When the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently hosted a forum on IP, innovation, national security and geopolitical competition, there was an active discussion about the role of IP – intellectual property – in achieving those other outcomes. An interesting debate emerged over the words that describe those IP functions, suggesting that policy can be ill-served by some habitually used, but perhaps not descriptively accurate, vocabulary. The upshot: words matter.  

On Thursday, April 25, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held an open meeting during which the agency’s commissioners voted 3-2 to restore net neutrality rules that reclassifies Internet broadband providers as common carriers, dramatically increasing regulatory oversight on such companies operating in the United States. This partisan victory for the Democratic Party membership of the FCC is raising opposition from taxpayer advocacy groups and Republican lawmakers who believe that the return of net neutrality rules will do much to harm America’s leadership in broadband Internet.

GlaxoSmithKline filed a four-count civil action for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware late last week seeking damages for Pfizer and BioNTech’s infringing manufacture, use, sale and marketing of both the original “monovalent” and “bivalent” Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine was quickly rolled out compared to other vaccines in the past and many pharmaceutical companies benefited financially. However, GSK contends their competitors, Pfizer Inc. and Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC (collectively Pfizer) and BioNTech SE, BioNTech Manufacturing GMBH and BioNTech US Inc. (collectively BioNTech) developed their vaccines with GSK’s patented inventions created about a decade earlier.

A recent Post Grant Review (PGR) petition raises several interesting questions, including whether the crossing of two varieties of corn previously crossed and already owned by the patent owner results in a non-obvious claimed invention. See Inari Agriculture, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., PGR2024-00025. But as interesting as that obviousness question may be, and how easy it seems it is to get a utility plant patent issued, the question of greater concern for the system relates to which test for indefiniteness the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should be using, and why.

This week in Other Barks and Bites: Caltech drops a patent infringement lawsuit against HP; the world celebrates World Intellectual Property Day; GSK sues Pfizer accusing the company of infringing on its mRNA patents.

Late last year, , the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that it would issue a limited exclusion order (LEO) and cease and desist order (CDO) against Apple, Inc. prohibiting Apple from importing and selling its Apple Watch (Series 6 and 7) products in the United States. The case was Certain Light-Based Physiological Measurement Devices and Components Thereof, Investigation No. 337-TA-1276 (“Light-Based Physiological Measurement Devices”), a “Section 337” patent infringement investigation before the ITC that was initiated by Masimo Corporation. Adding insult to injury, the ITC refused to stay these remedial orders pending appeal, putting at immediate risk continued sales of the Apple Watch in the United States. These decisions sent shock waves across both the tech industry and the legal community.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) established World IP Day (WIPD) 19 years ago to celebrate the day on which the WIPO Convention entered into force: April 26, 1970. And this year, WIPO has set as the theme for World IP Day 2024, “IP and the SDGs: Building our common future with innovation and creativity.” According to WIPO’s website, in order to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), “we need to re-think how we live, work and play.” Intellectual property is, of course, a major part of this as the engine for “innovative and creative solutions that are so crucial to building our common future.”

Picture this: You own a women’s swimwear business. You engage your customers by curating eye-popping images on social media that exude athleticism and style. While browsing online, you find a photo posted by someone else of a woman in one of your pink swimsuits diving into a pool. You instantly know that this woman is exactly who your customers want to be! You share it on your profile with the caption, “Making waves wherever I go” and link to your swimsuit for purchase. Within hours the post racks up 50,000 likes and 2,000 swimsuit orders. But the excitement quickly wears off when you receive an email from a law firm representing the photographer, claiming you infringed her copyright.

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal on April 19 vacated a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that had denied institution of an inter partes review (IPR) for a lighting system patent owned by Rotolight Limited. Videndum Production Solutions challenged claims 1–19 of U.S. Patent No. 10,845,044 B2 via IPR and Rotolight argued the petition should be discretionarily denied under the factors set forth in General Plastic Industries Co., Ltd. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha.

On April 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) released an updated draft proposal of an international agreement on the global response to future pandemics. While the WHO pandemic agreement has been met with widespread support from many of the international agency’s member nations, including the United States, it retains provisions limiting intellectual property (IP) rights that have encouraged opposition from lawmakers and pharmaceutical innovators alike.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a revised opinion on Tuesday in the case of Abitron v. Hetronic, which was on remand from the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision vacating a $96 million damages award for Hetronic. The Court ruled last year that Sections 1114(1)(a) and 1125(a)(1) of the Lanham Act are not extraterritorial in nature and that “‘use in commerce’ provides the dividing line between foreign and domestic applications of these provisions.” The underlying case involved Hetronic’s radio remote controls, which are used to operate heavy-duty construction equipment, such as cranes. Abitron et. al. began manufacturing and selling the products primarily in Europe under the Hetronic brand and continued to do so following the termination of their distribution agreements with Hetronic.

Lyse Brillouet has been the Chief Intellectual Property Officer and Senior Vice-President, Licensing, for the Orange Group since 2018. In the latest episode of The SEP Couch, Brillouet describes why intellectual property (IP) matters within the Orange Group, which has over 130,000 employees worldwide. IP for Orange is an important outcome of various research and development projects. Orange is a technology company, with its main objective being to bring technology and related service to its customers. In some cases, Brillouet must balance the monetization of IP and the promotion of a new standardized technology. One example of this is Orange’s strategy regarding patent pools.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today voted in a Special Open Commission Meeting to publish and approve a final version of the January 2023 proposed rule that would ban employers from using clauses for their employees. Today’s rule allows existing non-competes to remain in force for senior executives but bans new non-competes for all workers and makes existing non-competes for all other workers unenforceable after the effective date, which is 120 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Tennessee’s recent legislative move, the ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and the Image Security Act of 2024), has garnered attention for its efforts to address the challenges posed by artificial intelligence in the music industry. Signed into law on March 21, 2024, the ELVIS Act represents a big step by a state with a huge music industry presence to prevent the unauthorized use of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated musician soundalike content. But is it enforceable?

Brazil, a country known for its abundant natural resources, is emerging as a significant player in the global renewable energy sector. Brazil has one of the highest levels of insolation in the world (ranging from 4.25 to 6.5 sun hours per day according to the Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment Project – (SWERA) and is therefore uniquely positioned to harness the power of the sun.