Posts Tagged: "1-800 Contacts"

Trademarks Are Not Patents: The Second Circuit Rejects FTC Challenge to Trademark Settlements in 1-800 Contacts

In “big IP cases that count,” the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has had a mixed record lately, going one-for-three – good in baseball but bad in government appellate litigation. (The biggest recent FTC loss that counts, the Supreme Court’s unanimous April 2021 AMG decision (see here), did not involve IP, but had major negative implications for the FTC’s future ability to obtain monetary relief in IP-related prosecutions). In August 2020, the Ninth Circuit vacated a district court “finding that Qualcomm had engaged in unlawful licensing practices, and reversed a permanent, worldwide injunction against several of Qualcomm’s core business practices.” (The full Ninth Circuit subsequently denied the FTC’s request for rehearing en banc, and the FTC threw in the towel in March 2021, electing not to seek Supreme Court review).