Last week, the Court of Appeals of Virginia issued an important opinion involving trespass and statutes of limitations. In Willems v. Batcheller, Record No. 0754-22-4, 2023 Va. App. LEXIS 524 (Ct. App. Va. Aug. 8, 2023), the...more
The Eleventh Circuit joins the Ninth Circuit where, despite a claim of copyright infringement having a three-year statute of limitation, a plaintiff can recover damages more than three years prior to the suit. Recently, the...more
The federal Lanham Act goes beyond trademark protection and establishes causes of action, as well, for unfair competition, false advertising, and false association. Section 43(a), however, does not contain a statute of...more
By Memorandum Order entered by the Honorable Leonard P. Stark in Emerson Radio Corp. v. Emerson Quiet Kool Co. Ltd., Civil Action No. 20-1652-LPS (D.Del. November 5, 2021), the Court granted the motion for partial summary...more
Kim v. Coupang, LLC, C.A. No. 2020-0772-JRS (Del. Ch. Aug. 19, 2021) - If a court can rule on the affirmative defense of laches on the face of a complaint, it may grant a motion to dismiss. As this case illustrates,...more
In Connecticut General Life Ins. Co. v. BioHealth Labs., Inc., No. 20-2312-CV, — F.3d –, 2021 WL 476111 (2d Cir. Feb. 10, 2021), Cigna, as administrator of employee health plans, sued six out-of-network lab companies for...more
On March 2, 2020, the Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed in Laurel Zuckerman, as Ancillary Adminstratrix of the Estate of Alice Leffmann v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At issue was whether the...more
The defendants moved to compel arbitration of a complex dispute concerning the parties’ investment in medical marijuana companies. The plaintiff claimed that the defendants breached a non-compete agreement and fiduciary...more
In Cosmetic Warriors v. Pinkette Clothing, the Ninth Circuit addressed the availability of laches in trademark infringement and cancellation actions under the Lanham Act. ...more
In In re Estate of Perez-Muzza, two days before the statute of limitations period ended, a contestant filed a will contest seeking to have a court set aside an order admitting a will to probate. No. 04-16-00755-CV, 2018 Tex....more
After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 11th annual list of top patent stories. For 2017, we identified nineteen stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe...more
Bioveris Corporation v. Meso Scale Diagnostics, C.A. No. 8692-VCMR (Nov. 2, 2017) - Some assume that a statute of limitations will not apply in the Court of Chancery. But as this decision illustrates, that is an...more
The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a 7-1 ruling in SCA Hygiene1 that eliminated the common-law defense of laches in patent infringement cases. The Supreme Court reasoned that laches is a “gap-filling doctrine” that does...more
Patentee’s Unnecessarily Broad Prosecution Disclaimer Affirmed by Federal Circuit - In Technology Properties Limited LLC v. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Appeal Nos. 2016-1306, -1307, -1309, -1310, -1311, the Federal...more
In a recent decision, Weatherford Canada Partnership v. Artemis Kautschuk und Kunstoff-Technik GmbH (Weatherford), the Alberta Court of Appeal (Court) upheld the dismissal of the plaintiff’s claim against two defendants on...more
On March 21, 2017 the Supreme Court issued a monumental holding removing the availability of laches as a defense in a claim for damages under patent infringement. The case changes decades of legal precedent, and adopts...more
While financial elder abuse is a serious problem in California, not just anyone can sue to protect an abused elder. This is especially true if the elder does not want to bring suit in the first place. On April 19, 2017, the...more
Apparently, quite a bit according to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has dipped its toe into the waters of intellectual property law again and has decided to overturn 150 years or more of common law precedent in its...more
In SCA v. First Quality Baby Products, the Supreme Court holds that laches should not be available as a defense in patent cases, refusing to concur with the Circuit’s en banc holding that the Patent Act’s 6-year limitation on...more
In SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC, the Supreme Court last week overruled the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision that laches (unreasonable delay in bringing a claim) can bar recovery of...more
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two opinions on intellectual property issues. On March 21, 2017, the Court decided in a 7-1 opinion that laches is no longer a valid defense to a claim of patent infringement occurring...more
Three years ago, in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., the Supreme Court held that the equitable defense of laches is not available against copyright claims for damages brought within the Copyright Act’s three-year...more
In a 7-1 decision on March 21, 2017, in the case of SCA Hygiene Products AB v. First Quality Baby Products LLC, the United States Supreme Court reversed an en banc decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and...more
In SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products, LLC, the Supreme Court made plain that laches is merely an equitable defense in patent cases, and will not bar a damage claim if brought within the six year...more
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that laches is not a defense in the majority of patent cases. Justice Alito, writing for the 7-1 majority, found the application of laches to patent disputes incompatible with the...more