On April 30, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it was expanding its campaign against allegedly improper patent listings in the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) Orange Book. In letters to 10 pharmaceutical companies, the FTC disputed the relevancy of more than 300 patents protecting aspects of drugs that have received market approval from the FDA. While the FTC claims that such action is necessary to improve Americans’ access to affordable prescription drugs, pharmaceutical industry representatives have questioned the propriety of this enforcement campaign given two d ..read more

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property met today to hear from six witnesses about a recently-proposed bill to curb unauthorized uses via artificial intelligence (AI) of an individual’s voice and likeness.   The “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2023” (NO FAKES Act) was introduced in October 2023 by Senator and Chair of the IP Subcommittee Chris Coons (D-DE) and Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Thom Tillis (R-NC). The goal of the bill is to “protect the voice and visual likenesses of individual ..read more

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential trademark decision affirming a Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) ruling that sustained Framboise Holdings, Inc.’s opposition and refused registration of Jalmar Araujo’s mark #TODECACHO. Framboise alleged ownership of the pictured design mark (left) based on prior use of the mark in the United States in connection with hair products, including shampoo, conditioner, hair mask treatments, hair cream, curly hair activator, hair jelly, etc. When Araujo applied to register U.S. Trademark Application Serial No ..read more

President Biden issued an executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence on October 30, 2023,  announcing a series of agency directives for managing risks related to the use of AI technologies. Now, the Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced several new actions aimed at implementing that order. On Monday, April 29, the DOC said the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released four draft publications on improving safety and security of AI technologies and also launched a program that will help to distinguish between content produced by humans and content produced ..read more

Epstein Becker & Green is seeking an intellectual property associate to join its Health Care & Life Sciences practice in our Columbus, OH, Nashville, TN, Pittsburgh PA, Portland, OR, or Princeton, NJ, office. This is a full-time, permanent position. Candidates should have a minimum of three years of experience in patent prosecution within the life sciences industry and a familiarity with technology transactions such as collaborations, licensing, outsourcing, and joint venture agreements. Experience in evaluating and managing patent, trademark, and copyright portfolios, performing IP du ..read more

When the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently hosted a forum on IP, innovation, national security and geopolitical competition, there was an active discussion about the role of IP – intellectual property - in achieving those other outcomes. An interesting debate emerged over the words that describe those IP functions, suggesting that policy can be ill-served by some habitually used, but perhaps not descriptively accurate, vocabulary. The upshot: words matter.   ..read more

GlaxoSmithKline filed a four-count civil action for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware late last week seeking damages for Pfizer and BioNTech’s infringing manufacture, use, sale and marketing of both the original “monovalent” and “bivalent” Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccine was quickly rolled out compared to other vaccines in the past and many pharmaceutical companies benefited financially. However, GSK contends their competitors, Pfizer Inc. and Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC (collectively Pfizer) and BioNTech SE, BioNTech Manu ..read more

On Thursday, April 25, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held an open meeting during which the agency’s commissioners voted 3-2 to restore net neutrality rules that reclassifies Internet broadband providers as common carriers, dramatically increasing regulatory oversight on such companies operating in the United States. This partisan victory for the Democratic Party membership of the FCC is raising opposition from taxpayer advocacy groups and Republican lawmakers who believe that the return of net neutrality rules will do much to harm America’s leadership in broadband Internet ..read more

A recent Post Grant Review (PGR) petition raises several interesting questions, including whether the crossing of two varieties of corn previously crossed and already owned by the patent owner results in a non-obvious claimed invention. See Inari Agriculture, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., PGR2024-00025. But as interesting as that obviousness question may be, and how easy it seems it is to get a utility plant patent issued, the question of greater concern for the system relates to which test for indefiniteness the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should be using, and why ..read more

This week in Other Barks and Bites: Caltech drops a patent infringement lawsuit against HP; the world celebrates World Intellectual Property Day; GSK sues Pfizer accusing the company of infringing on its mRNA patents ..read more