The Supreme Court held 6–2 that surface designs on cheerleading uniforms are copyrightable, establishing a new two-part separability test: a design element is protectable if it can be perceived as a work of art separate from the useful article, and would qualify for copyright protection if imagined
The Supreme Court held 7-1 that laches cannot be used as a defense to patent infringement that occurred within the six-year statute of limitations — extending Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (copyright) to patent law and eliminating a long-standing Federal Circuit precedent that had allowed laches t
The Supreme Court held that supplying a single component of a multi-component patented invention from the United States does not trigger liability under § 271(f)(1), which requires supplying ‘all or a substantial portion’ of the components.
The Supreme Court held that in design patent infringement, the infringer’s profits need not be calculated based on the entire end product; courts must identify the relevant ‘article of manufacture’ to which the design was applied.
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s use of the ‘broadest reasonable interpretation’ standard for claim construction in inter partes review proceedings — validating the PTO’s approach over patent holders’ objections that IPR should us
The Supreme Court unanimously held that courts awarding attorney fees under the Copyright Act must give substantial weight to the objective reasonableness of the losing party’s litigation position, while retaining discretion to weigh all other relevant factors.
The Supreme Court unanimously overruled the Federal Circuit’s Seagate objective-recklessness test for willful patent infringement and enhanced damages under § 284 — holding that courts have broad discretion to award enhanced damages in egregious cases of deliberate or wanton infringement, with
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.