Insights
Federal Circuit Overturns Precedent in Dan Tana Restaurant Trademark Case
January 16th, 2024
The Federal Circuit has overturned 50 years of precedent in a trademark case involving a famous West Hollywood restaurant. The case is Great Concepts, LLC v. Chutter, Inc. Great Concepts, LLC appealed the decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Bo…
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Categories: Trademarks
Supreme Court Hears “Trump Too Small” Trademark Case
January 15th, 2024
The US Supreme Court will resolve a trademark dispute over an attempt to register the mark “Trump Too Small” for printing on shirts. Elster applied for the trademark in 2018. It was inspired by an exchange of insults at a 2016 Republican presiden…
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Categories: Uncategorized
Mickey Mouse Enters the Public Domain
January 12th, 2024
January 1 every year is celebrated by some as “public domain day.” Works first published in 1928 (and sound recordings from 1923) enter the public domain on this day. Works published earlier were already in the public domain. As the US Copyright…
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Categories: Patents
USPTO Director Vacates Food Slicer Holding
January 11th, 2024
US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal vacated and remanded a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) that found Weber, Inc. had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that certain claims of Provisur Techn…
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Categories: Patents
New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft for Copyright Infringement
January 9th, 2024
At the end of December, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming that their generative AI (GAI or GenAI) tools were trained on articles published by the Times without its authorization. There have been similar…
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Categories: Copyright
Federal Circuit Affirms Medtronic Failed to Prove Teleflex Claims Unpatentable
January 3rd, 2024
The Federal Circuit has affirmed a finding by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) that Medtronic failed to prove that challenged claims of a Teleflex catheter patent were unpatentable. The ’116 patent is directed to a method for using…
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Categories: Patents
Trader Joe’s Charges Crypto Platform with Trademark Infringement
January 2nd, 2024
Trader Joe’s has filed a lawsuit against a cryptocurrency platform called “Trader Joe,” claiming fraud, trademark infringement, and trademark dilution. The crypto site uses the URL https://traderjoexyz.com/avalanche and other domains that incor…
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Categories: Patents
US Patent Office Releases New China IP Rights Toolkit
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has released a revised edition of its China Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Toolkit. According to the USPTO, The Toolkit offers an in-depth look at the basics of protecting IP rights in China… It also p…
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Patent Office Launches Semiconductor Fast Track
December 13th, 2023
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has started to accept petitions for the Semiconductor Technology Pilot Program. As the USPTO explains, the Pilot Program is designed to support the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIP…
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Categories: Patents
Court Dismisses Netflix “Tiger King” Tattoo Copyright Case
December 8th, 2023
A US district court has granted Netflix’s motion to dismiss a claim for copyright infringement by a tattoo artist whose work was shown in the Tiger King series. The case is Cramer v. Netflix, Inc. In March 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Moll…
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Categories: Copyright
