Intellectual Property

On March 27, 2018, in Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC, the Federal Circuit overturned a jury verdict in favor of Google from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In doing so, the court revived Oracle's claim that Google's use of Oracle's open-source Java language code did not constitute “fair use.”

Despite Possibility of 'Chaos,' Presumption Against Extraterritorial Application May Give Way to Simple Proximate Cause Test, Justices Suggest

The U.S. Supreme Court seemed to be mulling a flexible test for foreign patent damages last month, with the categorical presumption against extraterritoriality taking a back seat.

A Recent Decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Involving Twitter May Have Significant Implications for Online Publications

The exponential growth of social media, and the inevitable conflicts that result, is leading to more and more litigation. In many instances, courts are being asked to apply laws crafted before the Internet era to these modern disputes.

Much has been written about what will happen to EU-wide IP rights after Brexit — and whether, and how, the protection given by those rights will be maintained in the UK. Finally, we have some clarity about what is going to happen.

Federal Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Declaratory-Judgment Action Based Under Rule Against Piecemeal Adjudication
Federal Circuit Affirms Non-Infringement Finding Despite Defendant's Discovery Violation

It's not uncommon for rights licensees in the entertainment industry to find themselves in a rights dispute when a licensor files for bankruptcy.

Only a small fraction of television news broadcasts are made available online. For a party to monitor and view all news coverage of an event, it would essentially have to watch and record all news broadcasts 24/7. That's exactly what media-monitoring service TVEyes did. There was no dispute that TVEyes had copied Fox News's content. Instead, the issue was whether TVEyes's service constituted fair use.

The First Circuit Widens the Controversy

In In re Tempnology, the First Circuit held that the debtor's rejection of a trademark license strips the nondebtor licensee of any right to continue to use the trademarks. In so doing, the court takes the same approach as the Fourth Circuit and rejects the approaches advocated by the Third and Seventh Circuits.