Even when they do not break significant new ground, decisions on claim construction can offer practical reminders about how the words that inventors and patent drafters choose to use in the specification – even in the title of invention – can impact the way in which a court will later construe claim language. The Federal Circuit’s decision earlier this year in Wastow Enterprises, LLC v. Truckmovers.com, Inc., 855 F. App’x 748 (Fed. Cir. May 14, 2021), is a good example of this.
They say that diamonds are forever. Trademarks can be too—but only if you keep using your goods or services in commerce. For example, Samson Rope Technology’s trademark logo (seen at https://samsonrope.com/ ) was registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on May 27, 1884, and the registration has been timely renewed since then. Samson Rope can keep this trademark until the end of time so long as it keeps using its logo in commerce in connection with the goods covered by its registration (and pays the appropriate fees to the Trademark Office).
As it seems to do every few years, the Supreme Court has again waded into personal jurisdiction waters. The Court issued Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017 (2021), on March 25, 2021. Ford is significant for a few reasons.
Introduction
“[I]t is entirely irrelevant to [the fair use] analysis that each Prince Series work is immediately recognizable as a ‘Warhol.’ Entertaining that logic would inevitably create a celebrity-plagiarist privilege.” Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, No. 19-2420-CV, 2021 WL 1148826 at *9 (2d Cir. Mar. 26, 2021) (internal citations and quotations mostly omitted).
In Vidstream, LLC. v. Twitter, Inc., No. 2019-00734 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 25, 2020), the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the PTAB holding Vidstream’s patent unpatentable over a reference submitted by Twitter. In doing so, the Federal Circuit addressed two issues that come up regularly in IPR practice: when the PTAB can consider evidence submitted by the petitioner on reply, and the date to which a prior art reference is entitled.
On December 27, 2020, bipartisan legislation was signed into law that will usher in significant changes to copyright and trademark law. We highlight below some of the key aspects of the new Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (or CASE Act of 2020) and the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (or TM Act of 2020).
On December 7, 2020, the Federal Circuit issued a decision holding that a U.S. court can compel a party to transfer ownership over foreign patents and patent applications. The decision is SiOnyx LLC v. Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. et al., Case Nos. 2019-2359 & 2020-1217 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 7, 2020).