Gene Quinn’s Post

Northwestern University sued vaccine maker Moderna, Inc. on Wednesday, October 16, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement of three patents the school says cover technology key to the delivery method for Moderna’s groundbreaking messenger-RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine. The complaint alleges that Northwestern inventors at the school’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN) pioneered the technology for a “vehicle for delivering genetic code into a cell by harnessing attributes of naturally-occurring structures, called lipoproteins” through research beginning in the late 2000s.

One advantage a non-practicing entity (NPE) has for collecting damages through patent infringement litigation is that there is no obligation to mark a product prior to collecting damages, whereas the marking statute (35 U.S.C. §287) requires a patent holder to mark the patent number on a commercial embodiment of its invention (i.e., the product or service it uses, sells or offers to sale) in order to collect damages for infringement. However, what happens after an NPE settles a patent infringement case with a defendant that produces a product or service, and that product or service was the accused instrumentality in the patent infringement lawsuit?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Tuesday, October 15, ruled that a district court applied the wrong test for assessing personal jurisdiction in a case involving alleged counterfeit dolls being sold on Amazon. The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah denied a motion for default judgment filed by Utah-based Bountiful Baby, a maker of kits for creating “reborn dolls,” against two Chinese companies— Adolly US (AUS) and Reborn Doll Gallery (RDG)—that it claimed were selling counterfeit versions of the dolls on Amazon.com.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list indicating that it had denied yet another petition for writ of certiorari seeking clarity on the patent eligibility of claims covering improvements to computer technologies under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The petition, filed by digital photography innovator Plotagraph, had argued against both the abstract idea determination under Federal Circuit case law on technological improvements to computer animations, as well as the district court’s early determination of validity at the motion to dismiss stage.

The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a bilateral partnership between different intellectual property offices around the world that facilitates the acceleration of patent examination. In Brazil, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) participates in this program with the aim of expediting patent examination and improving the efficiency of processing applications in the country. In Brazil, the program is regulated by Ordinance No. 78/2022.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday, October 15, affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a patent owner’s infringement suit against Amazon, Inc. and Ring LLC due to improper venue and failure to state a claim. Massoud Heidary sued Amazon, which owns home security company Ring, for infringement of his U.S. Patent 10,380,862, titled “Fire Protection System with Fan Shut Off, Including a Camera and a Display Unit,” in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Heidary claimed Ring’s products—the X-SENSE Wi-Fi Smoke Alarm and the Aegislink Wi-Fi Smoke Alarm—met “each and every limitation of claim 1 of the ’862 patent.

There are two distinct procedures available to parties for resolving patent infringement matters in China: an administrative procedure before the IP office and a civil procedure before the courts. With the ongoing efforts of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), the regulation of patent infringement administrative procedures has become more comprehensive.

By now, most IP practitioners are familiar with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products, Inc. The highly publicized ruling came after almost a decade of litigation between the parties over VIP’s “Bad Spaniels” parody dog toy designed to mimic a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The ruling addressed VIP’s defenses to trademark infringement and trademark dilution. The High Court ruled that VIP had no defense to either cause of action.... But the story does not end there. It continues on remand in Arizona federal court, where this case first began a decade ago in 2014. The litigation that has unfolded in the past year foretells the downstream implications of the Supreme Court ruling, particularly for trademark dilution law.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a special episode. At the end of September we held our annual all-topics conference, which we call IPWatchdog LIVE. This conference brings together some of the top thought leaders and newsmakers from the entire industry, with a variety of different backgrounds and people who focus on various different niche verticals within the IP community. So, while the conference was ongoing, Eileen McDermott, our editor in chief, asked some of the industry leaders in attendance what they thought was the most important issue facing the intellectual property industry.

On October 8, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and attorneys general (AGs) from every U.S. state as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico filed a proposed remedy framework in the federal antitrust lawsuit against Internet services giant Google currently ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. While the proposed remedies could change with further discovery, the framework includes several measures that would prohibit Google’s self-preferencing its search engine platform on its products and certain contractual behaviors that undermine competition from rival search engines.