The Supreme Court denied certiorari in a DNA-sequencing patent malpractice case that highlights a structural problem in patent law: inventors can be bound by litigation outcomes through claim preclusion while courts simultaneously hold that no attorney-client duty was owed to them.
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed a billion-dollar verdict against Cox Communications and held that an internet service provider is contributorily liable for user copyright infringement only when it induces the infringement or sells a service tailored to infringement. Mere knowledge that subscr
The Supreme Court unanimously held that an award of “defendant’s profits” under the Lanham Act is limited to the profits of the named defendant entity and may not include profits of legally separate affiliated companies, unless those affiliates are alter egos or otherwise liable.
The Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s restriction on registering marks that include a living person’s name without their consent is a content-based but viewpoint-neutral restriction that does not violate the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court held 6–3 that a copyright plaintiff who timely files under the discovery rule may recover damages for infringing acts occurring more than three years before filing, rejecting the argument that a separate three-year damages lookback window limits recovery.
The Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s trademark infringement provisions apply only to infringing use in commerce that occurs within the United States; foreign conduct is not actionable even if infringing products ultimately enter the U.S. market.
The Supreme Court held that when a defendant uses an allegedly parodic mark as a source identifier — as an actual trademark — the Rogers test for expressive works does not apply, and the ordinary likelihood-of-confusion analysis governs, with parody as a relevant but not dispositive factor.
The Supreme Court held 7-2 that the Andy Warhol Foundation’s commercial licensing of Warhol’s silkscreen portrait of Prince — based on a photograph by Lynn Goldsmith — was not fair use, because the commercial licensing purpose closely tracked the photographer’s own licensing market
The Supreme Court held 6-3 that a copyright owner’s failure to know that a single registration application could not cover both published and unpublished works did not necessarily constitute a ‘knowing’ inaccuracy that voids the registration — allowing courts to overlook good-faith
The Supreme Court held 5-4 that assignor estoppel — the doctrine preventing a patent inventor who has assigned their patent from later claiming the patent is invalid — remains a valid doctrine, but only applies when there is a direct conflict between the invalidity position and what the inventor war
The Supreme Court held 5-4 that the appointment of Administrative Patent Judges without Senate confirmation violated the Appointments Clause — but remedied the violation by making APJ decisions reviewable by the USPTO Director, rather than striking down the entire IPR system.
The Supreme Court held 6-2 that Google’s copying of approximately 11,500 lines of Java API declaring code to build the Android mobile operating system was fair use — holding that the declaring code’s function as an interoperability interface, combined with Google’s transformative u
The Supreme Court held that combining a generic word with “.com” does not automatically make the resulting term generic; whether a term is generic depends on consumer perception, and “Booking.com” is not generic for hotel reservation services.
The Supreme Court held 5–4 that Georgia’s officially adopted annotated code — including annotations prepared under legislative supervision — is not copyrightable under the government edicts doctrine, because works created by government officials exercising legislative or judicial authority bel
The Supreme Court held unanimously that a plaintiff in a trademark infringement case may recover the defendant’s profits under 15 U.S.C. §1117(a) without proving that the infringement was willful.
The Supreme Court held 7-2 that § 314(d)’s bar on judicial review of IPR institution decisions extends to determinations about the § 315(b) one-year time bar — meaning courts cannot review whether the PTAB incorrectly concluded that a petition was timely filed within the statutory one-year per
The Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress lacked constitutional authority to abrogate state sovereign immunity for copyright infringement under the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, leaving rights holders without a federal damages remedy when states infringe their copyrights.
The Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering marks that are immoral or scandalous constitutes an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech under the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court held that the federal government is not a ‘person’ eligible to petition for inter partes review, post-grant review, or covered business method review under the America Invents Act.
The Supreme Court unanimously held that copyright registration “occurs” when the Copyright Office registers a claim — not when the applicant files — meaning copyright holders must wait for the Office to act before they can sue for infringement.
The Supreme Court held that the AIA preserved pre-AIA law on the ‘on sale’ bar: a confidential commercial sale of an invention more than one year before the patent application triggers the bar, even if the invention’s details remain secret.
The Supreme Court held that a patent holder can recover lost foreign profits as damages when a domestic act of infringement under § 271(f) caused those foreign profits to be lost.
The Supreme Court held 7-2 that inter partes review does not violate Article III or the Seventh Amendment — because patents are public franchises granted by the government, which may reclaim or modify them through an executive agency proceeding without a jury trial, upholding the America Invents Act
The Supreme Court held 5-4 that when the USPTO institutes an inter partes review, it must adjudicate every claim challenged in the petition — rejecting the PTO’s practice of instituting IPR on only some of the challenged claims and leaving other claims unreviewable.