Williams Mullen's Trending Now - An IP Podcast - Intellectual Contracts
Protecting IP Through Employment Law
Precedential and Key Federal Circuit Opinions - 1. BACKERTOP LICENSING LLC [OPINION] (23-2367, 23-2368, 24-1016, 24-1017 Prost, Hughes, and Stoll) - Hughes, J. The Court affirmed the District Court’s orders (1)...more
Precedential and Key Federal Circuit Opinions - LKQ CORPORATION v. GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC [OPINION] (2021-2348, 5/21/24) Moore, Lourie, Dyk, Prost, Reyna, Taranto, Chen, Hughes, Stoll, and Stark - Stoll,...more
In a split opinion issued Tuesday, and based on language in an assignment clause of a contract, the Federal Circuit overturned a district court's summary judgment that Core Optical lacked standing to sue Nokia, Cisco, and...more
Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - QUALCOMM INCORPORATED v. INTEL CORPORATION [OPINION] (2020-1589, 2020-1590, 2020-1591, 2020-1592, 2020-1593, 2020-1594, 7/27/21) (Moore, Reyna, Stoll) - Moore, J. Vacating final...more
IN RE: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC., LG ELECTRONICS INC., LG ELECTRONICS USA, INC. [OPINION] (2021-139, 2021-140, 6/30/2021) (Lourie, Dyk, Reyna) - Dyk, J. Granting the writs of...more
296-1. Federal Circuit Finds Pre-Invention Ideas Not Covered Under Employment IP Assignment Agreement - The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed a ruling by the United States...more
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. v. International Trade Commission, Appeal No. 2020-1785 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 29, 2021) - The Federal Circuit’s only precedential patent decision this week comes on appeal from the International Trade...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision that a reformation of an incorrect assignment supports Article III standing and affirmed the court’s prejudgment interest award....more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Schwendimann v. Arkwright Advanced Coating, Inc., Appeal Nos. 2018-2416, et al. (Fed. Cir. May 5, 2020) (unsealed May 13, 2020) - In this recently unsealed precedential opinion, the Federal...more
In Regents of the Univ. of Minn. v. LSI Corporation, Fed. Cir., No. 18-01559, the Federal Circuit extended the inability to stand behind 11th Amendment Sovereign Immunity to patents owned by individual states, such that they...more
On July 20, 2018, the Federal Circuit affirmed in Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that tribal immunity cannot be asserted in IPRs. The appeal stemmed from a dispute between Allergan and various generic...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Wallach. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Summary: When a case is dismissed with prejudice for lack of standing,...more
On March 7, 2018, the Federal Court upheld the validity of Kennedy’s patent for a use of infliximab (Janssen’s REMICADE) (Patent No. 2,261,630 [the “630 patent”]), and granted Kennedy’s counterclaim that Hospira’s biosimilar...more
Improperly Drafted Employment Agreement Leads to Dismissal of Patent Case Due to Lack of Standing - In Advanced Video Technologies LLC v. HTC Corporation et al., Appeal Nos. 2016-2309, 2016-2310, 2016-2311, the Federal...more
In a highly anticipated decision on the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s motion to terminate inter partes review proceedings, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejected tribal sovereign immunity to IPRs. The PTAB’s decision also...more
Sovereign Immunity - Sovereign immunity exempts a sovereign from the jurisdiction of a court - States are entitled to sovereign immunity under the 11th amendment Seminole Tribe of Fla v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996) ...more
Hint: The standard employment agreement you have been using that includes an assignment of IP provision might not be sufficient. - In the United States, employers don’t own an employee’s or consultant’s inventions unless...more
What is the difference between an employment agreement that says “I hereby assign inventions I create during my employment to my employer,” and one that says “I will assign inventions I create during my employment to my...more
Patent owners and employers: Pay attention to the words in assignment and employment agreements that transfer patent ownership to you. A recent Federal Circuit case once again emphasizes the need to use particular language to...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Newman, O’Malley, and Reyna. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Summary: A co-inventor did not transfer ownership interests in a...more
On September 14, 2017, District Judge Robert W. Sweet (S.D.N.Y.) denied the motion of Ferring B.V., et al. (“Ferring”) to dismiss for lack of standing a patent infringement suit brought by Allergan, Inc., et al. (“Allergan”)....more
In In Re Cray, the panel grants Cray’s petition for a writ of mandamus, ruling that the district court’s handling of the case is not consistent with its case law regarding what is “a regular and established place of...more
For declaratory judgment (DJ) actions concerning patents, whether a patent owner’s conduct is sufficient for there to be a real and immediate controversy is the usual jurisdictional hurdle. In BASF Plant Science, LP v. Nuseed...more
On June 14, 2016, S.D.N.Y. District Judge Colleen McMahon granted defendants HTC Corporation, HTC America, Inc., Blackberry Limited, Blackberry Corporation, and Motorola Mobility LLC’s (collectively “Defendants”) motion to...more
Addressing the issue of standing, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a patent case brought by an exclusive licensee, finding that the original assignee had not transferred...more