Thank you for reading the May 2023 issue of Sterne Kessler's MarkIt to Market® newsletter. This month, we discuss Taco Bell's attempt to cancel two TACO TUESDAY trademark registrations, and a precedential TTAB decision...more
Addressing a multitude of issues, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling dismissing infringement of one patent and finding a trade dress invalid but reversed the invalidation of...more
Chief Judge Lynn in the Northern District of Texas recently granted a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss a complaint alleging patent infringement because the claim-at-issue recites patent-ineligible subject matter under 35...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that a representative claim was directed to a patent-eligible improvement to computer functionality, and therefore reversed a decision authored by Judge Leonard P....more
In a precedential opinion in Amgen Inc. et al. v. Sanofi, Aventisub LLC, et al., No. 20-1074 (Fed. Cir. 2021) issued on February 11, 2021, the Federal Circuit affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the...more
SIMIO, LLC V. FLEXSIM SOFTWARE PRODUCTS, INC. Before Prost, Clevenger, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Utah. Summary: A claim whose only inventive concept is the applications...more
This decision is bad. Not an American Axle level of bad, but still quite far from good. Simio sued FlexSim in the District of Utah for alleged infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 8,156,468. FlexSim moved for dismissal on...more
Karamelion has asserted its two patents more than 40 times since the summer of 2018, typically settling the cases prior to a responsive pleading. This activity will have to go on hold, at least for the time being, as the U.S....more
In CTB Inc. v. Hog Slat, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, found that a chicken feeder design was not eligible for trade dress protection because it improved the way the feeders worked. It was therefore...more
On June 11, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) designated as informative a July 26, 2019 institution decision granting post-grant review of a design patent for lacking ornamentality. In this ruling, the PTAB...more
The plaintiff in Wanker v. United States accuses the government of infringing four patents, all of which relate generally to a method for comparing products and services through the use of various weighting factors to assign...more
KONINKLIJKE KPN N.V. v. GEMALTO M2M GMBH - Before Dyk, Chen, and Stoll. Appeal from the District of Delaware. Summary: Claims directed to improving the functionality of one tool that is part of a system do not...more
Addressing the issue of the functional requirements of design patents, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit refused to invalidate design patents on truck parts on the basis of aesthetic functionality. Automotive...more
• In a relatively rare opinion regarding design patents, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit weighed in recently on the requirements for design patents in its Automotive Body Parts Association v. Ford Global...more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Automotive Body Parts Ass’n. v. Ford Global Techs., LLC, Appeal No. 2018-1613 (Fed. Cir. July 23, 2019) - Our case of the week is a design patent case. It concerns two primary issues—what...more
On July 23, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit released its decision affirming summary judgment that the asserted design patents were not invalid for non-ornamentality under 35 U.S.C. § 171, and rejecting...more
On June 12, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided Bodum USA, Inc. v. A Top New Casting Inc., No. 18-3030, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 17555 (7th Cir. June 12, 2019). The case, led by Vedder Price...more
On Wednesday, the Federal Circuit, in a per curiam order, denied SHzoom's motion to make the Trading Technologies opinion precedential. The order of course gave no reasons for the decision. Nonetheless, the underlying...more
In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. emphasized that “[t]he rights of a patentee or copyright holder are part of a ‘carefully crafted bargain,’… under which, once the patent or...more
In a decision authored by Chief Judge Sharon Prost, the Federal Circuit held that while design patents covering product configurations – that is, “a product feature or a combination or arrangement of features” – can protect...more
In Williamson v. Citrix Online, announced on June 16, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a partially en banc opinion that claims expressed in terms of functionality can be subject to statutory requirements...more
McAirlaids, Inc. v. Kimberly-Clark Corp. - Addressing whether a pattern of dots embossed on an absorbent pad was functional, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a lower court’s summary judgment in...more
In AbbVie Deutschland Gmbh v. Janssen Biotech, Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court decision that found AbbVie’s patents directed to anti-IL-12 antibodies invalid for lack of adequate written description. As...more
Patent claim drafting is a challenging exercise that requires balancing potential infringement of the claim against the prior art. A patent practitioner may easily draft a claim of very narrow scope, but if such claim has a...more
In Bayer Cropscience AG v. Dow AgroSciences LLC, the Federal Circuit upheld the district court’s claim construction that interpreted “2,4-D monooxygenase” in accordance with its established scientific meaning, even though...more