News

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 10, 2020, affirmed the invalidation of Genentech’s patent directed to methods of purifying antibodies, finding that the process of chilling a composition to below room temperature could be found both obvious and anticipated by a process that purified that composition at room temperature.

The US Patent and Trademark Office will brief users on recent examination practice and procedure guidance related to examination of ranges during its Virtual Instructor Led Training (vILT) course Examination of Ranges on February 11, 12, or 13.

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 were barred by a covenant not to sue, and found that the covenant was not superseded by a later agreement involving the same patent.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.

The addition of a generic top-level domain (gTLD) to an otherwise generic term can, under certain circumstances, create a protectable trademark, the American Intellectual Property Law Association said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on January 13, 2020.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on January 9, 2020, held that statutory damage awards are not available when a defendant infringes in one way before the copyright was registered and another way after registration.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 7, 2020, vacated and remanded a lower court ruling which held that Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC, an integrated specialty pharmaceutical company, didn’t infringe Amgen Inc.’s patent for the kidney disease drug Sensipar.

The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts on January 6, 2020, awarded a summary judgment victory to Prince’s estate on its claims that unauthorized concert recordings posted to YouTube infringed the late musician’s copyrights.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 6, 2019, reversed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruling that held claims of a Koninklijke Philips NV keypad patent valid.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on December 18, 2019, vacated and remanded a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision which invalidated SRAM’s improved bicycle chainring patent for obviousness.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on December 12, 2019, held that a garage door opener patent didn’t cover openers without a motion detector in a wall unit because the detector’s placement in a wall unit constituted the patent’s invention.

The US District Court for the District of South Dakota on December 11, 2019, canceled trademark registrations for the word “Sturgis” in light of Walmart and others’ success defeating the trademark owner’s related infringement claims.

The AIPLA Newsstand is on hiatus today to celebrate Christmas Eve.

The Precedential Opinion Panel (POP) concludes that, at institution, a petitioner must identify with particularity sufficient evidence to establish a reasonable likelihood that an asserted reference was publicly accessible before the critical date of the challenged patent and thus qualifies as a printed publication.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on December 16, 2019, affirmed a district court ruling that awarded Health In Motion LLC and Leisure Fitness Equipment LLC attorneys’ fees and expenses after the parties petitioned the court for fee reimbursement in a patent infringement suit.

The US Patent & Trademark Office announced that it will delay the effective date of its mandatory electronic filing rule change from December 21, 2019 to February 15, 2020.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board on December 11, 2019, designated three decisions as informative.