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Mealey's Intellectual Property

  • July 29, 2025

    11th Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of Russian Pop Band Copyright Complaint

    ATLANTA — An 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on July 28 affirmed a Florida federal judge’s dismissal of a Florida company’s copyright infringement claims against a French digital music company for allegedly infringing on rights associated with a Soviet-era Russian pop group, agreeing that the Florida company failed to establish jurisdiction under the state’s long-arm statute.

  • July 29, 2025

    Federal Circuit Agrees With DocuSign On Invalidity Of Security Patent Claims

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said it saw no errors in the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) finding that DocuSign Inc. successfully showed that all challenged claims in web security patents were unpatentable as obvious in three separate inter partes review (IPR) proceedings, rejecting the appellant inventor’s contention that PTAB’s findings stemmed from an incorrect claim construction.

  • July 28, 2025

    Federal Circuit Finds No Jurisdiction Over Patent Royalty Row, Transfers Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held July 25 that it lacks jurisdiction to consider a medicine maker’s request for changes to an arbitration award requiring royalty payments to another company for a patented active ingredient because the issues on appeal do not sound in patent law, transferring the case to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

  • July 28, 2025

    Xerox Again Sees Patent Invalidation Affirmed By Federal Circuit

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) invalidation of all claims in a patent held by Xerox Inc. describing a method of content delivering content to users, agreeing with the PTAB’s claim construction that all parties agreed would be dispositive if upheld.

  • July 28, 2025

    On Remand From 9th Circuit, Judge Dismisses FCA Suit Against Drugmakers

    SAN FRANCISCO — On remand from the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and after the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari, a California federal judge dismissed without prejudice a qui tam suit accusing pharmaceutical companies of violating the False Claims Act (FCA) and related state laws by artificially inflating drug prices, finding that dismissal “is warranted” because the second amended complaint “lumps” the companies “together in an undifferentiated mass” regarding the alleged fraud.

  • July 28, 2025

    AI Chatbots Replicate Tony Robbins’ Protected Works, Motivational Speaker Says

    LOS ANGELES — Two companies promote artificial intelligence chatbot replicas of Tony Robbins using his image, persona, methodologies and other protected material, the motivational speaker’s companies say in a complaint filed in a federal court in California alleging “digital, commercialized impersonation and misappropriation.”

  • July 25, 2025

    Federal Circuit OKs Judgment On Patent, Copyright, Other Claims On Steel Brace

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A steel company failed to show that a construction company infringed its patent describing a type of bracing for preventing seismic damage to buildings, a panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held, affirming a Utah federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in the construction company’s favor.

  • July 25, 2025

    9th Circuit: Bored Ape NFTs Trademarkable, But Confusion Not Shown

    SAN FRANCISCO — While a panel in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with the makers of Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that NFTs are trademarkable “goods” as defined in the Lanham Act, the panel reversed summary judgment in the company’s favor on trademark infringement and cybersquatting claims because it failed to show convincingly that consumers would confuse its NFTs with other ape-themed products from two defendants lampooning the original NFTs.

  • July 24, 2025

    Federal Circuit: PTAB Right To Reject Interference Estoppel In Gambling IPR

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that there was no error in the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) finding that an appellant patent owner’s patent for an invention that applied to transfers of data between gaming machines was invalid as obvious; the panel also found “no shenanigans” in the decision not to apply interference estoppel.

  • July 24, 2025

    Federal Circuit Won’t Rethink AI Patent Eligibility 1st Impression Decision

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The full Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on July 23 denied a machine learning patent holder’s petition for panel or en banc rehearing, leaving in place an April panel decision on a matter of first impression that affirmed the invalidation of the patents for describing the abstract concept of machine learning without pointing to specific improvements.

  • July 23, 2025

    Judge Dismisses Trump’s Bid For Co-Authorship Of Bob Woodward Audiobook

    NEW YORK — President Donald J. Trump failed to show that he is the joint author or copyright owner of the audiobook version of a book by journalist Bob Woodward that included clips of recordings of interviews with Trump, a New York federal judge ruled, dismissing Trump’s second amended complaint against the reporter, publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. and its parent company.

  • July 23, 2025

    Judge: Copyright Claims Not Among Those Surviving In Voice Actors’ AI Suit

    NEW YORK — Two voice actors may proceed with claims that a company breached its contract by using recording to train artificial intelligence and infringement claims stemming from the use of the actual voice in presentations, but copyright and Lanham Act claims and those stemming from AI output fall, a federal judge in New York said in partially granting a motion to dismiss.

  • July 22, 2025

    Judge Finds For OpenAI In Suit Over Open AI Trademark

    SAN FRANCISCO — While both companies in a trademark dispute over the “Open AI” mark offered artificial intelligence products, it was OpenAI Inc. that commercialized and advertised its products and whose mark acquired a secondary meaning, a federal judge in California said in granting the company summary judgment on July 21.

