Oral arguments took place today in Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy, a case that asks whether a copyright plaintiff can recover damages for acts that allegedly occurred more than three years before the filing of a lawsuit. The Justices repeatedly asked the parties involved whether they should dismiss the case as having been improvidently granted (DIG) in order to first grant and decide another pending case that directly addresses a technically peripheral, but seemingly crucial, question at issue in Warner Chappell, namely, whether the so-called discovery accrual rule applies to the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations for civil claims.  

OpenAI shocked the world when it released its spectacularly helpful, free generative AI platform, ChatGPT, on November 30, 2022. AI has existed in various forms for decades but it has never been so widely accessible or boldly efficient. No one can deny that we’ve been living in an AI world ever since. But ChatGPT is just one example of how AI is being used by businesses. To unpack why and how different forms of artificial intelligence are being adopted by businesses and their impact on intellectual property rights, Bruce Berman hosts two innovative exponents of AI on the seventh episode of the third season of his podcast “Understanding IP Matters.”

On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list that denied petitions for writ of certiorari filed in at least five intellectual property cases. While none of these cases induced large numbers of amici to ask the Court to grant cert, they do represent several current issues in IP law that remain unaddressed. From the use of joinder to evade time-bar limits in patent validity proceedings to the service of process required for a grant of preliminary injunction, the Court’s cert denials leave several open questions with which the patent and trademark community will likely grapple.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) today that would allow practitioners who are not registered with the USPTO patent bar to act as lead counsel in proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The Office has decided to propose that practitioners must still be represented by a registered practitioner, but to allow parties to “designate a non-registered practitioner as lead counsel and the registered practitioner as back-up counsel.”

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) remains a popular and busy venue for post-grant review of patents. These proceedings are known for being faster, and by statute, they allow for less discovery than district court patent cases. PTAB litigants therefore may not think about potential third-party subpoenas, which can take significant time and effort to obtain. It is possible, however, to obtain a subpoena in a PTAB case. In certain circumstances, a PTAB subpoena can be a useful tool to bolster your case at the PTAB, but there are specific procedures that must be followed to properly issue and enforce such a subpoena. Precise compliance with these procedures is necessary to obtain the discovery sought.

On February 5, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) held its en banc oral argument to reconsider the obviousness test for design patents. Overall, the many judges’ questions indicated a hesitancy to change the current law, as they expressed concern with positions advanced by the patent challenger. Listening to the argument, it became instantly clear that the designer’s voice was missing from the arguments of both parties. The judges had deeply probing and important questions that need the input of a design professional. As an experienced design professional, I penned this article to highlight the designer’s voice by providing answers to several critical questions posed by the court during oral argument.

On February 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a pair of precedential rulings in Promptu Systems Corp. v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, vacating a final judgment of infringement after reversing part of the district court’s claim construction rulings. The entire U.S. patent community, however, should take notice of the Federal Circuit’s sua sponte order informing future litigants that evading briefing limits by incorporating much larger documents by reference will likely result in sanctions.

This week in Other Barks and Bites: The World Trade Organization adopts two reports meant to advance work leading up to the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC13), where the Council will in part decide whether to extend a waiver of IP rights for COVID vaccines to therapeutics and diagnostics; a Valentine’s Day patent poem gets the WTO in hot water with public health advocates; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rules that Meta will once again face a search engine patent lawsuit and also rebukes counsel for Comcast in a precedential Order regarding incorporation by reference; and a group of music publishers claim a chatbot was knowingly trained to produce copyright-protected lyrics.

In an ideal world, issued patents would not contain errors. In reality, patent drafting is tedious and time-consuming work and perfection is not an attainable goal. The patent industry seems to be steadily getting better, though. In a recent study, we uncovered an 11.24% decrease in errors per patent over the past four years. We observed this decrease by reviewing every patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since 2020 – nearly 1.4 million patents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on Thursday vacating the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) denial of a petition to cancel a trademark for a medicated tea product to treat colic in babies. Naterra International, Inc. petitioned the TTAB to cancel the mark BABIES’ MAGIC TEA based on likely confusion in the market with its own registrations for the mark BABY MAGIC, which cover “numerous toiletry goods.” The Board found that Naterra failed to prove confusion under the 13 DuPont Factors.

It was an average week for patent filings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and an above-average week in district courts, with 72 district court complaints filed and 18 new PTAB petitions—one petition for Post Grant Review (PGR), and 17 for Inter Partes Review (IPR). At the PTAB, a number of challenges were filed, including two IPRs by Tesla challenging patents owned by Iqar Inc, four IPRs by Dish challenging patents owned by Entropic Communications LLC (associated with Fortress), two IPRs by Microsoft challenging patents owned by Interdigital Patent Holdings Inc (associated with InterDigital Inc.), and two IPRs by Juniper Networks challenging patents owned by Monarch Networking Solutions LLC (associated with Acacia Research Corporation).

Three law school faculty and students filed an amicus brief earlier this week urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a trademark decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit regarding the legal standard for trademark confusion. The brief asks the Court to “end the contradiction and confusion” around the different approaches taken to the likelihood of confusion analysis by federal courts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today held that certain claims of a patent for a system to protect against identity theft and fraud were invalid for indefiniteness. Judge Schall dissented-in-part, explaining that he would not have found the claims indefinite based on the intrinsic evidence. U.S. Patent No. 9,361,658 is owned by Mantissa Corporation and is titled “System and Method for Enhanced Protection and Control Over the Use of Identity.” Mantissa sued First Financial Corporation and First Financial Bank, N.A. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging infringement of certain claims. The parties mainly disputed two terms during claim construction: (1) “transaction partner” and (2) “OFF.” The district court relied on First Financial’s expert testimony to conclude that “transaction partner” was indefinite, after finding that the expert used was a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA).

On February 12, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) filed a lawsuit against streaming music company Pandora Media in the Middle District of Tennessee seeking unpaid royalty fees for blanket licenses under the Music Modernization Act (MMA). The case, prompted by recent final determinations on blanket license royalty rates, could prove an interesting test case on the level of interactivity and personal control required before a streaming service qualifies as a covered activity under the MMA.

Fashion is a brand-driven industry, and few brands in the fashion space carry the same cachet as Chanel. But how much control do brands like Chanel have over merchants who resell name-brand items in the secondary market? The answer, according to a federal jury in the Southern District of New York, is “Quite a bit.” The jury awarded Chanel $4 million in statutory damages on Chanel’s claims of trademark infringement, false association, unfair competition, and false advertising related to What Goes Around Comes Around’s (WGACA) reselling and marketing of Chanel products. The plaintiffs prevailed on all claims.