure to a fetus to avoid adverse side effects of the drug. The patents describe the System for Thalidomide Education and Prescription Safety that compiles information about patients and prescribers to prevent the prescription from being filled before appropriate counseling. The Coalition for Affordable Drugs (CFAD) sought inter partes review. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board determined that all of the claims of the 501 patent and multiple claims of the 720 patent were obvious. The Federal Circuit affirmed and held that the retroactive application of IPR proceedings to pre-Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, 125 Stat. 284-341, patents is not an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment. IPRs do not differ sufficiently from the PTO reconsideration avenues available when the patents here were issued to constitute a taking. View "Celgene Corp. v. Peter" on Justia Law

Solutran’s patent, issued in 2012, describes a system for processing paper checks. It explains that the digital age ushered in a faster approach to processing checks, where the transaction information on the check is turned into a digital file at the merchant’s point of sale terminal and is sent electronically; the funds are then transferred electronically from one account to another, so that it is not always necessary to physically move the paper check from one entity to another to debit or credit the accounts.. The patent discloses a method proposed by the National Automated Clearing House Association for “back office conversion” where merchants scan their checks in a back office, typically at the end of the day, “instead of at the purchase terminal.” The district court held that the patent was not invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101 for failing to recite patent-eligible subject matter and was infringed. The Federal Circuit reversed, applying the “Alice” test. The claims are directed to the abstract idea of crediting a merchant’s account as early as possible while electronically processing a check and do not “contain a sufficiently transformative inventive concept so as to be patent-eligible. The patent's claims simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea with routine, conventional activity. View "Solutran, Inc. v. Elavon, Inc." on Justia Law

Recombinant therapeutic proteins are a class of biologic medicines that are manufactured inside living cells. Before a protein can be therapeutically useful, it must first be purified from contaminants. Amgen’s patent claims methods of purifying proteins using hydrophobic interaction chromatography. Amgen sued Coherus for infringing the patent under the doctrine of equivalents because the salt combination used in Coherus’s process did not match any of the three expressly claimed salt combinations in the Amgen patent. The Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit, reasoning that prosecution history estoppel bars Amgen from succeeding on its infringement claim under the doctrine of equivalents. During prosecution of the patent, Amgen clearly and unmistakably surrendered salt combinations other than the particular combinations recited in the claims. View "Amgen Inc. v. Coherus Biosciences Inc." on Justia Law

Life filed a complaint against another corporation of the same name, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition under the Lanham Act. Life obtained an injunction against the defendant corporation and its officers, including the corporation's president, who was not named a defendant. After entry of a default judgment against the corporation and damages-related discovery, the district court awarded damages and attorneys' fees against both the defendant corporation and its president personally.The Fourth Circuit held that the district court erred in entering judgment against the president personally when he was not named as a party or otherwise brought into the case by service of process. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the president in contempt of court. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for the district court to determine whether any of the damages and fees award entered against the president is attributable to his contempt of court. View "Life Technologies Corp. v. Govindaraj" on Justia Law