The Supreme Court reaffirmed the Brulotte rule that agreements requiring patent royalty payments beyond a patent’s expiration date are unenforceable as a matter of law.
The Supreme Court held 6-2 that a defendant’s good-faith belief that a patent is invalid is not a defense to induced infringement liability under § 271(b) — distinguishing between validity and infringement and holding that invalidity must be raised as a defense, not as a shield against the kno
The Supreme Court held that TTAB likelihood-of-confusion decisions on trademark registration can preclude relitigation of the same issue in a federal court infringement suit when the usages adjudicated are materially the same.
The Supreme Court held that appellate courts must apply clear-error review to subsidiary factual findings underlying patent claim construction, while legal conclusions remain subject to de novo review.
The Supreme Court held 6–3 that Aereo’s service — which captured over-the-air broadcasts using thousands of tiny antennas and streamed them to individual subscribers — performed copyrighted works publicly and infringed broadcasters’ exclusive public performance right.
The Supreme Court held unanimously that software claims directed to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement, implemented on a generic computer, are patent-ineligible under §101, and articulated the two-step Alice/Mayo framework now universally applied to §101 analysis.
The Supreme Court held that competitors may bring Lanham Act false advertising claims challenging product labels even when those labels have been approved or regulated under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The Supreme Court held that patent claims are indefinite and invalid if they fail to inform a skilled artisan with reasonable certainty about the scope of the invention, rejecting the Federal Circuit’s overly lenient ‘insolubly ambiguous’ standard.
The Supreme Court held 6–3 that the equitable defense of laches cannot bar a copyright infringement claim for damages filed within the Copyright Act’s three-year statute of limitations.
The Supreme Court held that §285 ‘exceptional case’ fee-shifting requires only that the case stands out from others in the substantive strength of a party’s position or the unreasonable manner of litigation, rejecting the Federal Circuit’s rigid Brooks Furniture two-prong tes