Posts Tagged: "amazon"

In part one of this series, I outlined the preliminary steps I took on behalf of my client “Bill” to initiate Amazon’s Neutral Patent Evaluation Process. In part two, I will describe the substantive procedure of the evaluation process and its successful resolution…. Overall, Bill and I were extremely pleased with the speed and efficiency of the evaluation process and delighted with the outcome. Moving forward, Bill requested that my firm monitor Amazon for additional infringing products. Because we have already participated in the Neutral Patent Evaluation Process and obtained a favorable outcome, Bill and I will simply report any future infringers to Amazon without having to initiate the evaluation process for a second time.

On May 1, Representative and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and a bipartisan coalition of members of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law signed a letter addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The letter focuses on antitrust issues posed by Amazon’s alleged use of third-party seller data to develop products competing with those sellers, allegations that directly contradict testimony offered by Amazon last year during a House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing. It also calls upon Bezos to testify before the House Judiciary Committee to clear up any discrepancies between the recent Wall Street Journal article and Amazon’s prior testimony to Congress on the subject of third-party seller data.

On April 29, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released its 2020 Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Protection and its 2019 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy. The Report identifies countries and IP-related market access barriers and steps necessary to address those barriers. Section I of the Report highlights “Developments in Intellectual Property Rights Protection, Enforcement, and Related Market Access” and Section II is a Priority Watch List including country reports for countries where particular problems exist with respect to IP protection, enforcement, or market access. The Review identifies illustrative examples of online and physical markets that are alleged to have contributed to substantial trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy activities around the world.

On April 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling absolving e-commerce giant Amazon.com of trademark infringement allegations brought by a German perfume distributor seeking redress for Amazon’s storage and distribution of brand-infringing perfume products sold by third-party sellers. The decision, issued by the CJEU’s Fifth Chamber, holds that Amazon’s mere storage of infringing goods in the context of its online marketplace does not constitute an infringement of trademark rights by Amazon.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments over copyright status of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated; the Federal Circuit remands Ericsson appeal to calculate release payment in patent license; Apple, Ford and others urge the USPTO to retain policy against injunctions on companies practicing SEPs; Huawei asks the Fifth Circuit to undo the FCC’s ban preventing it from supplying U.S. networks; Sergey Brin and Larry Page relinquish executive duties at Google; U.S. antitrust regulators explore Amazon’s cloud business; Washington politicians send letter to ALI over Copyright Restatement Effort concerns; and Qualcomm challenges Judge Koh’s class action certification at the Ninth Circuit.

Trademark and copyright enforcement remains a significant challenge for licensors of popular brands across sports, entertainment, fashion and other industries. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of three dozen industrial countries, estimates counterfeit goods account for 3.3% of global trade. Brand owners cannot rely on the belief that their trademark and copyright registrations will be respected, and they cannot confine their enforcement to demand letters and traditional intellectual property litigation. Rather, a brand owner must avail itself of additional approaches to address both traditional and newer platforms offering infringing products. We continue to see an increase in online infringements, especially in connection with certain e-commerce sites and targeted advertisements on social media. Under the current law, enforcement against online providers can be difficult, particularly when compared to traditional infringement hot sports in the brick-and-mortar marketplace. Flea markets, swap meets and other brick-and-mortar shopping venues reported verdicts and settlements in the last 10 years that confirm commercial landlords/owners can be held liable for the trademark infringement activity of their tenants, with courts around the country extending liability for trademark infringement beyond just the party selling infringing products.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit strikes down a district court’s finding of design patent infringement on summary judgment; the USPTO advises trademark attorneys to monitor filings to prevent against the unauthorized use of their names; the U.S. Copyright Office issues final rules eliminating options for physical material submissions for newspaper and serial registrations; the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Booking.com’s appeal of the rejection of its trademark application by the USPTO; AG Barr supports the FCC’s plan to restrict Huawei and ZTE equipment purchases through the Universal Service Fund; Nirvana’s copyright case against Marc Jacobs moves past a motion to dismiss; Biogen loses $3 billion in market value after PTAB hearing; and Amazon seeks an injunction against a patent owner asserting infringement claims against Amazon Fire product retailers.

