Cannabis legalization in one form or another was on the ballot in five states – Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota – and passed in all of them.
Cannabis legalization in one form or another was on the ballot in five states – Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota – and passed in all of them.
Copyright is a dangerous legal minefield for organizations, particularly with so many copyrighted works readily available for employees to unthinkingly cut, paste and use improperly for company marketing purposes.
In a decision released on Aug. 6, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a portion of user fees charged to PACER users is unauthorized by statute and therefore is improper.
The Federal Circuit today affirmed a district court’s denial of a motion for reconsideration of an intervenor’s opposition to a motion to seal. In Uniloc 2017 LLC v. Apple, Inc., 2019-1922 (Fed. Cir. Jul. 9, 2020), Uniloc had moved to seal the briefing and record associated with Apple’s motion to dismiss premised on a defect in Uniloc’s ownership rights due to a loan default. The request covered two categories of documents: (1) company confidential materials and (2) third party confidential materials. Non-party Electronic Frontier Foundation intervened to obtain public access to the supposedly confidential documents.
Effective August 3, 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has amended its Rules of Practice in Trademark Cases to require foreign applicants, registrants, and parties to trademark proceedings before the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to be represented by a qualified U.S. attorney.
Owning a trademark brings certain benefits and obligations. If you are the first entity in a particular geographic area to use a distinctive word (or phrase, logo, color, etc.) to sell a product or to provide a service, then you may claim exclusive rights in that area for that trademark on those products or services. Your trademark rights allow you to preclude subsequent entities in the same area from using the same, or confusingly similar, trademark on related products or services.
A useful tool in preparing for mediation or in a mediation itself is a decision tree. Decision trees, also known as flow charts, help attorneys to make decisions early in the mediation process and plan for potential outcomes.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), created in 2012 as part of the America Invents Act, a branch of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that hears appeals to adverse examiner decisions and conducts trials, including inter partes reviews and post-grant challenges. Ideally, the PTAB is meant to ensure the predictable, uniform, and unbiased application of USPTO policy to patent applications.
In the nearly five years since 25 European Union states signed an intergovernmental agreement to create a Unified Patent Court (UPC), a number of political obstacles have arisen to delay its enactment. Those obstacles are beginning to resolve, however, and it is time to begin thinking about how the Unitary Patent will affect your IP portfolio strategy.
Throughout 2017, Panitch Schwarze has carefully watched key intellectual property disputes at the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The following 2017 cases will impact the protection of intellectual property in the United States.