General IP News

The United Kingdom’s Tax Watch has an interesting report on the alleged abuse of the tax credit system in the United Kingdom by video game maker, Rockstar North, Take-Two Interactive and related companies.  Rockstar North and Take-Two Interactive are two of the related companies responsible for the hugely popular video ... Read More

Whether you are recovering from the holidays or still enjoying them, the world of IP keeps turning! Here is a round up of some of the news going around the IP blogosphere….It's a big world out there...Patents The Kluwer Patent Blog provides coverage of VMI Holland v. Safe-Run in the Chinese ... Read More

ThermoLife International LLC v. American Fitness Wholesalers LLC, 2019 WL 3840988, No. CV-18-04189-PHX-JAT (D. Ariz. Aug. 15, 2019)Courts really, really like to call the Lexmark issue “standing.” Here, though, the court goes further by finding the noncompetitor plaintiff—who makes ingredients that are added to third party supplements—not to have Article ... Read More

Julie E. Cohen, Internet Utopianism and the Practical Inevitability of Law, 18 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 85 (2019)From the Introduction:Writing at the dawn of the digital era, John Perry Barlow proclaimed cyberspace to be a new domain of pure freedom. Addressing the nations of the world, he cautioned that ... Read More

Coco wrote too many papers this summer The IPKat leisurely stalked the IP world all week and found some delicious KatFood for thought.EventsEvening with UNION-IPMr António Campinos, President of the European Patent Office, will be making his first official address to a UK audience on Thursday, 12 September 2019 at the ... Read More

El Director General de la Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual (OMPI), Francis Gurry, publicó un mensaje en el marco del Día Internacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (9 de Agosto), el cual puede consultarse aquí. En tal sentido, resulta pertinente destacar que la OMPI está ofreciendo su primer programa de formación ... Read More

Kat friend Jolena Ang from Singapore reports on an interesting trademark opposition involving both word mark and device mark elements. In Tiger Coatings GMBH & Co. KG v Seng Fong Paints Pte Ltd [2019] SGIPOS 10, the Applicant, Seng Fong Paints Pte Ltd, applied to register the following marks (“the ... Read More

Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn recently published in 2019, “The Myth of Capitalism,” which is around 290 pages with endnotes.  Jonathan Tepper is a former hedge fund analyst and trader, and founded Variant Perception, a consultancy.  Denise Hearn is Head of Business Development for Variant Perception.  In “The Myth of ... Read More

One reason that Gordon v. Drape Creative is so concerning is that it reads "explicit" to be something other than explicit--maybe a version of falsity by necessary implication, but one that wants to pose transformativeness as the thing that avoids explicit falsity. So what do we do with art objects like ... Read More

Wilson v. AdvisorLaw LLC, --- Fed.Appx. ----, 2019 WL 3819604, No. 18-1441 (10th Cir. Aug. 15, 2019)Wilson, a lawyer, had a relationship with AdvisorLaw that ended badly in November 2016. Later that day, a “Patrick Erickson,” allegedly from New York, posted a negative review of Wilson on the website ripoffreport.com ... Read More

Lookalike products pose a concern for many a famous brand, and many forms of legal action may be brought in efforts to quell this, from trade mark infringement to passing off and, also, copyright infringement. When it comes to makeup palettes, pursuit of a copyright infringement claim may be indeed ... Read More

Kat friend Tyrone Berger has provided us with a report about the latest judicial treatment in Australia of an implied license in connection with a patent litigation action. For many jurisdictions, the issue of repurposing a patented product is an issue of exhaustion. Not so in Australia, where, ... Read More

Now that's how to get people reading:Intergenerational Equity, Student Loan Debt, and Taxing Rich Dead PeopleVictoria J. Haneman Creighton University - School of LawOnce upon a time, there was a generation of indentured servants called Millennials. They were beautiful and mysterious and clever and feckless, in the way that all ... Read More

Wilson v. Ohio State Chiropractic Board, 2019 WL 3801546, No. 18AP-739, 2019 -Ohio- 3243 (Ct. App. Aug. 13, 2019)The Board disciplined Wilson for deceptive advertising, and the court of appeals upheld the discipline.  Two bits of interest: (1) Wilson advertised that he was a “D.NMSc.” The court of appeals found ... Read More

Hadley v. Kellogg Sales Co., 2019 WL 3804661, No. 16-CV-04955-LHK (N.D. Cal. Aug. 13, 2019)An important reminder that California’s UCL makes “unlawful” conduct a violation even without separate consumer deception (although consumer belief may be important for damages causation).  Hadley won partial summary judgment on UCL claims against certain Kellogg ... Read More

