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Mealey's Intellectual Property

  • September 05, 2025

    11th Circuit: ‘Shotgun’ Copyright Case Against Sub Shot Rightfully Tossed

    ATLANTA — A Florida federal judge’s decision to dismiss a pro se plaintiff-appellant’s copyright infringement claims against the commercial entity behind the Firehouse Subs restaurant chain was affirmed by a panel in the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which found no abuse of discretion in the judge’s finding that the complaint was an impermissible shotgun pleading.

  • September 05, 2025

    Generic Med Amicus Echoes Calls For High Court Look At Entresto Patent Ruling

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) tells the U.S. Supreme Court in an amicus curiae brief in support of MSN Pharmaceuticals and related entities (MSN) that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals created a situation where medicine patent holders “will see a new strategy they can employ to fashion overbroad claims to delay generic competition” while skirting patent law requirements “that protect the public’s interests in ensuring that patents do not let inventors control more than they invented.”

  • September 05, 2025

    No Errors In TTAB’s Denial OF Applicant’s Logo Marks, Federal Circuit Says

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a pair of nonprecedential opinions, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel said the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) did not err in denying a pro se applicant’s request for registrations of two marks related to his sensor network product, leaving in place TTAB’s findings that the applications lacked a clear identification of the goods or services covered by the marks, among other issues.

  • September 05, 2025

    Judge: Tech Company Established Ownership In IP Fight With TikTok Before Trial

    SAN FRANCISCO — In a pair of orders, a California federal judge held that a China-based company adequately established that it owns the asserted copyrights and trade secrets in a “heavily litigated” dispute with TikTok Inc. and affiliated entities, including source code from an earlier video-editing app that preceded the plaintiff entity’s app.  The judge found that there is no triable issue of fact as to the ownership of the code.

  • September 05, 2025

    Union Sues Over Elimination Of Patents Office Workers’ Collective Bargaining Rights

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — An August executive order (EO) that expanded on a March EO and nullified the collective bargaining rights of additional agencies, including the Office of the Commissioner for Patents, was “retaliatory and not based on the statutory criteria” contained in the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) argues in a complaint filed in a federal court in the District of Columbia.

  • September 05, 2025

    9th Circuit Transfers Fee Issue In Facebook Cybersquatting Trademark Suit

    SAN FRANCISCO  — Without providing explanation, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted a motion filed by Instagram LLC and Facebook Inc., now known as Meta Platforms Inc., (collectively, Meta) to transfer consideration of attorney fees on appeal to a district court in Meta’s trademark infringement suit against multiple Chinese-based companies for their alleged cybersquatting by using domain names purportedly infringing on Meta’s trademarks.

  • September 04, 2025

    N.Y. Federal Judge: Jurisdiction Discovery Needed In IP Row Started In California

    SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A federal judge in New York partly granted a professional employer organization (PEO) service company’s request for limited jurisdictional discovery in a trademark dispute with another entity offering similar services over the name “Pinnacle in what the judge called a “seemingly endless tug-of-war over jurisdiction,” noting that a California federal judge dismissed a trademark dispute with the same parties in opposite roles for jurisdictional reasons in early 2024.

  • September 04, 2025

    4th Circuit Upholds Preliminary Injunction Denial In Dance Team Name Mark Row

    RICHMOND, Va. — There was no error in a North Carolina judge’s decision to deny a charter school and its parent-teacher organization’s request for a preliminary injunction against a local dance company in the parties’ dispute over a trademark on a logo using the name “Inspire,” a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, finding that factual questions remained as to the ownership and priority of use of the marks.

  • September 03, 2025

    Design Firm Tells High Court 8th Circuit Got Floor Plan Fair Use Case Wrong

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A design company is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its petition for a writ of certiorari, arguing that the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ finding that two real estate agents’ use of floor plans in home resale listings was a noninfringing fair use created a doctrinal “Catch-22” that makes owners of copyrights of architectural details unable to enforce their rights.

  • September 03, 2025

    PTAB Wrongly Excluded Google’s Arguments In Database IPR, Federal Circuit Holds

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) erred in claim construction and wrongly rejected Google LLC’s reply evidence in inter partes review proceedings Google brought against a technology company, a panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held, vacating findings that Google failed to show some of the company’s patents’ claims to be invalid.

  • September 02, 2025

    Federal Circuit Affirms Prosecution Laches For PTO’s Rejection Of Applications

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held on Aug. 29 that a District of Columbia federal judge did not err in finding that a prolific patent applicant’s applications were barred under the doctrine of prosecution laches, rejecting as forfeited the inventor’s argument that a 1992 decision by the Board of Patent Appeals and Inferences showed he had no reason to change his method of prosecuting the applications.

  • September 02, 2025

    9th Circuit Resurrects Copyright Dispute Over Catholic Liturgical Songs

    SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel revived a copyright infringement dispute between two writers of Catholic liturgical music, partly reversing an Oregon federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant-appellee songwriter and her publisher because questions of fact remain as to whether the defendant songwriter had access to the plaintiff-appellant’s hymn.

