by Dennis Crouch The leading case on copyrightability of AI created works is now pending before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233 (D.C. Cir. 2024), centers on Dr. Stephen Thaler’s attempts to register a copyright for an artistic image autonomously generated by his AI system that he has named the “Creativity Machine.” The U.S. Copyright Office refused registration on the basis that the work lacked the required human authorship. Thaler filed suit challenging this determination.  The parties have now filed their briefs, along with ..read more

by Dennis Crouch The Federal Circuit is set to consider the use of terms like “patented,” “proprietary,” and “exclusive” in commercial advertising can be actionable under § 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act when their use is not entirely accurate. The key issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in granting summary judgment for Crocs on Double Diamond Distribution and U.S.A. Dawgs’ (“Dawgs”) counterclaim for false advertising under the Lanham Act. This case began back in 2006 when Crocs sued Double Diamond and others for patent infringement of Crocs’s design patents. That case was sta ..read more

I’m always on the lookout for interesting new scholarship related to intellectual property and innovation policy. The following are a few of the articles that I’ve been delving into this past week: James Hicks, Do Patents Drive Investment in Software?, 118 NW. U. L. REV. 1277 (2024). Ana Santos Rutschman, From Myriad to Moderna: The Modern Pharmaceutical Company, ___ Texas A&M University Journal of Property Law ___ (2024) (forthcoming). John Howells, Ron D Katznelson, Freedom to Operate analysis as competitive necessity—the Selden automobile patent case revisited, Journal of Intellectual ..read more

By Chris Holman Salix Pharms., Ltd. v. Norwich Pharms. Inc., 2024 WL 1561195 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 11, 2024) Human clinical trials play an essential role in the discovery, development, and regulatory approval of innovative drugs, and federal law mandates the public disclosure of these trials. Pharmaceutical innovators are voicing concern that these disclosures are increasingly being used as prior art to invalidate patents arising out of, or otherwise relating to, these trials, in a manner that threatens to disincentivize investment in pharmaceutical innovation. A recent Federal Circuit decision, Sal ..read more

by Dennis Crouch Law school civil procedure courses spend very little time on proper venue because, in most cases venue is proper so long as the district court has personal jurisdiction over the defendant. However, in a quirk of history, Congress created a patent-law specific venue statute in the 1800s that severely limits where a patent case can be filed. See 28 U.S.C. 1404(b). A newly proposed bill, S.4095, sponsored by Republican Senators McConnell, Cotton, and Tillis, would moderately expand the scope of proper venue and resolve some indeterminacy regarding foreign defendants.  Althou ..read more

by Dennis Crouch The USPTO has published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to formalize the process for Director Review of PTAB decisions. These proposed rules come in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Arthrex, Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1970 (2021), which underscored the necessity for the USPTO Director to have the ability to review PTAB decisions to comply with the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  Of course, the USPTO has been operating under an interim procedure for Director Review that began soon after Arthrex, but has been updated a couple of times ..read more

by Dennis Crouch The Federal Circuit’s new decision in Luv’N’Care, Ltd. (LNC) v. Laurain and EZPZ, relies on the doctrine of unclean hands to deny relief to the patentee (Laurain and EZPZ), affirming the district court’s judgment.  The appellate panel also vacated and remanded the district court’s finding that LNC failed to prove the asserted patent is unenforceable due to inequitable conduct during prosecution, as well as its grant of summary judgment one of the asserted patents was invalid as obvious.  U.S. Patent No. 9,462,903. The case here involves bowls/plates attached to a ma ..read more

by Dennis Crouch As many of you know, I have done machine learning work for many years — starting in the 1990s while in college.  However, like most of the world, I have been surprised and amazed by the power of LLM-based GenAI technology and have been trying to figure out ways to use it both for patent practice and in my job as a law professor.  I hope that it helps me become both more effective and more efficient. On the Patently-O side, I have been honing my approach somewhat. I tried to have a GenAI tool (like ChatGPT or Claude) simply write a blog post for me, but those attempts ..read more

by Dennis Crouch The Federal Circuit’s August 2023 decision in In re Cellect, LLC has set-up a significant question regarding the interplay between the patent term adjustment (PTA) statute, 35 U.S.C. § 154(b), and the judicially-created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP). Now, Cellect is seeking Supreme Court review, recently filing a petition for an extension of time that also indicated its intent to file. Cellect’s petition is now due May 20, 2024, and I expect significant support from the patent owner community. Patentees often receive PTA due to USPTO delays that otherwis ..read more

By Dennis crouch The international IP community is moving toward further harmonizing legal protection for industrial designs. For almost twenty years, member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have been negotiating a Design Law Treaty (DLT) that would streamline and align procedural requirements for obtaining registered design rights across jurisdictions. If successful, the DLT would make it “significantly easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to obtain industrial design protection overseas as a result of simplified, streamlined and aligned procedures and req ..read more