IP News Alerts
Web3 Blockchain Domain Names: A New Frontier for Trademark Protection
April 15, 2022
By: Giovanna H. Fessenden-Fairbank
Trademark owners once raced to protect their brands by registering .com domain names on the World Wide Web (Web2). It is with a sense of déjà vu that trademark owners...
The Copyright Clash Between Artists: A Quiz
April 14, 2022
“Appropriation Artists,” such as Warhol and Koons, often take an image made by another visual artist, usually a professional photographer, without permission, and incorporate...
Subject Matter Eligibility Responses May be Deferred in USPTO Pilot Program
January 31, 2022
On February 1, 2022, the USPTO will launch a Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response Pilot Program for qualifying non-provisional patent applications in which the first...
Expedited Examination for COVID-19 Related Patent Applications
January 26, 2022
Applicants seeking to patent COVID-19 related inventions may want to consider filing their applications under the USPTO’s COVID-19 prioritized examination pilot program. The...
Implementation of the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020
January 6, 2022
By: John L. DuPré and Timothy J. Meagher
The Trademark Modernization Act (TMA) was enacted in December 2020. In November 2021, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued regulations to implement the TMA....
Epic Games' Battle Royale with Apple - Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple, Inc.
September 16, 2021
By: Giovanna H. Fessenden-Fairbank
Epic Games fails to prove that Apple is a monopolist Apple must change its App Store rules to allow third-party developers to use other payment systems On September...
United States Supreme Court Decision in Arthrex Finds a Constitutional Remedy for the Structure of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Post Grant Patent Challenges
June 25, 2021
By: Lawrence P. Cogswell III,, Ph.D. and Keith J. Wood
Decision addresses uncertainty about whether post-grant patent challenges are constitutional. With this ruling, many expect that the USPTO will create a formal procedure by which...
Supreme Court Limits Copyright Protection for Software
April 8, 2021
By: Brian T. Moriarty, Mary Lou Wakimura, and Timothy J. Meagher
On April 5, 2021, the United States Supreme Court, in Google v. Oracle, issued a landmark decision concerning the application of Copyright Laws to protect software. The Court ruled...
The Transition is Over: Evaluating Your Trademark and Design Portfolios in the EU and UK Now That BREXIT is Official
January 11, 2021
As of January 1, 2021, registered European Union (EU) Trademarks and Community Designs are no longer effective in the United Kingdom (UK). The United Kingdom Intellectual Property...
USPTO COVID-19 Response Update
June 5, 2020
The USPTO announced that it has launched the COVID-19 Response Resource Center to provide improved access to USPTO initiatives, programs, and other helpful intellectual property-related...
Federal Circuit Decision Shows How Software Improvements to Computer Technologies are Patentable
May 6, 2020
The Court held that “software can make patent-eligible improvements to computer technology, and related claims are eligible as long as they are directed to non-abstract improvements...
United States Patent Office Finds Artificial Intelligence System Cannot Be An Inventor
April 29, 2020
The United States Patent Office limits inventorship to “natural persons.” Under current U.S. patent law, identifying an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system as an inventor...