Intellectual Property

As metaverse-related technology and branding initiatives continue to grow, innovators in the space may need to pursue IP protection. Mintz Member Frank Gerratana and Associate Amritaa Ganguly discuss the use of patents, trademarks, and copyrights to protect innovations and creative activity associated with this new virtual world.

Successful defense of trade secrets in litigation begins with evaluating valuable confidential information and steps taken to safeguard it before any disputes arise. Trade secret asset management allows companies to effectively frame misappropriation or theft claims and advance arguments at every stage of a trade secrets dispute.

Generative artificial intelligence creates content and work efficiencies but also comes with legal pitfalls. Mintz Venture Capital & Emerging Companies Practice Co-chair Jeremy Glaser and Associate Lorena Niebla look at the technology's potential uses as well as risks related to data privacy, intellectual property, and more.

On February 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., v. Avadel CNS Pharmaceuticals, LLC, Case No. 23-1186, affirmed a decision from the District Court of Delaware directing Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Jazz”) to delist U.S. Patent No. 8,731,963 (the “’963 patent”) from the FDA’s Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations publication (the “Orange Book”). The district court held, and the Federal Circuit affirmed, that the ’963 patent, which covers Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (“REMS”) for the narcolepsy drug Xyrem®, failed to claim a drug or method of use, and was thus improperly listed.

Starting a high-tech company is a difficult, exhausting, and thrilling endeavor – one in which founders will face seemingly endless challenges, deadlines, and make or break decisions. From a venture’s inception, founders face numerous decisions that if not thoughtfully considered can result in significant legal and financial risk.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now at our fingertips.  No longer a concept hidden behind the walls of Big Tech and academia, AI programs are now available and accessible to everyone.  Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have made headlines for its human-like conversation and writing, and Lensa has done the same for its ability to create original works of art. 

On January 9, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in In re Stingray IP Solutions, LLC, No. 23-102 granted a writ of mandamus, vacating a decision of the Eastern District Court of Texas which had transferred a patent infringement suit filed against foreign defendants to the Central District of California based on defendants’ post-suit consent to jurisdiction there.

Innovators developing IP strategies for 2023 are reflecting on last year’s key IP issues, including entity size designations for US patent applications, erasures of patent damage awards due to flawed expert opinions, and developments involving the ITC, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and inter partes reviews.

Grants of permanent injunctions in U.S. district court patent litigation remain uncommon since the landmark decision in eBay v. MercExchange. LexMachina’s 2021 Patent Litigation Report highlights that courts grant fewer than fifteen permanent injunctions annually in the U.S. One such injunction was recently granted in Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy A/S, v. General Electric Co. (“Siemens”) by the District of Massachusetts. That case is notable not only because it granted an injunction, but also because it took a novel approach to balancing public interest in doing so. Specifically, the public interest considerations implicated public green energy projects. In view of the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”), which was signed into law and provides incentives to combat climate change by investing in technologies such as solar and wind energy, such public interest considerations may become more common.

The UK has again demonstrated the ongoing trend against hold-out, approving an order forcing Apple to commit to take a license on FRAND terms, to be determined by the court, or face an injunction. This ruling is the latest in a line of decisions favorable to SEP holders across Europe and the United States that seem to be retilting SEP licensing towards more balance between innovators (patent owners) and implementers (alleged infringers). While there is more progress to be made, and the recognition of hold-out as a real problem continues to gain traction, this new UK decision reinforces basic principles of patent law: injunctions for SEPs are a real possibility.

In 2021 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based prototype search system for use by examiners during examination of patent applications. The USPTO found searching success with the prototype, for the USPTO just launched an AI-based “Similarity Search” in the Patents End-to-End (PE2E) prior art search suite for patents examiners.

On October 5, 2022, U.S. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne of the Eastern District of Texas recommended denying-in-part a motion for summary judgment of no willful infringement, holding that requisite knowledge of the asserted patent and alleged infringement of that patent could be satisfied by notice of the lawsuit before the moving defendant was added as a party.

Federal courts remain split on whether the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) allows for trade secret misappropriation claims brought under a theory of inevitable disclosure. Given this current patchwork of treatment of inevitable disclosure claims across the nation, owners of trade secrets and litigators of trade secret claims should continue to stay up to date on the treatment of this issue in the jurisdictions in which they practice.

Patent owners can recover lost profits when (1) there is a demand for a patented product, (2) an absence of acceptable non-infringing alternatives, (3) the patentee had the manufacturing and marketing capacity to exploit demand for the product, and (4) the patentee can establish the amount of profit it should have made but-for the accused product. Mentor Graphics Corp. v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 1285 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (reciting the Panduit factors). An implicit threshold requirement of this legal framework is actually being the entity that earns profits on the patented product.

On July 12, 2022, U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright of the Western District of Texas denied alleged infringer Lenovo’s motion to dismiss ACQIS’s willful and indirect infringement and enhanced damages claims, holding that patent owners need not allege egregious infringing behavior to assert a claim of willful infringement.

The power of Rule 11 – as with any weapon – must be employed diligently and with good judgment, as recently reiterated by the Northern District of Ohio.

While litigants may oft use Rule 11 prematurely or inappropriately, it does have its proper time and place when deployed as intended. In the patent context, examples include when claim elements are clearly missing in an accused product but a patent owner refuses to withdraw infringement allegations or, conversely, when a defendant continues to contest infringement when all claim limitations are clearly present in the accused product. Rule 11 grounds also arise in different contexts, as in the recent case of Imprenta Services, Inc.v. Karll.