News & Publications

Sovereign immunity bars a federal copyright infringement claim against a public hospital, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri ruled on March 7, 2019.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 1, 2019, held the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s heart disease detection patent invalid because the claims of the patent were directed to a natural law and recited no other inventive concept.

The Eleventh Circuit on April 1, 2019, held that Kroma EU, a European cosmetics company, lacked standing to sue the Kardashian sisters for trademark infringement in the US.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 1, 2019, held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) must reconsider its decision to invalidate IBM’s U.S. Patent No. 7,631,346; the patent is related to a system for reducing authentication burdens by allowing a user to sign-in only once while accessing multiple applications.

The UK is due to leave the European Union – an economic and political partnership of 28 countries – ending 46 years of British membership. But the exact timing remains unclear.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on March 26, 2019, affirmed a district court ruling which declined to disgorge Becton Dickinson & Co.’s (BD) profits despite the fact the syringe maker was found liable by a jury on multiple Lanham Act violations.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced that she has appointed Karyn A. Temple as Register of Copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, effective March 27, 2019. Temple has been Acting Register of Copyrights since October 21, 2016.

The US Patent and Trademark Office on March 27, 2019, alerted EFS-Web users about a system defect in the initial web-based application data sheet (ADS) and the corrected web-based ADS.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 26, 2019, held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board wrongly invalidated an Arctic Cat Inc. patent based on an earlier-filed application.

On March 28, the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force will host the third public meeting on Developing the Digital Marketplace for Copyrighted Works at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.