Posts Tagged: "SCOTUS"

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc., which asks the Court to consider whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit erred in applying the Lanham Act extraterritorially to Abitron’s foreign sales, “including purely foreign sales that never reached the United States or confused U.S. consumers.” The Justices struggled with the appropriate reach of the Lanham Act and whether reversing the Tenth Circuit would require overruling Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280, 282-285 (1952), but overall seemed to be considering the need for a new or narrowed test to account for the realities of modern commerce.

On March 9, e-commerce company Ingenio Inc. filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to take up an appeal of a decision last August by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in favor of patent owner Click-to-Call Technologies. Ingenio’s petition asks the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s ruling that Ingenio was estopped from challenging the validity of patent claims that were denied institution during inter partes review (IPR) validity proceedings at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

On March 6, biotechnology developer Amgen filed a reply brief  with the U.S. Supreme Court in its appeal of the invalidation of its patent claims covering antibodies effective at blocking low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol receptors. The brief responds to arguments raised both by rival pharmaceutical firm Sanofi and the U.S. federal government in Amgen’s appeal of the invalidation of its patent claims as a matter of law under 35 U.S.C. § 112, which the district court entered on judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) after a jury verdict upheld the validity of Amgen’s patent claims.

Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. filed its reply brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, March 10, in a major trademark case set to be argued on March 22. The brief contends that the country’s most popular brands are at risk of losing their brand identity if the Court affirms the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s view that a poop-themed dog toy mimicking Jack Daniel’s Whiskey bottle is an expressive work entitled to First Amendment protection. In November 2022, the Supreme Court granted Jack Daniel’s petition for a writ of certiorari, which seeks to clarify whether the First Amendment protects VIP Products, LLC’s humorous use of Jack Daniel’s trademarks for commercial purposes against claims of infringement and dilution.

Panelists at IPWatchdog’s Artificial Intelligence Masters Program today debated how artificial intelligence (AI) interacts with intellectual property protection, and how laws around who (or what) can be an inventor or creator, as well as areas like patent eligibility, will need to evolve to ensure the continued “gold standard” status of the U.S. IP system. Attorneys working on some of the biggest cases in the AI space today took part in day one of AI Masters, including Professor Ryan Abbott, who is representing Stephen Thaler in his myriad of cases involving the AI machine, DABUS, both in the United States and elsewhere, and Van Lindberg, who represented Kristina Kashtanova in their recent bid to copyright a partially AI-generated graphic novel.

The United States Supreme Court is soon poised to decide the fate of the enablement requirement, and the patent community is collectively holding its breath, wondering if the Court will strike a deathblow to the biopharmaceutical industry—simultaneously making all patents harder to get and even easier to challenge than they already are. The Supreme Court does not have a strong track record of objectively getting patent issues correct, at least not from a pro-innovation standpoint, although the Justices and their supporters likely would disagree. The undeniable truth, however, is that since the Supreme Court issued its decision in eBay v. MercExchange, virtually every decision of consequence to the patent system has made patent rights weaker and patents themselves easier to successfully challenge.

A manufacturer of Radio Frequency Identification Device transponders (RFIDs), Avery Dennison Corporation, yesterday petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in its appeal of a decision upholding ADASA, Inc.’s patent for RFID technology as patent eligible. Avery Dennison is urging the Court to take up the case, which it says “illustrates the depths of the Federal Circuit’s division” and represents “the other side of the coin” in the eligibility debate, in order to balance competing perspectives. While past and present petitions to the Court on eligibility have traditionally focused on uncertainty due to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) too-narrow view of the law and tendency to invalidate patents under Section 101, Avery Dennison’s petition takes the view that the Federal Circuit’s reading of 101 is too broad.