E-commerce giant Amazon is “known for its disruption of well-established industries,” as the company’s Wikipedia entry will tell you. What started out as a humble online bookstore has become one of the world’s premier e-commerce sites. Along the way, it has expanded into cloud computing, consumer electronics, and film production, among other diverse ventures. It is responsible for the U.S. Post Office delivering packages on Sundays, and recently sent countless states and municipalities into a frenzy over a competition to host the company’s second headquarter site. Now, Amazon seems primed to disrupt the market for IP legal services with the launch of its IP Accelerator.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: new patent collective for video technology launched; inventor rally to be held during live IPR hearing at AIPLA meeting; the White House indicates that the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal will focus on IP; the USPTO shifts burden of proving patentability in PTAB motions to amend to the petitioner after Aqua Products; the House of Representatives passes the CASE Act in a 410-6 vote; the EU invalidates the three-dimensional trademark to the Rubik’s Cube; Power Integrations settles its patent infringement litigation against ON Semiconductor; Intel files an antitrust suit against SoftBank over patent acquisition and assertion activities; Amazon.com posts its first year-over-year earnings loss in more than two years; and the Federal Circuit overturns Google’s challenge to a Philips patent on appeal from the PTAB.

In late August, the U.S. International Trade Commission published a notice of institution of a Section 337 investigation on behalf of the Regents of the University of California, which is now underway. The University filed a complaint in July alleging that a series of major retailers including Amazon.com, Bed Bath & Beyond, IKEA, Target and Walmart have infringed patents through the importation of certain filament light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and products containing the same. The ITC action is part of an enforcement campaign that is being hailed by the firm representing the university as a “first-of-its-kind university-led effort” to vindicate patent rights owned by the institution.

While online giant Amazon has been in the news recently for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to ease restrictions for its planned drone-based delivery services, a battle is raging behind the scenes for the future of unmanned delivery vehicles. Walmart is combating the narrative of online retailers overtaking brick-and-mortar businesses by revamping its image and services. Besides using a hybrid of online shopping and manual pick-up at the store, the company is very interested in delivering its products to the customer directly—not only through traditional means, but with unmanned drone delivery couriers.

On August 21, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced the release of its official app for mobile devices, titled IPOS Go, to the Apple App and Google Play stores. Among the services offered through the app are trademark filing services, making this particular app the world’s first for enabling the filing of trademark registration documents from a mobile device. IPOS expects that the introduction of this mobile app will help facilitate a growing number of trademark applications; the agency notes that trademark applications in Singapore have increased by 30% over the past five years. As reported by ZDNet, IPOS took in 50,035 trademark applications and registered 37,030 trademarks during 2017. A little over 20% of both filed applications and trademark registrations that year belonged to domestic entities in Singapore. The top foreign filers of trademark applications into Singapore included Amazon Technologies and Apple.

As online marketplaces have been created and subsequently evolved over time, there always seems to be a point where counterfeits and diverted gray-market goods make their way onto those marketplaces. eBay was one of the first e-commerce sites that gave brand owners and trademark owners the ability to review, monitor and take down infringing goods. This program was called VERO (Verified Rights Owner Program). Alibaba and Amazon are now making their own similar efforts to rid their platforms of counterfeit and infringing goods in an effort to keep the big brands interested in selling on their sites.

At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet this morning, titled Counterfeits and Cluttering: Emerging Threats to the Integrity of the Trademark System and the Impact on American Consumers and Businesses, members of Congress expressed concern over the steep rise in trademark applications by Chinese filers, many of which have been found to be fraudulent. The problem has been exacerbated by poor enforcement on the part of platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart; by the limited authority of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to revoke registrations once issued; and by incentives offered by the Chinese government in the form of subsidies to Chinese applicants for U.S. trademarks, said panelists.

Management of trade secrets is fraught with competing interests. There is the tradeoff between security and inconvenience—for example, the annoying wait for a special code to allow “two-factor identification” when you already have your password handy. There is trusting your employees while knowing they might leave to join a competitor. And there is the tension between corporate secrecy and the public interest, such as when the fire department insists on knowing what toxic chemicals are used in your facility. And now we have the cloud (like “internet,” its ubiquity merits lower case), which offers unparalleled convenience and flexibility to outsource corporate data management to others. But moving IT functions outside the enterprise creates new vulnerabilities for that data, which happens to be the fastest growing and most valuable category of commercial assets. So understanding this environment has to be a high priority for business managers.