Commercial Law & Contracts › Science, Computers & Technology › Civil Procedure

Arbitral Award of Perpetual License Upheld by Fifth Circuit

Once in a while it seems the people who design live-action war-based video games get into real-world non-virtual disputes of their own. When “Timegate” promised to “Southpeak” that it would design a videogame named “Section...more

Patent Watch: Motiva, LLC. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n

The "Commission is fundamentally a trade forum, not an intellectual property forum" [and] litigation expenses directed at preventing, instead of encouraging manufacture of, articles incorporating patented technology does not...more

If Patented Technology Can Copy Itself, When Do Patent Rights Cease?

Patent rights in a patented self-replicating technology, such as seeds, continue until the patent term is ended and not before. On May 13, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bowman v. Monsanto that the patent rights in seeds are...more

Patent Exhaustion Doctrine Does Not Protect Farmers Who Replant Patented Seeds

In a brief, unanimous opinion written by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court yesterday agreed with Monsanto that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not enable farmers to replant and reproduce patented seeds without the...more

Patent Watch: Bowman v. Monsanto Co.

On May 13, 2013, in Bowman v. Monsanto Co., the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Federal Circuit's affirmance of the district court's judgment that Bowman infringed U.S. Patents No. 5,352,605 and No. RE39,247, which related to...more

Bowman v. Monsanto: Crisis Averted on IP Protection for Self-Replicating Technologies

Life science companies in general (and seed companies in particular) are breathing a sigh of relief following the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Bowman v. Monsanto. As Bowman wended its way through district...more

Bowman v. Monsanto Co. (2013)

Today, in Bowman v. Monsanto Co., the Supreme Court determined that the doctrine of patent exhaustion did not permit a farmer who buys patented seeds to repro­duce them through planting and harvesting without the patent...more

Bowman v. Monsanto

Supreme Court Ruling on Patent Rights of Self-Replicating Technology

Full text copy of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bowman v. Monsanto Co. et al that Monsanto’s patent rights extend to future generations of its patented seeds. From Joe Barnes at the Washington Post: “Farmers must pay...more

A First for FRAND: Federal Court in Microsoft v. Motorola Sets FRAND Royalty Rates for Standard Essential Patents

Microsoft v. Motorola developed a framework for courts to assess fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms for standard-essential patents. Its roadmap and analysis will probably influence future FRAND cases in...more

Rubin v. General Hospital Corp. (Fed. Cir. 2013)

On March 28, the Federal Circuit in Rubin v. General Hospital Corp. affirmed judgment by the District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissing the suit brought by Drs. Berish Rubin and Sylvia Anderson against The...more

Do Patents Control Self-Replicating Technologies? Supreme Court Hears Argument that Sale of Patented Seed Exhausts Future Patent

Patent infringement arises when one “makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells” a patented invention without authority from the patent holder. However, once the first authorized sale of the patented product has occurred, the...more

Will Google Break the GPL?

The subject of open source licensing has created a level of uncertainty amongst companies, especially with General Public License (GPL) or GPL derivatives when it comes to intellectual property restrictions on coded data. The...more

Campmor, Inc. v. Brulant, LLC

Order on Motions in Limine

An unusually detailed ruling on various pretrial motions in limine...more

IP/Entertainment Law Weekly Case Update for Motion Picture Studios and Television Networks -- April 26, 2013

- Viacom International v. Google Inc., USDC S.D. New York, April 18, 2013: On remand from the Second Circuit, district court grants summary judgment in favor of Google and its YouTube platform on all copyright...more

Massachusetts Tax Developments - A Reed Smith Quarterly Update (1st Quarter 2013)

The first quarter of 2013 saw Massachusetts developments for some the biggest tax issues facing the state, including taxation and sourcing of cloud computing, SaaS and other web-based software products and services;...more

Homework For The Privacy Commissioner Of Canada: Guidelines To Follow

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics tabled its Report, entitled “Privacy and Social Media in the Age of Big Data” on April 23, 2013....more

Federal Court Says No to “Used” Digital Music Marketplace

Digital music has come a long way since the era of widespread unauthorized sharing, with digital music sales estimated to be approaching $6 billion worldwide. As this market grows, a natural question is whether there can be a...more

Software Vendor Challenges Massachusetts’ Restrictive Policy on Multiple Points of Use Certificates

Software purchasers that have paid Massachusetts sales tax on the full purchase price for software that was also concurrently available for use by employees outside Massachusetts, should consider filing protective refund...more

Capital Records v. ReDigi, Inc.: New York District Court Determines that First Sale Doctrine does NOT apply to Digital Media. Did...

On March 30, 2013, only 11 days after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley to extend the first sale doctrine to foreign made goods, a United States District Court in the Southern District of New...more

Federal Court Orders FDA to Approve OTC Sales of “Morning-After Pill,” Finds Current Age and Point-of-Sale Restrictions to be...

On April 5, 2013, Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York found that the Secretary of Health and Human Service’s (“HHS”) decision to limit over-the-counter (“OTC”)...more

Franchising in the Courts - April 2013

Robert Moore Pharmacy Ltd. v. Shoppers Drug Mart Inc.: The Applicability and Limits of the Duty of Good Faith - Robert Moore Pharmacy Ltd. v. Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. 2012 ONSC 73511 (Moore Case) reaffirms key...more

Spotlight on SALT: New York Court of Appeals Upholds the State's "Click-Through Nexus" Statute

On March 28, 2013, in Overstock.com, LLC v. New York State Dept. of Taxation and Finance, the New York Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, upheld the New York State "click-through nexus" statute against a challenge...more

Litigation Alert: U.S. Supreme Court to Weigh In on Reverse Payment Deals

On March 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in FTC v. Actavis, Inc.,1 which is on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This case addresses a type of patent litigation settlement...more

Case Brief: Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals

[Ed. The Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals. While Patent Docs will provide analysis regarding the oral argument in a subsequent post, we provide the following...more

Clearance: Proskauer's Quarterly Antitrust Update - Winter 2013

In This Issue: - Watson and Reverse Payments: An Opportunity to Resolve the Competing Tension Between Antitrust and Patent Law Under the Hatch-Waxman Act - Judge Posner on the Limits of the Per Se Rule against Price...more