On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a motion for leave filed by the U.S. Solicitor General to participate in oral argument, as well as for divided argument and for enlargement of oral argument time, in Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. While the Court’s decision to grant the motion shows its interest in the Solicitor General’s arguments in favor of limiting the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act, a reply brief filed the same day by petitioner Abitron argues that the federal government’s proposed legal tests still go too far in allowing Lanham Act claims to reach foreign infringing sales. Last September, the U.S. Solicitor General filed a brief representing the views of the federal government on the issues in Abitron Austria, a case which asks whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit erred in awarding civil remedies under the Lanham Act for infringement of U.S. trademarks through purely foreign sales that neither reached the United States nor confused U.S. consumers. In its brief, the Solicitor General urged the Supreme Court to grant Abitron’s petition for writ of certiorari and rein in the Tenth Circuit’s approach toward awarding Lanham Act damages for foreign infringing sales.

Companies rely on copyright protections to shield their software, data sets, and other works that are licensed to their customers; however, a reframing of what constitutes a “transformative use,” and the extent a license can restrict such fair uses, may whittle away all avenues of protections. On October 22, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. The question before the Court is where does a copyright holder’s right to create derivative works stop and “fair use” of the work begin? Companies that license data sets or data feeds should pay close attention, as the Court’s decision could narrow contractual remedies. 

A number of amici weighed in this week on Novartis Pharmaceuticals’ petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Justices to consider whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) should have been allowed to vacate the decision of a previous three-judge panel composed of different judges, thus invalidating Novartis’ patent for a dosing regimen for its multiple sclerosis drug, Gilenya. In January of this year, Novartis followed through on its September 2022 promise that it would appeal the CAFC’s June 2022 decision invalidating its U.S. Patent No. 9,187,405 to the Supreme Court, after the CAFC denied its request to rehear the case.

In Allen v. Cooper, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA) (codified at 17 U.S.C. §§ 501(a) & 511) did not abrogate a state’s sovereign immunity from copyright infringement liability. A casual reading of that decision might have led one to reasonably believe that it ended the plaintiffs’ copyright case. After all, the Supreme Court indicated that it affirmed a holding that the CRCA was “invalid.” But, as with so many other issues encountered in the legal realm, much lies below the surface. The aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision cast light on the realization that the Court addressed only “prophylactic” abrogation, which seeks to deter constitutional harm before it occurs. On remand, the plaintiffs convinced the district court to consider whether the state’s sovereign immunity could be negated via a “case by case” type of abrogation, which requires actual violation of both a federal statute and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Late last week, a slew of additional amicus briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Amgen v. Sanofi, a closely-watched case that will consider the scope of the enablement inquiry under 35 U.S.C. § 112. More than 30 amici in total have now weighed in on the case. The Court granted certiorari in November 2022 over the U.S. Solicitor General’s recommendation to deny the petition. The justices granted cert on one of the two questions presented.

The American Bar Association (ABA) filed an amicus brief on February 3 with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to clarify issues related to the application of the Lanham Act to trademark disputes that cross international borders. The ABA filed the brief in the Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc. trademark case, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a $90 million damages award for trademark infringement based on infringement that occurred almost entirely outside of the United States.

The inventor of a novel jump rope system (the Revolution Rope), Molly Metz, argued in a reply brief to the U.S. Supreme Court filed on behalf of her company, Jump Rope Systems, LLC, on Tuesday that her case against Rogue Fitness is justiciable and the company has standing despite the cancellation of her patent claims by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Jump Rope Systems filed the brief in reply to Rogue Fitness’s brief in opposition, which was filed on January 19. Metz and Jump Rope Systems originally sued Rogue Fitness in 2018. But after Rogue filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruled that Jump Rope Systems’ two patents (US 7,789,809 B2 and US 8,136.208 B2) related to jump rope handle technology were unpatentable.

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Juno v. Kite undermines effective prosecution practice and ultimately patent enforcement. The Juno panel held that to satisfy the written description requirement, a patent needs to demonstrate to a skilled artisan that the inventors possessed and disclosed in their filing the full scope of every genus being claimed. By denying rehearing to the Federal Circuit’s 2021 decision on the scope of the written description requirement, Juno v. Kite demonstrates how once again, the courts never consider anything from a prosecutor’s point of view. Here’s why Juno v. Kite is bad for patent prosecution practice.