Posts Tagged: "thanksgiving"

As we get ready to celebrate another Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, it’s time once again to reflect on the year so far and to look beyond the many challenges facing intellectual property (IP) owners to what there is to be thankful for. Whether it’s people—like Judge Paul Michel, Kathi Vidal, Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Thomas Massie—or major developments—like the withdrawal of the latest Joint Policy Statement on SEPs and the introduction of legislation to reform patent eligibility law—the commenters below have found a lot of ways to give thanks.

It’s been another challenging year. At the end of 2020, we were all hopeful that 2021 would bring with it a chance to get back to normal, but that has so far eluded most of the world. However, the year did bring with it a lot to be grateful for—the various COVID-19 vaccines, made possible by science and arguably made viable by intellectual property rights—were initially rolled out in the United States beginning in late 2020 and became available to the masses in the spring of 2021. Today, about 60% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and there would be many hundreds of thousands more deaths without the vaccines. IPWatchdog was able to have its first annual LIVE! event as a result of the vaccines as well, and it was a huge success. I’m very thankful to be part of such a great team and to have such truly genuine and wonderful bosses in Gene and Renée. Below are responses to our request for comments on what the IP community is thankful for this year. If you’d like to be added to our mailing list for these roundup perspective pieces, please write us at [email protected].

It began typically enough: the Supreme Court denied cert in Athena, Chargepoint and Trading Technologies; Brexit finally happened; the Federal Circuit refused to rehear Arthrex; and the IP community was waiting for important rulings in copyright cases like Google v. Oracle and trademark cases like Booking.com. But then came COVID. Courts and offices shut down, the USPTO went almost 100% remote, and all conferences and events were cancelled into 2021. At the same time, pharmaceuticals, vaccines – and the IP around them – became the only thing on anyone’s mind.