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Mealey's Intellectual Property

  • 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.

  • July 16, 2025

    5th Circuit Vacates, Remands Ruling On IP Exclusion In Coverage Dispute

    NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals vacated a lower federal court’s ruling that an insurance policy’s intellectual property (IP) exclusion unambiguously barred coverage for an underlying lawsuit alleging that an insured  bribed and induced a competitor’s employees to wrongfully misappropriate confidential information and remanded, holding that the insured set forth a reasonable construction of the exclusion.

  • July 15, 2025

    After Settlement Notice, Judge Moots Motions In Web-Based Retailers Trademark Row

    DENVER — After a fencing company and the web-based retailers it sued over alleged trademark infringement notified the court that the parties entered into a settlement agreement, a Colorado federal judge on July 14 issued a docket-only order denying as moot motions to dismiss and for an extension of time related to discovery.

  • July 15, 2025

    Federal Circuit Finds No Error In AAPA Use In PTAB Catheter Ruling

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) should have found all claims of a patent related to a cardiovascular catheter device to be unpatentable as obvious, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held July 14, affirming the bulk of the board’s findings but reversing as to a single claim PTAB did not invalidate.

  • July 15, 2025

    Judge: Fair Use Protects Anthropic’s Use Of Copyrighted Works

    SAN FRANCISCO — The use of authors’ copyrighted works for training the large language models behind Anthropic PBC’s artificial intelligence was transformative and is akin to schooling children and constitutes fair use, leaving only allegations that the company pirated copies for inclusion in a digital library, a federal judge in California said in largely granting summary judgment to Anthropic.

  • July 15, 2025

    Judge Sanctions IP Lawyer For Giving Netflix Info To 3rd Party In Patent Row

    SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge ordered sanctions against an attorney from Ramey LLP who formerly represented a pro se plaintiff in a patent infringement dispute brought against Netflix Inc., holding that the attorney inappropriately shared discovery information with a third party the court previously blocked from being joined to the litigation.

  • July 15, 2025

    Independent Music Artist Sues AI Music Companies Over Copyright

    In a pair of class lawsuits filed in federal courts in Massachusetts and New York, a country music artist and his recording company claim that artificial intelligence companies illegally copied his and other independent artists’ works, bypassing the type of licensing deals on which artists like himself rely.

  • July 15, 2025

    Class Says OpenAI, Others Stole Copyrighted Works To Train AI

    SAN FRANCISCO — Various OpenAI Inc. entities created their artificial intelligence ChatGPT by stealing copyrighted works from the internet rather than obtaining the material legally, plaintiffs allege in a class action filed in California federal court.

  • July 14, 2025

    4th Circuit: No Error In Injunction Barring Gaming Chair Mark Use In Europe

    RICHMOND, Va. — A panel in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on July 11 affirmed a Virginia federal judge’s implementation of a permanent injunction that bars a video game peripheral maker’s use of the mark “GTRacing” internationally; the panel held that the injunction does not run afoul of the Lanham Act’s territorial limitations because it enforces a previously negotiated and subsequently breached settlement agreement.

  • July 14, 2025

    Clothing Maker Seeks New Trial After Verdict In Penn State Trademark Fight

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — An apparel maker argues that it deserves either judgment as a matter of law in its favor or a new trial in a Pennsylvania federal court after a jury found that it willfully infringed marks held by The Pennsylvania State University and a judge issued a permanent injunction barring it from further uses of the marks, maintaining its contention that the university failed to show the apparel maker used the marks in an infringing way.

  • July 14, 2025

    Judge Won’t Reconsider Ruling Denying Leave To Amend In AI Case

    NEW YORK — News outlets will not get to amend their copyright action involving ChatGPT after a federal judge in New York determined that different rulings by other judges and the case’s inclusion in a recently created multidistrict litigation did not warrant revisiting denying leave to amend.

  • July 11, 2025

    Federal Circuit: Novelist Can’t Register Shrimp Mark For Florida Restaurant

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said July 10 that a crime fiction novelist and restaurant owner cannot register “Yucatan Shrimp” as a trademark because it is merely descriptive, affirming decisions by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

  • July 11, 2025

    Federal Circuit Affirms Invalidity Of Smart HVAC System Patent Claims

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a pair of opinions, a panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed decisions by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that invalidated patents related to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) held by EcoFactor Inc. in a series of inter partes review (IPR) proceedings brought by Google LLC, in the latest step in the battle between the companies over smart thermostat technologies.

  • July 11, 2025

    4th Circuit OKs Scrapping Of Manufacturer’s Repeat Copyright, Trade Secret Claims

    RICHMOND, Va. — A Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a Taiwanese manufacturer’s copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation and other claims against a machine distributor failed for being based on conclusory allegations; the panel further found no error in a North Carolina federal judge’s refusal to allow the manufacturer leave to amend its complaint after the company “engaged in pleading practices that approached bad faith.”

  • July 10, 2025

    Federal Circuit Again Finds For Janssen On Mental Health Drug Patent

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a New Jersey federal judge’s finding that two appellant medicine makers failed to show that claims in a patent related to dosing regimens for an injectable schizophrenia treatment were invalid as obvious, holding that it saw no error in the judge’s analysis of the motivation to combine prior art references.

  • July 09, 2025

    Device Maker Tells High Court Shortened Discovery Timeline Tainted Patent Trial

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A medical product company tells the U.S. Supreme Court that a North Carolina federal court violated its due process rights by changing both the time to trial and the time for discovery in a patent infringement case for which the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has already ordered a new trial.