Justia Intellectual Property Opinion Summaries

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

Ford’s design patents relating to F-150 trucks are titled “Exterior of Vehicle Hood” and “Vehicle Head Lamp.” Before the International Trade Commission, Ford accused members of an association of companies that distribute automotive body parts (ABPA) of infringing the patents. The ITC actions settled; the ALJ rejected an argument that the asserted patents do not comply with the ornamentality requirement of 35 U.S.C. 171, and stated that there was no legal basis for a claim of unenforceability based on either the patent exhaustion or permissible repair doctrines. ABPA sought a declaratory judgment of invalidity or unenforceability. The Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Ford, first noting that a design patent protects a “new, original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture” while utility patents must be functional to be patentable. The court rejected ABPA’s argument that consumers seeking replacement parts prefer hoods and headlamps that restore the original appearance of their vehicles so that there is a functional benefit to designs that are aesthetically compatible with those vehicles. If customers prefer the “peculiar or distinctive appearance” of Ford’s designs over that of other designs that perform the same mechanical or utilitarian functions, that is the market advantage “manifestly contemplate[d]” by the design patent laws. The court also rejected ABPA’s contention that Ford’s patents are unenforceable against its members under the related doctrines of exhaustion and repair. View "Automotive Body Parts Association v. Ford Global Technologies, LLC" on Justia Law

Narkiewicz‐Laine, an artist, rented space from the defendants in 2004. About six years later, the defendants cleared the rental space and discarded most of his property, including his only records of the stored property. Narkiewicz‐Laine filed suit, citing the Visual Artists Rights Act, 17 U.S.C. 106A. For certain visual art, the Act confers upon artists rights to attribution and integrity, including the right to prevent the work’s destruction. Narkiewicz‐Laine added claims for trespass, conversion, and negligence under Illinois law. He sought $11 million for his losses. The defendants presented evidence that Narkiewicz‐Laine had missed multiple rent payments and stopped paying for the property's utilities, and testified that, before emptying the space, they saw nothing resembling art or valuable personal property. The defendants introduced Narkiewicz‐Laine's prior conviction for lying to an FBI agent. The jury awarded $120,000 in damages under the Act plus $300,000 on the state law claims, reflecting the loss of all the belongings stored at the unit. The court reduced the total award to $300,000 to avoid an improper double recovery, reasoning that Narkiewicz‐Laine’s common law claims necessarily included the loss of his artwork. The court concluded did not award Narkiewicz‐Laine attorneys’ fees under the Copyright Act. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, first upholding the decision to allow Narkiewicz‐Laine’s 2003 conviction into evidence. Narkiewicz‐Laine is not entitled to recover twice for the same property, so the actual damages attributed to specific art must be subtracted from the jury’s award of actual damages for all destroyed property. View "Narkiewicz-Laine v. Doyle" on Justia Law

Infobridge’s 772 Patent, titled “Method of Constructing Merge List,” generally relates to encoding and decoding video data; the patented methods are essential to the High-Efficiency Video Coding standard (H.265 standard). In two inter partes review proceedings requested by Samsung, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld all challenged claims of the 772 patent, finding that Samsung failed to show that a certain prior art reference was publicly accessible before the 772 patent’s critical date and thus could not be considered prior art. The Federal Circuit vacated, first holding that has standing to appeal. the 772 patent is licensed as part of a “pool” of patents, including some owned by Samsung, that have been declared essential to the H.265 standard. Under this arrangement, Samsung is being deprived of royalty payments, which constitutes the kind of concrete and particularized economic injury that satisfies the Article III requirement. The Board applied the wrong legal standard in assessing public accessibility. A petitioner need not establish that specific persons actually accessed or received a work to show that the work was publicly accessible. The information may have been publicly accessible when it was emailed on a listserv to interested individuals. View "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Infobridge PTE. Ltd." on Justia Law