Federal Circuit: District Courts May Impose Deterrence Sanctions Even After They Had Already Awarded Attorney Fees and Costs Under 35 U.S.C. §285Federal Circuit: To Properly Claim A Negative Limitation, There Must Be SupportFederal Circuit: The Mere Beginning of a Step In a Claimed System Does Not Satisfy the Limitation
In February 2024, the Fourth Circuit addressed a jury’s 2020 damages award of $1 billion finding Cox secondarily liable for its subscribers’ copyright infringement through illegal copying of copyrighted songs. Both Cox and Sony filed petitions for certiorari.
A subject of extensive debate within the U.S. patent system has been the classification of “patent trolls” — most widely defined as individuals or companies that acquire patents solely for the purpose of assertion, often in cases without any merit, but which leverage the high cost of patent litigation defense to force small settlements.
President-elect Donald Trump did not make intellectual property (IP) policy a major focus of his 2024 election campaign, but his policy priorities are nearly certain to have a profound effect on the IP landscape when he takes office in January.
This article discusses how a pharmaceutical patent works, its role in drug development, and the polarizing impact it has on global health care.
An NDA can cover information that would not qualify as a trade secret under state or federal law, and it can provide limited contractual protection to that information. But it is not a “magic talisman” for the protection of intellectual property, and it cannot create trade secret protection where it would not otherwise exist.
A look at the latest developments in intellectual property law.
Copyright law has long struggled to keep pace with advances in technology, and the debate around the copyrightability of AI-assisted works is no exception. At issue is the human authorship requirement: the principle that a work must have a human author to be eligible for copyright protection. While the Copyright Office has previously cited this "bedrock requirement of copyright" to reject registrations, recent decisions have focused on the role of human authorship in the context of AI.
In September 2024, the Federal Circuit clarified the necessary qualifications for a technical expert to testify in a patent lawsuit, holding that while an expert must possess ordinary skill in the art, they need not have possessed such skill "at the time of the alleged invention."
When something is referred to as a "knockoff" it typically implies that the knockoff product is similar in appearance to an earlier product and is unlawful. But that is not always the case. Indeed, there can be infringing knockoffs and noninfringing knockoffs. It depends on the facts and circumstances. To appreciate the difference, a look into the general rules and some specific cases is needed.