  • July 22, 2025

    Federal Circuit Reverses Patent, Trademark Infringement Finding In Sweatshirt Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed an Arizona federal jury’s verdict in a design patent and trademark infringement dispute related to oversized sweatshirts, holding that substantial evidence does not support the jury’s finding that a manufacturer infringed another entity’s trademarks.

  • July 22, 2025

    Microsoft, GitHub Say Coders Lack Injury, Identicality In AI Appeal

    OAKLAND, Calif. — Coders have not shown that artificial intelligences produce code identical to their own, and interpreting federal law to cover works that merely resemble a copyrighted work would produce “staggering” results, Microsoft Corp. and online code platform GitHub told the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a response brief.

  • July 21, 2025

    Judge Tosses AI Patent Inventorship Claims For Lack Of Jurisdiction

    CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge dismissed an artificial intelligence (AI) data scientist’s complaint against his former employer, an industrial supplier, seeking the invalidation of patents for which he claimed to be the inventor, noting that the scientist appeared to cite a nonexistent subsection of the Patent Act and sought relief that was not possible.

  • July 21, 2025

    Judge: No Juror Could Find Infringement In Metrology Tech Suit

    BOSTON — A federal judge in Massachusetts granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant semiconductor manufacturer, holding that “no reasonable juror” would find that its use of another company’s product infringed a nonpracticing plaintiff entity’s patent on a piece of metrology filtering technology.

  • July 18, 2025

    Media Companies Appeal Whether AI MDL Required Revisiting DMCA Dismissal

    NEW YORK — Two media companies filed a notice that they will ask the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to review a ruling dismissing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim against OpenAI Inc. and others as well as whether creation of a multidistrict litigation governing artificial intelligence copyright suits warranted reconsideration of the opinion.

  • July 18, 2025

    Judge Certifies AI Class, Wants Response To Fair Use Appeal Motion

    SAN FRANCISCO — In a pair of developments, a California federal judge on July 17 granted a class certification motion in an artificial intelligence copyright suit involving pirated works, saying “It will be straightforward to prove the classwide wrong done” and the case is the exact type that benefits from representative litigation.  In an earlier ruling the judge asked for a response to Anthropic PBC’s motion for reconsideration or an interlocutory appeal of a ruling on the company’s fair use arguments.

  • July 17, 2025

    Texas Federal Judge: Patents Asserted Against Cisco Invalid As Abstract

    WACO, Texas — A Texas federal judge who found that Cisco Systems Inc. did not infringe multiple claims of a computer system patent before a jury began deliberations said in a July 16 opinion that two remaining patents at issue are invalid as being directed at an abstract concept without a necessary transformative inventive idea added to it.

  • July 17, 2025

    Judge Says AI Photo Analysis Patent Not Abstract Per Alice Test

    WILMINGTON, Del. — A Delaware federal judge rejected a defendant artificial intelligence company’s argument that the machine learning patents it is accused of infringing are invalid as abstract, agreeing with the insurance company patent holder that “the patents recite the patent-eligible arrangement of two independently trained classifiers to analyze property characteristics and conditions.”

  • July 17, 2025

    9th Circuit: Supplement Trademark Used Abroad Can’t Be Confused With Older Mark

    SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected a nutrition supplement company’s contention that a competitor’s proposed trademark for “Nature’s Day” had been shown to have a likelihood of being confused with the company’s “Nature’s Way” mark because the “Nature’s Day” mark was exclusively used on products sold abroad, contravening the Lanham Act’s bar on extraterritoriality.

  • July 16, 2025

    Newly Amended MosaicML Copyright Claims Lack Specifics, Companies Say

    SAN FRANCISCO — Plaintiffs in a recently amended action involving artificial intelligence copyright claims make conclusory allegations but never actually link the training of the models to copyrighted works or the plaintiffs’ own works, two companies responsible for training large language models tell a federal judge in California in seeking dismissal of the action.

  • July 16, 2025

    2nd Circuit Revives Counterfeit Speaker Claims, Vacates Summary Judgment

    NEW YORK — A panel in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals vacated a New York federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an online electronics market, holding July 15 that the judgment stemmed from an incorrect finding that an electronics manufacturer failed to establish a prima facie case for its trademark infringement and counterfeiting claims.

  • July 16, 2025

    Judge Dismisses Patent Claims Against DraftKings, But Not FanDuel

    TRENTON, N.J. — In a pair of opinions issued on the same day, a New Jersey federal judge found that sports betting company DraftKings Inc. and a related entity successfully showed that a technology company failed to substantiate its patent infringement claims against the sportsbook, while separately finding that FanDuel Inc. failed to show that patents held by the same company were invalid as abstract.