Brown v. Showtime Networks, Inc., No. 18 Civ. 11078 (CM) (JLC), 2019 BL 290214 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 02, 2019)Bobby Brown and the Estate of Bobbi Kristina Brown sued Showtime and the BBC (which got out of the case on jurisdictional grounds) and some other defendants, claiming they used allegedly unauthorized footage ... Read More

As has been recently widely reported (BBC, Financial Times and The Times), a number of patent applications have been filed designating a machine learning (ML) algorithm as an inventor. The aim of the applications appears to kickstart a conversation on how patent law could be changed to take account of AI inventorship.  ... Read More

The AmeriKat hiding from work-relatedintruders in the Castello's gardenRight at the end of July, came big news from the Irish Supreme Court in Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp v Clonmel Healthcare Ltd 2019 IESC 65.  The case concerned the launch of a generic version of an ezetimibe/simvastatin combination drug for the ... Read More

The latest copyright  decision of the Swedish Patent and Market Court of Appeal,  given on   15 July 2019 (PMT 14029-16),  concerns the use of a film (recorded through a  mobile phone) as well as the use of photos extracted from the film sequence by a TV channel. The issue ... Read More

In The IPKat team: arrivals, farewells, and news, PermaKat Merpel introduces the new Kats and says goodbye to those Kats who will not continue with the blog. In spite of these changes, for Kat readers, it is always “never too late” to catch up on the latest IPKat posts. Patents ... Read More

Having discussed the recent opinion by Advocate General Szpunar in relation to copyright and sampling, the CJEU's decision has been very hotly anticipated, particularly by the music industry. Sampling has become incredibly common in the creation and production of music, and so the potential curtailing of sampling by the CJEU ... Read More

The USPTO published its second update to the PTAB Trial and Practice Guide last month. The section addressing procedures for addressing multiple challenges to a patent is a new and noteworthy addition. In the new section addressing “parallel petitions challenging the same patent” by the same petitioner, the Board states ... Read More

As IPKat and IP Finance blogger Neil Wilkof recently reported Professor Shamnad Basheer passed away.  Neil wrote a very beautiful tribute on the IPKat blog, here.  I encourage you to read it and particularly note his work with children and youth (also here).  About ten years ago, Shamnad and I ... Read More

Carson Optical, Inc. v. Alista Corp., 2019 WL 3729460, No. 19-cv-1725 (SJF)(AKT) (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 8, 2019)Carson sells three products on Amazon that have a magnifying mirror: a folding compact lighted mirror, a round lighted mirror with suction cup base, and a square lighted mirror with stand. According to defendant RQ’s ... Read More

JB & Associates, Inc. v. Nebraska Cancer Coalition, --- N.W.2d ----, 303 Neb. 855, No. S-18-719, 2019 WL 3756342 (Aug. 9, 2019)Appellants, several tanning salons, appealed their dismissal of defamation and product disparagement claims under Nebraska’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act (UDTPA). The NCC said negative things about tanning beds ... Read More

Alexander v. Falk, 2019 WL 3717802, No. 16-cv-02268-MMD-GWF (D. Nev. Aug. 7, 2019)Randi Alexander and Jackson Young sued a bunch of entities mostly for defamation and disparagement under federal and Nevada laws. “Alexander is an erotic romance novelist and Young is a romance novel cover model.” Defendant RT’s business is ... Read More

Long Grove Investments, LLC v. Baldi Candy Co., No. 18-cv-5237, 2019 WL 3716841 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 7, 2019)Plaintiff Long Grove owns a building in Long Grove, Illinois, “in which a beloved bakery, the Long Grove Apple Haus, once thrived, selling goods such as apple pies and ciders.”  It claimed that, ... Read More

My partners Steve Jedlinski and Anthony Fuga recently wrote a valuable article about a new Federal Circuit decision dealing with functionality and exhaustion issues for design patents. It is republished below with permission. In a relatively rare opinion regarding design patents, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ... Read More

My partners Steve Jedlinski and Anthony Fuga recently wrote a valuable article about a new Federal Circuit decision dealing with functionality and exhaustion issues for design patents. It is republished below with permission. In a relatively rare opinion regarding design patents, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ... Read More

South Africa: The much-discussed Copyright Amendment Bill is in a critical point in the post-legislative phase. It has been passed by the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces and is currently on the desk of the President. Questions have swirled about its constitutionality and a delay in its ... Read More