The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on January 9, 2020, affirmed the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling which held that a claim of Hospira’s Precedex Premix sedative was invalid for obviousness.

The US Patent and Trademark Office on January 15, 2020, released a “New to PTAB” toolkit now available on the PTAB webpage of the USPTO website.

“A low level of protection for trade secrets and IP theft in a number of countries, notably in China and India” have caused “irreparable harm to European businesses” said the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, in its “Report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries” released on January 8, 2020.

The addition of a generic top-level domain (gTLD) to an otherwise generic term can, under certain circumstances, create a protectable trademark, the American Intellectual Property Law Association said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on January 13, 2020.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on January 9, 2020, held that statutory damage awards are not available when a defendant infringes in one way before the copyright was registered and another way after registration.