By: Mark R. Malek So you have just received your Notice of Allowance for your patent application. In the Notice of Allowance, there is a requirement for you to pay an issue fee and a publication fee. You may have paid the publication fee early pursuant to a request for early publication. Section 1129 of […]
By: Tyler Hampy Pursuant to the well-established principles of equity, a patentee seeking an injunction against an infringer must satisfy a four-factor test before a court may grant such relief. The patentee must demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate […]
By: Tyler Hampy Prior to the implementation of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20 governed permissive joinder of defendants in patent infringement suits. However, prior to the AIA, district courts were split on how they interpreted Rule 20 in patent infringement litigation. A few district courts interpreted Rule 20 […]
Your company has decided to conduct an audit to take inventory of its intellectual assets (IA), and has an idea of the level of abstraction at which it will identify those assets. So where should the company start seining for IA information? The following tips may be helpful.
By: Tyler Hampy Although you may think that Facebook “friends” aren’t really the same thing as real-life friends, the ethical guidelines for lawyers and judges do not make such a distinction. Even though different jurisdictions have taken slightly different approaches with respect to judges using online social networks, the trend is all the same… there […]
In my last post, I discussed the ability to trademark generic terms. This post focuses on trademarking geographic terms. In the United States, geographic terms can be registered and protected as trademarks identifying a single commercial source if certain conditions are met. Geographic terms have traditionally been very important in identifying the source and […]
Do movie makers need to obtain permission to use all brand products in their movies? The answer is no, but it is recommended. The rule is a product can be used within a movie without permission as long as the product is being used as was intended by the manufacturers without negatively defaming the product […]
My next couple of posts are going to focus on the types of words that can and can’t be trademarked. This post centers on generic terms. In short, a generic name of a product can never function as a trademark to indicate origin. The terms “generic” and “trademark” are mutually exclusive. If a term […]
