IP Law News

Pressure Grows to Stop Automatic Product Bans in EU Patent Rows

Trademark Loss for 161-Year-Old Insurer Shows Risk of Rebranding

Latest Stories

Vifor Pharma Sues Alkem, Ascent to Block Copies of Veltassa Drug

Vifor Pharma’s Relypsa unit said proposed generic versions of a treatment for high levels of potassium in blood by Alkem and Ascent infringe as many as four patents for Veltassa.

Apple Owes Quarterhill $85 Million in Royalties, U.S. Jury Says

Apple Inc. must pay Quarterhill Inc.’s WiLan $85 million for infringing patents related to wireless communications, a jury in San Diego ruled.

Personnel Changes at IP Law Firms, Organizations

The following are personnel changes and other news recently announced by prominent intellectual property law firms and other IP-related organizations:

Bedding Maker Wants No Full Court Review in Pillow Patent Fight

A bedding company is urging the Federal Circuit to pass on a rival’s request for the full court to review a decision wiping out Patent Trial and Appeal Board findings in a dispute over pillow patents.

Gilead Denies CDC Earned Cut of Billions Made Off Truvada Patent

Gilead shouldn’t have to share the billions it reaped from its HIV prevention drugs with the federal government, the company told a federal judge.

Trademark Loss for 161-Year-Old Insurer Shows Risk of Rebranding

An insurance company’s failed attempt to revive the term “Equitable” that it had used for over 150 years underscores the importance of continuously using a trademark and the risks of abandoning a well-established mark even for a short time, attorneys say.

Proskauer Names Daryn Grossman as New Managing Partner

Proskauer Rose has named Daryn Grossman as its managing partner, a key part of the international law firm’s first major leadership changeover in nearly a decade.

In Brief

Case: Trademarks/Timeliness (N.D. Tex.)

Domain Protection LLC’s motion to dismiss this Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act action was denied by a federal district court in Texas. Mercury Luggage Manufacturing Co. owns the luggage and trunk manufacturer Seward Trunk and its trademark of the same name, and it claims that Domain Protection registered the domain name sewardtrunk.com in bad faith. According to the court, Mercury’s claim isn’t barred by the statute of limitations due to the fact that the suit was filed 14 years after the domain was registered, because under the continuing tort doctrine, the four-year statute of limitations restarts each day the domain is used. And although laches applies to Lanham Act claims, Domain didn’t show that it took any action it otherwise wouldn’t have taken if Mercury had filed suit earlier, the court found. The case is Mercury Luggage Mfg. Co. v. Domain Prot., LLC, 2020 BL 24535, N.D. Tex., No. 3:19-cv-01939-M, 1/22/20.

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Case: Patents/Obviousness (P.T.A.B.)

Cisco Systems Inc. showed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that claims of Centripetal Networks Inc.'s patent for methods and systems for protecting a secured network are unpatentable as obvious over prior art. Prior patent applications for an intrusion detection and prevention device residing at the edge of a network that could employ pattern matching to detect malicious activity; a unified network threat management approach in which a flow processing facility uses artificial neurons; and a framer that extracts packets from a received frame; a prior patent for an application identification function, a dynamic mirroring function, a policy based dynamic mirroring function, and a network system controller; and a specification for an architecture for differentiated services; teach the challenged claims, according to the board. The case is Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Centripetal Networks, Inc., P.T.A.B., IPR2018-01386, 1/23/20.

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Case: Patents/Stay (N.D. Tex.)

A federal district court in Texas granted LG Electronics U.S.A.'s Inc.'s motion to stay Uniloc 2017 LLC’s action for infringement of its patent for systems and devices for receipt and decoding broadcast television signals, pending the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s resolution of LG’s petition for inter partes review. According to the court, a stay won’t unduly prejudice Uniloc and doesn’t present a tactial disadvantage. Also, the court found that a stay may simplify the issues in the case, which is in the early stages of litigation. And the court ruled that a stay will reduce the burden of litigation on the court and the parties. The case is Uniloc 2017 LLC v. LG Elecs. U.S.A., Inc., N.D. Tex., No. 3:18-CV-3071-N, 1/23/20.

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Case: Trademarks/Licensing (N.D. Ohio)

A federal district court in Ohio granted Matco Tools Corp. summary judgment of its trademark infringement and trade secrets misappropriation claims against a former distributor. Matco claims that the distributor used its name and reputation to compete with Matco after purposefully abandoning his distributorship, and it terminated the distributorship. The court held that the distributor’s continued use of Matco’s marks after the termination of the distributorship was likely to cause confusion. And the court found that Matco established that its lists of calls contain trade secrets entitled to protection under Ohio law, and the distributor relied on these trade secrets when he continued to call on customers on the list without Matco’s permission. The case is Matco Tools Corp. v. Urquhart, N.D. Ohio, No. 5:19-CV-1009, 1/22/20.

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