Blog: Protecting Businesses and Their Owners
Another one bites the dust (design patent valuations expected to drop)
It never made sense to me that design patents -- patents that protect an ornamental design instead of a functional aspect of a device -- used a formula for determining damages that made them far more valuable than utility patents. District courts have traditionally...
A brief post about USPTO events
The United States Patent and Trademark Office regularly holds events targeted all the various stakeholders it serves -- inventors, startups, big companies, attorneys, trademark owners, etc. The events are all listed on the USPTO website,...
First Amendment v. Limits on Trademarks: On to the Supreme Court
In 2015, the Federal Circuit held that "the disparagement provision of [trademark law is] unconstitutional.... We recognize that invalidating this provision may lead to the wider registration of marks that offend vulnerable communities.... But much the same can be...
Original US Government Works and Other Free-to-use Materials
Original US Government works are not subject to copyright. The law is about as clear as it can be: Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving...
The America Invents Act Turns Five — What Inventors Need to Know
The America Invents Act ("AIA") turned five years old last week. At the time of its adoption, independent inventors were hyper-focused on the switch from "First to Invent" to "First to File". For example, NPR did a piece where they interviewed a very experienced...