Justia Intellectual Property Opinion Summaries

Samsung filed a petition to institute an inter partes review of certain claims of IXI’s 033 patent, titled “System, Device And Computer Readable Medium For Providing A Managed Wireless Network Using Short-Range Radio Signals.” The patent is directed to “a system that accesses information from a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet, and local wireless devices in response to short-range radio signals.” The system includes a wireless gateway device (i.e., a cell phone), which is coupled to a cellular network, which in turn connects to the Internet through a carrier backbone. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted the review and determined that the reviewed claims are invalid. The Federal Circuit affirmed, as supported by substantial evidence, the finding that a person of ordinary skill in the art would read prior art as implicitly describing an implementation in which the JINI (a specific architecture designed for deploying and using services in a network) lookup service, which identifies services provided on the network, is located on the gateway device, i.e., the cell phone. View "IXI IP, LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd." on Justia Law

Worlds’s patents relate to the computer-generated display of avatars in a virtual world, including methods to determine which avatars are displayed in a given situation. In 2012, Worlds asserted infringement against Activision, which develops, publishes, licenses, and distributes video games. Bungie developed the Destiny products, which are distributed by Activision. In 2014, Worlds notified Activision that it intended to add Destiny as an additional accused product. Six months later, more than a year after Activision was served with the infringement complaint, Bungie filed inter partes reviews petitions, challenging Worlds’s patents. Worlds sought discovery regarding whether Activision should have been named as a real party in interest, making the petitions time-barred under 35 U.S.C. 315(b). Worlds submitted evidence of an agreement between Bungie and Activision: Destiny would be developed by Bungie and published by Activision; Bungie is responsible for “legal reviews,” “subject to prior review and approval of Activision.” The Agreement contemplates financial support from Activision to Bungie for development of Destiny. The Patent Board denied the motion and invalidated the patents. The Federal Circuit vacated. A mere assertion that a third party is an unnamed real party in interest, without any support, is insufficient to put the issue into dispute, but Worlds presented evidence sufficient so the Board was required to make factual determinations necessary to evaluate whether Bungie had established that its petition was not time-barred based on the complaints served upon Activision. View "Worlds, Inc. v. Bungie, Inc." on Justia Law

IV’s 248 patent describes “an application-aware resource allocator” that allocates bandwidth resources to transmit information from software applications over a packet-switched network. The patent explains that quality of service (QoS) requirements may vary among applications, with some types of applications demanding, for instance, error minimization, and others prioritizing speed. To meet these varying requirements, the application-aware resource allocator “allocates bandwidth resource to an application based on an application type.” The district court rejected an infringement suit on summary judgment. The Federal Circuit vacated in part. The plain meanings of “application-aware resource allocator” in claim 1 and “application-aware media access control (MAC) layer” in claim 20 permits the resource allocator to allocate resources based on application type, which can be discerned using information from any of network layer 3, transport layer 4, and application layer 7. The district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement resulted from a contrary construction. The court affirmed a determination that the “allocating means” in claim 20 are indefinite. The patent described QoS as “subjective” and varying based on individual preferences; the patent does not “provide adequate guidance.” View "Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. T-Mobile USA, Inc." on Justia Law

Every winter for about 60 years, Tawas, Michigan has been the home of the “Perchville” festival, including a polar bear swim and a fishing contest. The Chamber of Commerce organizes the event and registered the name Perchville as a trademark. While dues-paying members of the Chamber may use the Perchville mark, non-members must pay a ($750) licensing fee to use it. A local company, AuSable, wants to make Perchville-branded tee-shirts, and sued the Chamber to invalidate its mark. The district court declined. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. “Perchville” is a distinctive term eligible for protection under the Lanham Act, which protects “any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof” that a person uses “to identify and distinguish his or her goods” in the marketplace, 15 U.S.C. 1127. “No matter how you slice it, the term ‘Perchville’ is inherently distinctive. The name does not refer to a place. It serves only ‘to identify a particular’ event, namely the annual winter festival in Tawas. … The word almost certainly counts as fanciful, and at the very least is sufficiently suggestive to qualify as an inherently distinctive trademark.” View "AuSable River Trading Post v. Dovetail Solutions, Inc." on Justia Law

In 2005, Tanksley, a Philadelphia actor and producer, created a three-episode television pilot, Cream, for which he received a copyright. In 2015, Fox Television debuted a new series, Empire, from award-winning producer and director Lee Daniels. Tanksley sued, claiming that Empire infringed on his copyright of Cream. The district court found no substantial similarity between the two shows and dismissed. The Third Circuit affirmed. Superficial similarities notwithstanding, Cream and Empire are not substantially similar as a matter of law. The shared premise of the shows—an African-American, male record executive— is unprotectable. These characters fit squarely within the class of “prototypes” to which copyright protection has never extended. Considering the protectable elements of Cream, “no reasonable jury, properly instructed, could find that the two works are substantially similar.” View "Tanksley v. Daniels" on Justia Law

