Recently in Intellectual Property Law Category

Earlier this month, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals came down with a ruling that would greatly affect the way several patent cases come out of the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The court held that joinder will not be allowed in multi-defendant patent infringement cases, where the cases allege that the defendants violated the same patent.

Why does this affect the District Court in Texas, though? Because a large number of patent troll cases come out of Texas. In fact, a large number of patent cases, period, come out of Texas, due to the fact that many find the court amenable to the adjudication of patent cases (i.e., it's a favorable forum).

Last month, we talked about the oral arguments made in the Apple-Samsung lawsuit. Apple was trying to enjoin the sale of Samsung’s version of the iPad in the U.S.

Now, the verdict is in. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled on the Apple Samsung patent infringement lawsuit.

And what’s the court saying?

It’s not only high-tech and bio-tech companies that fight patent cases before financial services industry. But if you read many of the posts on this blog, you’ll notice that most of the patent cases we talk about come from either of those two industries.

So today for a change, we bring you a patent case from the world of Wall Street. Or close enough. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is facing patent infringement claims by the International Securities Exchange (ISE) over a system used for trading options contracts, reports Bloomberg News.

It’s not easy to win a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. ZapMedia has learned this the expensive way; it lost its latest battle in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals last week.

The ZapMedia-Apple lawsuit has been in the courts for many years now. In a suit brought before the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ZapMedia alleged that Apple had infringed on a patent over ZapMedia’s technology.

Today, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held in favor of Cephalon in a patent case involving the muscle relaxant drug, Amrix.

The Federal Circuit Court ruling reversed and vacated the lower court ruling which found the two patents invalid as obvious.

Don’t mess with the iPad. Apple takes their tablets and smartphones seriously. And they don’t want competition.

Apple has tried unsuccessfully to block competitor Samsung from selling their smartphones and tablets, accusing them of patent infringement. Now, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing arguments in the iPad patent infringement case.

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated two patents held by Paris-based Sanofi. In a ruling earlier this week, the appellate court concluded that the patents on the Taxotere cancer treatment drug were invalid.

The patents in question are patent numbers 5,714,512 and 5,750,561.

The ruling upholds a lower court ruling invalidating the patents and holding them unenforceable. The reasoning behind the lower court decision was that Sanofi obtained the patents improperly, reports Reuters.

Registering a trademark isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Chamber of Commerce of the United States recently fought for the right to register the service mark “National Chamber” but were met with resistance from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

The reason for the resistance? TTAB claimed that the service mark “National Chamber” was too descriptive of the services offered in connection with the mark, in violation of 15 USC 1052.

The Mayo v. Prometheus case from last week is already generating the effect that many legal analysts predicted it would. On March 20, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a decision from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, citing in its decision that companies cannot patent their observations on a natural phenomenon.

In light of that ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court is sending another case back to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The high court is asking the Federal Circuit to review a case that challenged two patents held by Myriad Genetics Inc.

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in dismissing Appellants’ opposition to registration of a trademark. The TTAB held that there was no likelihood of confusion between the opposed mark and the marks of Appellant. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

Likelihood of confusion is a concept very familiar to trademark attorneys. It is the cornerstone of a trademark application and the essential idea that a mark cannot be registered as a trademark if it risks being confused with another mark. Here, in Bridgestone v. Federal Corp., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit examines the opposition of a company on the very basis of likelihood of confusion.