The Federal Circuit on January 10, 2020, held that patent infringement claims against Japanese electric motor manufacturer Nidec Corp. were barred by a covenant not to sue, and found that the covenant was not superseded by a later agreement involving the same patent.

CBS Corp. won’t have to pay a $1.3 million infringement award because a podcasting patent was invalidated by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the Federal Circuit said on January 10, 2020.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 9, 2020, affirmed the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling which held that a claim of Hospira’s Precedex Premix sedative was invalid for obviousness.

The US Patent and Trademark Office on January 15, 2020, released a “New to PTAB” toolkit now available on the PTAB webpage of the USPTO website.

“A low level of protection for trade secrets and IP theft in a number of countries, notably in China and India” have caused “irreparable harm to European businesses” said the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, in its “Report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries” released on January 8, 2020.