Insights
What is Likely to Drive Chinese Patent Filings in the Coming Years?
May 20th, 2021
Chinese companies have filed the most number of patents in 2020 at the European Patent Office. Pharmaceuticals and biotechnology patents had the biggest jump in filings last year, which is unsurprising given the global health concern brought on by th…
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Categories: Patents
Federal Circuit Rules that Flower-Arranging Method is Abstract
May 17th, 2021
The Federal Circuit has ruled that a method for creating a floral arrangement on an electronic display screen is abstract and thus not eligible for patent protection. The case of In re Sturgeon involved an appeal from the US Patent and Trademark Offi…
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Categories: Patents
Small patent filing mistakes can have a decisive impact on high-stakes disputes
May 12th, 2021
At first glance, a translation error in a patent may seem to be of little consequence, but a small such mistake in a patent owned by IBSA Institute Biochimique (IBSA) cost the company a lot to litigate. IBSA filed a petition for writ of certiorari in…
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Categories: Patents
US Supreme Court Holds that Copying Application Programming Interface (API) is Fair Use
April 27th, 2021
The US Supreme Court has held that Google’s copying of an application programming interface (“API”) was fair use under copyright law. The case involved Java SE, a computer program in the Java programming language. Oracle owns the copyright for…
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Categories: Copyright
Apple Claims Former Product Designer Stole Trade Secrets
April 23rd, 2021
Apple Inc. has sued a former product designer for the company, claiming that he stole Apple trade secrets in order to help his new employer and that he also leaked secrets to a reporter. The designer, Simon Lancaster, worked at Apple for more than te…
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Second Circuit Redefines the Concept of “Transformative” Fair Use under Copyright Law
April 21st, 2021
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that a series of Andy Warhol prints were not a “transformative” fair use of a photographer’s picture of the musical artist Prince and thus infringed the photographer’s copyright. The c…
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Categories: Copyright
Legal Implications of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT)
April 5th, 2021
We recently covered NFTs here, but due to the heightened interest regarding this topic, here’s a deeper dive into Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that have taken the blockchain industry by storm. An NFT is a type of cryptocurrency asset wherein each ite…
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Court Protects Cake Frosting as “Trade Dress”
April 1st, 2021
A federal court in Denbra IP Holdings, LLC d/b/a Nothing Bundt Cakes v. Kerri Thornton d.b.a. All About Bundt Cakes granted a cake company’s motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that a rival cake company’s frosting patterns violated the f…
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Categories: Trademarks
Federal Circuit Finds Recoupment of Investment Does Not Bar Equitable Intervening Rights
March 25th, 2021
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a district court’s grant of summary judgement of non-infringement in a case involving rival poultry chillers. The case of John Bean Technologies Corp. v. Morris & Associates, Inc. inv…
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Categories: Patents
Are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) Intellectual Property?
March 22nd, 2021
What’s a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) and is it a form of intellectual property (IP)? First, some background on NFTs. As the New York Times explains, An NFT is an asset verified using blockchain technology, in which a network of computers records trans…
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