Federal Circuit Reverses and Remands District Court Ruling in Obviousness-type Double Patenting Case By Kassity Liu – Edited by Joey Seiler Boehringer Ingelheim Int’l. v. Barr Laboratories, Inc., No. 2009-1032 (Fed. Cir. 2010). Opinion The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court for the District of Delaware, which had ruled that U.S. Patent No. 4,866,812, owned by the appellant Boehringer, was invalid because Boehringer’s terminal disclaimer did not overcome obviousness-type double patenting with respect to an earlier expired patent, ... Read More...
Archive for January, 2010
By Harry Zhou Harvard Law Professor Criticizes Google Book Settlement On January 26, TechCrunch reported that Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and “free-culture advocate,” criticized Google’s settlement with the Authors Guild as a “path to insanity.” Lessig writes that the settlement extended the copyright law’s regulation on physical copies into the digital world, resulting in “a world in which every bit, every published word, could be licensed.” According to Lessig, providing copyright protection at the level of pages ... Read More...
Court Reduces $1.92 Million File-Sharing Jury Award to $54,000 By Dmitriy Tishyevich – Edited by Joey Seiler Capitol Records Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset, No. 06-1497 (D. Minn. Jan. 22, 2010) Order In June 2009 a jury returned a verdict against Defendant Jamie Thomas-Rasset after finding that she willfully infringed the copyrights of twenty-four songs by making them available through a file-sharing program. The jury awarded Plaintiffs statutory damages of $80,000 for each willful infringement, resulting in a total verdict of $1.92 ... Read More...
Federal Circuit Affirms TTAB’s Refusal of South Carolina Baseball Logo Registration By Harry Zhou – Edited by Davis Doherty Univ. of S. Carolina v. Univ. of S. Cal., No. 2009-1064 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 19, 2010). Slip Opinion In a nonprecedential ruling, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board (“TTAB”) refusing the appellant’s (“South Carolina’s”) registration of its Carolina Baseball Logo mark and granting summary judgment against the appellant on its counterclaim for cancellation of ... Read More...
Federal Circuit Vacates Lower Court Ruling in Elevator Patent Case By: Helen (Ye) He – edited by Davis Doherty Schindler Elevator Corp. v. Otis Elevator Co., No. 2009-1146 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 15, 2010) Slip opinion The Federal Circuit vacated the District Court for the Southern District of New York’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Defendant Otis Elevator. The Federal Circuit concluded that the district court constructed Schindler Elevator’s patent claims too narrowly by construing the terms ... Read More...
