Posts Tagged: "district of colorado"

Crocs loses inter partes reexam, will appeal rejection of design patent for ornamental footwear

Boulder, CO-based shoe manufacturer Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ:CROX) had a design patent rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The patent struck by the USPTO is U.S. Patent No. D517789. Issued in March 2006 and assigned to Crocs, it protected the ornamental design of footwear. The design patent illustrations attached to the ‘789 design patent showcase the well-known Crocs design featuring holes in the footwear material around the front of the foot and a strap behind to hold the footwear in place against a person’s heel… The Examiner refused to recognize a priority claims of earlier filed applications dating back to June 23, 2003. According to the Examiner, the shoe that is the subject of the ‘789 design patent was not adequately disclosed prior to May 28, 2004, making an earlier priority date claim impossible to recognize.

Supreme Court Will Review Constitutionality of Restoring Expired Copyrights in Foreign Works

Earlier this week the United States Supreme Court granted the petition for a writ of certiorari filed by lawyers from Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project (FUP) and Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP and will review the constitutionality of a federal statute that has removed thousands of foreign works from the Public Domain and placed them under copyright protection. The case presents a two-pronged constitutional challenge to the 1994 law passed by Congress, which amended the Copyright Act. The case will test whether Congress has the authority to remove works from the Public Domain under the “Intellectual Property Clause” of the United States Constitution and whether the 1994 law violates the First Amendment rights of those who performed, adapted, restored and distributed works which had previously been in the Public Domain.