Presuming harm
For a long time, federal courts presumed that misuse of someone's intellectual property — things like patents, copyrights, and trademarks — would cause the owner "irreparable harm". The bad acts, the courts believed, would ipso facto injure the IP owner in ways that mere money could not fix.
Change in the air
But
No more over-the-air TV on your laptop?
The Supreme Court today struck a mighty blow against Internet television.
Firms that beam television programs to Internet users for a fee now face staggering liability for copyright infringement.
The 6-3 Court held that Aereo infringed the copyrights of content owners by enabling subscribers to select the channels
Broad patents
You could get really rich if you had a patent on something like "a device that can make and receive wireless phone calls". That would cover every wireless phone, dumb and smart, that ever existed. It would include the satchel phone that Blawgletter's friend Darrell Gest carried around in his ratty pickup back
If you need to sue somebody for stealing your customers with false advertising, don't worry about a conflict between two federal statutes — the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Lanham Act. No conflict exists, the Supreme Court held today.
To understand why, let us tell you . . .
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Patents require definiteness
The U.S. Supreme Court has tightened the test for whether a patent "particularly point[s] out and distinctly claim[s] the subject matter which the applicant regards as [the] invention." 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 2.
The Federal Circuit (which handles all appeals from district courts on patent matters) had interpreted the statute to
The U.S. Supreme Court took a step today towards limiting patent infringement cases, at least ones involving "method" patents (i.e., ones that describe a process rather than a device, design, or other patentable subject matter).
Kinds of infringement
Patent infringement may take different forms:
Copyrights endure
If you own a copyright — in a cat video, say — and someone rips it off — perhaps by posting it on his Kraaasy Kaaats website and claiming it as his own — how long can you and your heirs wait to sue for damages?
Under a new Supreme Court ruling, you
How not to defer.
Last month, Blawgletter pointed out that the Supreme Court had granted review in a case that may curb the Federal Circuit. We noted:
A rule that has applied in patent cases since 1998 may go the way of Chevy Cobalt ignition switches.
Boy, the Federal Circuit's sure lowered the boom on Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner in Apple Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., No. 12-1548 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 25, 2014).
Smartphone warfare.
The appeal dealt with Judge Posner's rulings as a trial court judge in the Northern District of Illinois phase of the titanic smartphone struggle between Apple and Motorola
A rule that has applied in patent cases since 1998 may go the way of Chevy Cobalt ignition switches.
"Deference, I Don't Have to Show You any Stinkin' Deference" riffed on a line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), in which Gold Hat, posing as a Mexican Federale, says