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A recent case heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involved a dispute that illustrated the “tension” between patents and trade secrets. This article discusses the claims made by both parties after the plaintiff alleged that the defendant — a terminated employee who’d set up his own company — had infringed its reissue patent and misappropriated trade secrets. A sidebar notes that — aside from its ruling — the court chastised the plaintiff for reversing a position it had taken during an earlier hearing.
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Since 2006, patentees have been pulling their hair out over whether a victorious patent infringement plaintiff is entitled to a permanent injunction against the infringement. This article discusses a case in which the appeals court eliminated the presumption of irreparable harm in the patentee’s favor, but also made clear that injunctions remain in reach for some patentees.
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In 2008, Apple sued a company that had developed a “master image” of Apple software on a non-Apple computer and then shipped its computers with a copy of that master image installed as the operating system. The defendant contended that Apple had misused its copyright by requiring licensees to run their copies only on Apple computers. This article shows why the court sided with Apple.
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The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) prohibits cybersquatters from registering domain names that are identical or confusingly similar to registered marks that are distinctive at the time of registration. But does the term “registration” include re-registration? That was the position of a plaintiff who noted that an alleged cybersquatter had re-registered its domain name after the plaintiff’s similar-sounding service mark had become distinctive. This article discusses the court’s opinion.
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