A bare allegation that a defendant is the registered subscriber of an Internet Protocol address associated with infringing activity is not sufficient to state a claim for direct or contributory infringement. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action brought by plaintiff under the Copyright Act, alleging direct and contributory infringement.The panel held that the direct infringement claim failed because defendant's status as the registered subscriber of an infringing IP address, standing alone, did not create a reasonable inference that he was also the infringer. The panel reasoned that because multiple devices and individuals may be able to connect via an IP address, simply identifying the IP subscriber solved only part of the puzzle. The panel held that a plaintiff must allege something more to create a reasonable inference that a subscriber is also an infringer. Furthermore, Cobbler Nevada could not succeed on its contributory infringement theory because, without allegations of intentional encouragement or inducement of infringement, an individual's failure to take affirmative steps to police his internet connection was insufficient to state a claim. View "Cobbler Nevada, LLC v. Gonzalez" on Justia Law

Diamond Hong petitioned for cancellation of Cai’s mark, “WU DANG TAI CHI GREEN TEA,” based on a likelihood of confusion with its registered TAI CHI mark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) found a likelihood of confusion, giving limited consideration to Cai’s briefing because it contravened provisions of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Manual of Procedure (TBMP). The Federal Circuit affirmed the cancellation of Cai’s mark under 15 U.S.C. 1052(d). The TBMP states that the TTAB is not required to permit “a party in the position of defendant” to file a reply brief. Diamond Hong initiated the cancellation proceedings by filing a petition;Cai was in the position of a defendant and was not entitled to file a reply brief. In its likelihood of confusion analysis, the TTAB considered the first three "DuPont factors," treating the rest as neutral because neither party submitted evidence related to them. Substantial evidence supports the TTAB’s findings with respect to each DuPont factor: the similarity of the nature of the goods, the similarity of established trade channels, and the similarity of the marks. View "Zheng Cai v. Diamond Hong, Inc." on Justia Law

The patent, which expired in 2015, is entitled “Optimizing packet size to eliminate effects of reception nulls,” and is directed to increasing the reliability of a wireless communications system when a wireless receiver is moving by minimizing the effects of burst errors (nulls) that occur at the receiver. Although nulls occur randomly, they can be predicted based on signal drop characteristics, such as the speed the receiver is moving. In describing prior art, the patent notes another technique for reducing the effects of burst errors "involves interleaving multiple message packets together.” On inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found various claims not unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103. The Federal Circuit vacated, finding that the Board improperly failed to consider a portion of the petitioner’s (Ericsson) reply brief, having characterized that portion of the reply as raising a new theory of obviousness, not addressed in the Petition or responding to arguments raised in the Patent Owner Response. “The Board’s error was parsing Ericsson’s arguments on reply with too fine of a filter.” Given the acknowledgment in the patent that interleaving was known in the art, Ericsson was entitled to argue on reply that the distinction in the specific type of interleaving between prior art and the patent would have been insubstantial to a person of skill in the art. The error was exacerbated by the fact that the significance of interleaving arose after the Petition was filed. View "Ericsson Inc. v. Intellectual Ventures I LLC" on Justia Law

Alliance filed suit seeking to enjoin Coalition's use of its logo for federal trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Alliance and enjoined Coalition from using both its name and logo in political advertisements.The Fifth Circuit affirmed and held that Coalition failed to properly raise threshold questions concerning the applicability of the Lanham Act to what it characterized as political non-commercial speech. Therefore, the court declined to reach those questions. The court also held that the district court did not err in deciding that the birds on the logos at issue were identical. The panel held that the evidence established without dispute that Alliance's logo was a valid composite mark and that the use of Coalition's logo infringed Alliance's composite mark as a matter of law. The panel did modify the court's injunction in one respect, finding that the injunction restrained Coalition from using its name as well as its logo. Therefore, that aspect of the injunction was overbroad. View "Alliance for Good Government v. Coalition for Better Government" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to CBS in an action alleging violation of state law copyrights owned by ABS in sound recordings originally fixed before 1972. The panel held that the district court erred in finding that there was no genuine issue of material fact about the copyright eligibility of remastered sound recordings distributed by CBS and improperly concluded that ABS's state copyright interest in pre-1972 sound recordings embodied in the remastered sound recordings was preempted; the district court abused its discretion by excluding evidence of ABS's expert and reports that evidenced CBS's performance of ABS's sound recordings in California, and granting partial summary judgment of no infringement with respect to the samples contained in those reports; and the district court's strict application of its local rules with respect to the timeliness of ABS's motion for class action certification was inconsistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and thus an abuse of discretion. The panel reversed the striking of class certification and remanded for further proceedings. View "ABS Entertainment, Inc. v. CBS Corp." on Justia Law