  • August 29, 2025

    Point Of Robots.txt Focus In Publishers’ AI Copyright Suit

    WILMINGTON, Del. — Whether the robots.txt file instructions barring bot scraping of websites constitutes a binding technical measure or simply directions that can be ignored came before a federal judge in New York, as OpenAI Inc. entities and a publisher of 45 media brands brief a motion to dismiss.

  • August 29, 2025

    Split Federal Circuit Again Sends 4-Letter Word Mark Application Back To TTAB

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected an artist and designer’s constitutional arguments against the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB’s) decision to deny his trademark applications for a vulgar word, but the panel still vacated the TTAB’s decision for lack of specificity, saying the TTAB’s “reasoning sounds in fact very much as though it has taken an ‘I know it when I see it’ approach to failure-to-function refusals.”

  • August 29, 2025

    Federal Circuit: Judge Wrongly Applied Prosecution Laches In Speaker Patent Row

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In mixed results for both parties, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Aug. 28 held that a California federal judge wrongly invalidated claims in some of a speaker company’s patents in a dispute with Google LLC and improperly applied prosecution laches, while also holding that the judge correctly invalidated claims in another one of the speaker company’s patents.

  • August 28, 2025

    Med Maker To High Court: Federal Circuit Created After-Arising Tech Loophole

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — MSN Pharmaceuticals and multiple related entities (MSN) tell the U.S. Supreme Court that it must step in to clarify the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ approach to the disclosure of “after-arising technology,” arguing that the appeals court split its own law regarding when it can be considered while ruling on a dispute over the validity of patents related to the heart medication drug Entresto.

  • August 28, 2025

    Federal Circuit Affirms PTAB Findings In First Look At Post-AIA Derivation

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals considered for the first time a derivation proceeding that was filed pursuant to the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), which allows “a first-inventor second-filer to pursue such a claim against a first-filer,” finding that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) had substantial evidence to support its judgment in favor of a defendant-appellee in a dispute over the inventorship of an ointment for wound treatments.

  • August 28, 2025

    PNC Bank Tells High Court USAA Can’t Show IPR Finding Was Arbitrary

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an Aug. 27 brief in opposition to United Services Automobile Association’s (USAA) petition for a writ of certiorari, PNC Bank NA says that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals did not err when it affirmed the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) decision to invalidate USAA’s mobile banking patents, brushing aside USAA’s contention that PTAB arbitrarily rendered opposing decisions on its patents in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings sought by different IPR petitioners.

  • August 27, 2025

    Federal Judge: Contract Counterclaims In Copyright Fight Barred By State Case

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal judge in Connecticut granted a plaintiff design company’s motion for summary judgment on all of a defendant technology company’s contract-related counterclaims under the doctrine of res judicata, but the judge said there were unresolved factual disputes regarding the design company’s copyright infringement claims that stem from a dispute over a website it was commissioned by the technology company to make.

  • August 27, 2025

    Copyright Suit Parties Debate Relevance Of Newspaper’s AI Use

    NEW YORK — The New York Times Co., Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI entities sparred over whether the newspaper’s use of an in-house ChatGPT tool could constitute evidence of fair use defense in a copyright case or whether such use is noninfringing and not relevant to the claims in the New York federal court case.

  • August 27, 2025

    Anthropic, Authors Reach Agreement On AI Copyright Claims

    SAN FRANCISCO — Anthropic PBC and authors told a federal judge in California on Aug. 26 that they reached an agreement in principle resolving claims that the company pirated copyrighted works during the process of obtaining material to train its artificial intelligence.

  • August 26, 2025

    Judge Finds No Violation Of Patent Injunction, Denies Contempt Motion

    WILMINGTON, Del. — A federal judge in Delaware on Aug. 25 denied a plaintiff manufacturer’s motion to hold a defendant manufacturer in contempt of a permanent injunction barring the defendant from further infringement of a patent related to bamboo decking, finding that the defendant’s new versions of its products are “colorably different” from the infringing versions.

  • August 26, 2025

    Lilly, Medical Centers Agree To Settle Diet Drugs Trademark Case In Federal Court

    SEATTLE — Eli Lilly and Co., two medical centers and two of their physicians who prescribe patients compounded versions of tirzepatide, a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for diabetes and weight loss, told a Washington federal judge that they have reached an agreement to end a trademark case filed by Lilly.

  • August 26, 2025

    More Discovery Briefing Ordered In Human Serum Albumin Infringement Fight

    KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A federal magistrate in Kansas found that three related biopharmaceutical entities in a patent infringement dispute over the production of plant-derived recombinant human serum albumin (rHSA) must make supplemental responses to requests from another biopharmaceutical entity for certain discovery documents, holding that their objection to the motion to compel could not be squared with their claim to have supplied all responsive documents.

  • August 26, 2025

    Federal Circuit Denies Mudflap Patent Owner’s Motion To Recall 2023 Mandate

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said Aug. 25 that it would not explain its denial of a pro se patent owner’s motion to recall a mandate issued after a panel affirmed a Michigan federal judge’s finding that the man was not entitled to injunctive relief in a patent dispute over mud flaps for vehicles; the patent owner told the Federal Circuit that the affirmation was based on fraud on the court by the plaintiff company in the form of obfuscating details about the company’s ownership.