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 unanimously held that the American Rule prevents the USPTO from recovering its attorney’s fees from unsuccessful applicants in § 145 civil actions, even though the statute requires applicants to pay “all expenses” of the proceeding.
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.