The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the agricultural company Monsanto, unanimously declaring that the doctrine of patent exhaustion does not protect a farmer who took self-replicating patented seeds, planted them, harvested the crop, and then replanted others’ harvested seed (containing patent protected seeds) to grow more crops. Monsanto is a large agricultural company [...]
Last week Disney filed 10 federal trademark applications for DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, for a wide variety of goods and services. Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday. Translated into English, “Dia de los Muertos” means “day of the dead”. Disney was planning on commercializing the mark, which they planned to use as the [...]
In recent news, Viacom’s copyright lawsuit against YouTube was dismissed…again. The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in 2007 seeking $1 billion in damages, and involved the unauthorized use of video clips on YouTube from television shows such as South Park and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Essentially, the case revolves around the issue of [...]
I had the opportunity to attend a lecture yesterday; part of the Life Sciences Commercialization Lecture Series at the University at Buffalo. Susan Mangicaro from Welch Allyn, a leading manufacturer of medical devices, spoke about marketing across borders (http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/04/026.html). The discussion focused on ways to be successful when marketing products in other countries, and also [...]
The United States Supreme Court is considering another controversial case this term. This time it is a controversial patent case, which is interesting because patents aren’t typically controversial.
Today, the Justices heard a case that asks whether genes are patentable. At issue is a patent issued to Myriad Genetics. The patent covers an isolated [...]
In June 2011, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) approved a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) system. Examples of gTLD’s are .com, .net and .org. Under the new system, one can apply for a new gTLD and eventually, if approved, operate a new top-level domain registry. Essentially, one would be responsible for [...]
Last but not least, at the ABA IP Conference, I attended a session about developments in the Fair Use Doctrine. Fair Use is a statutory exception to the rights of a copyright holder. It allows for certain uses of a copyrighted work by someone other than the copyright owner. There is a four factor test [...]
The penultimate session of the ABA IP conference was about developments in IP law in China. As many people might be aware, China has not been particularly strong when it comes to protecting and enforcing IP rights. This has been a hurdle for many US companies when entering the Chinese market, whether for manufacturing or [...]
The second morning session that I attended on the last day of the ABA IP Conference pertained to strategies and skills required for a successful Patent Examiner interview.
In order to get more Examiners to do more interviews to resolve issues, The Office has taken an initiative to get more interviews, which should facilitate [...]
On the final day of the ABA IP Conference, one of the morning sessions that I attended was about copyright infringement in patent prosecution. When a patent application is prepared, often there is a need to discuss some of the prior art in the application. Recently, some of the publishers have begun suing the patent [...]
