Posts in Circuit Courts of Appeal

The petitioner in a case challenging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that affirmed a Texas court’s dismissal of copyright claims over Texas A&M’s unauthorized reproduction of portions of his manuscript filed a reply brief Monday, arguing that the opposition provides “no escape hatch… for states’ particularly egregious intellectual property violations.” Michael Bynum, a sports writer and editor, and publishing company Canada Hockey L.L.C., doing business as Epic Sports, said that the Texas Attorney General’s August 19 brief in opposition was “bristling with aggressive and controversial legal positions” and that the Fifth Circuit’s decision “undermines federal copyright protection from state predation.”

On September 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a decision in Amyndas Pharmaceuticals, S.A. v. Zealand Pharma AS affirming the District of Massachusetts’ decision to dismiss trade secret misappropriation claims between former drug development partners. However, the First Circuit found that the district court abused its discretion in denying Amyndas’ motion to file an amended complaint and vacated the dismissal of trade secret claims against Zealand’s U.S. subsidiary.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on August 31 affirmed a district court’s ruling that Verify Smart Corp had failed to plausibly allege an agency relationship between Wells Fargo and Bank of America (the “Banks”) and a banking industry group’s subsidiary sufficient to prove the Banks enlisted the subsidiary to challenge a patent they were contractually prohibited from challenging themselves.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Monday said in a precedential decision that Jiangsu Tie Mao Glass Co. Ltd. (TMG) should have shown up sooner in a trade secrets misappropriation lawsuit brought against it by PPG Industries if it wanted to have a chance at winning. But by failing to enter the litigation until after PPG asked the district court to enter default judgment and award damages for unjust enrichment, “its protestations were and are too little and much too late,” said the appellate court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday affirmed the ruling of Judge James C. Mahan of the District of Nevada dismissing a trademark infringement case filed by K&K Promotions, which owns the IP rights to famed American daredevil Evel Knievel. The Ninth Circuit agreed with Judge Mahan that the character of Duke Caboom from Walt Disney Studios and Pixar’s Toy Story 4 was not a literal depiction of Knievel, but rather a transformative use.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a district court’s comprehensive order finding that Day to Day Imports, Inc. (DDI) acted with willful blindness in submitting a fifth Takedown Notice to Amazon asking that auto stickers it alleged infringed its licensed artwork be removed from the site. DDI took a license in 2016 to the copyright for artwork created by Harold Walters for a set of replacement stickers for the dashboard climate controls for certain General Motors vehicles. In 2018, Alper Automotive, Inc. began selling a sticker that DDI alleged infringed the licensed copyright. DDI sent Takedown Notices to Alper on May 8, 2018; May 15, 2018; August 2, 2018; and November 1, 2018.

On August 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in McGucken v. Pub Ocean Ltd. that reversed a Central District of California’s sua sponte grant of summary judgment to Pub Ocean on McGucken’s copyright infringement claims. The case involved Pub Ocean’s unauthorized use of photos of a lake that formed in Death Valley, California, in March 2019. The Ninth Circuit found that all of the fair use factors weighed against a determination that Pub Ocean’s unlicensed use of the photographs were transformative.

On Wednesday, August 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling against Vital Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (VPX) in the form of sanctions for violating its discovery obligations in a trade dress dispute with Monster Energy Company. The Eleventh Circuit also denied Monster’s motion for sanctions in the form of attorney’s fees and double costs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed with a district court earlier this week that neither a settlement agreement between AbbVie and a number of generic biologics companies, nor the 132 patents owned by Abbvie covering its blockbuster drug, Humira, violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. This holding, which is significant in its own right, also has broader implications for patent-antitrust analysis.

In a case that echoes they key issue in a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling for PepsiCo, Inc., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Lorna Schofield denied a brand owner’s request for a preliminary injunction enjoining model and influencer Hailey Rhode Bieber, who is also the spouse of superstar Justin Bieber, from selling products under the name “Rhode,” which is also her middle name.

On July 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision in RiseandShine Corp. v. PepsiCo, Inc., authored by Senior Circuit Judge Pierre N. Leval, reversing a preliminary injunction entered by the Southern District of New York that prevented Pepsi from marketing its “Mtn DEW Rise Energy” canned energy drink. In reversing, the Second Circuit held that the district court had improperly construed certain likelihood of confusion factors as favoring the merits of RiseandShine’s reverse confusion theory.

On July 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments in US Inventor v. Hirshfeld, an appeal from a lawsuit first filed in February 2021 to challenge the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) development of the Fintiv framework for discretionary denials of petitions for Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings. Although the appeal comes to the Fifth Circuit following the district court’s dismissal due to the plaintiffs’ lack of Article III standing, much of the oral arguments focused on whether the Fifth Circuit or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had proper jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

On June 24, the International Trademark Association (INTA) filed an amicus brief in Vans, Inc. v. MSCHF Product Studio, Inc., a case currently on appeal from the Eastern District of New York to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In the brief, INTA urges the Second Circuit to clarify the kinds of “expressive works” to which the Rogers test may be applied, and in such a way that the use of Vans trade dress on sneakers sold by MSCHF Product Studio would be actionable for infringement and not protected by the First Amendment simply because MSCHF claims the sneakers are works of art.

Following a denial of rehearing en banc by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in February, publishing company Canada Hockey L.L.C., doing business as Epic Sports, and Michael Bynum, a sportswriter and editor, have now filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in their appeal of a copyright case against both Texas A&M University and a pair of school officials. The petition claims the Fifth Circuit’s decision leaves copyright holders “at the mercy of state infringers.” In their petition, the plaintiffs argue that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling affirming the Southern District of Texas’ dismissal of copyright claims over Texas A&M’s unauthorized reproduction of portions of Bynum’s manuscript on the nearly 100-year history of the famed “12th Man” tradition at Texas A&M erred in failing to find constitutional violations of both the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Texas ruling followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2020 decision in Allen v. Cooper, which declared that Congress’ abrogation of state sovereign immunity under the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act was unconstitutional.

In responding to the unprecedented COVID-19 challenges, companies around the world are rushing to capitalize on the current crisis by advertising the effectiveness of their products in containing the virus spread. Among these ads and messages, some may be useful in building the public’s confidence and marketing effective products to consumers, but some may mislead and deceive desperate consumers into buying treatments and products without any scientific support. As fear and anxiety proliferate during this pandemic, fraudulent or false advertisements also surge and explode. Petitioners raise false advertising claims and try to stop misleading advertisements by seeking injunctions. However, the injunction standard in the false advertising context is still the subject of debate.