One of my most read posts is “What Nunc Pro Tunc Means.” It means “now for then” in Latin, which is hardly much help. Extensive Google research tells me that it’s used to correct judicial orders, but that’s not what brings readers to my blog. In the IP field we typically use “nunc pro...
Read more →When you have one theory for one court, and a different theory for a later one, it probably isn’t going to turn out too well. In the latter suit before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, Weber-Stephen Products, LLC, famous maker of grills, petitioned to cancel the registration for a stylized “Q” trademark owned...
Read more →In Abraxis Bioscience, Inc. v. Navinta, LLC last November, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit examined a set of transactional documents and held that the plaintiff did not own the patents when the suit was filed and therefore did not have standing (blog post here). This wasn’t your run-of-the...
Read more →Patent standing cases are a dime a dozen, so I don’t necessarily blog them. But Epic Sporting Goods, Inc. v. Fungoman LLC gives a really good summary of the legal significance of an assignment nunc pro tunc, so I thought I’d share it. On August 1, 2006 the asserted patent (U.S. Patent 7.082,938 titled “Baseball Fielding...
Read more →Commerce Bancorp LLC v. Hill is a meaty enough case on ownership issues alone it’s good for two blog posts. First is a standing problem that cropped up, second an allegation of trademark abandonment. I’ll do standing now and abandonment later. I am always somewhat baffled by changes in ownership of intellectual property when...
Read more →American Plastic Equipment, Inc. claimed to own the copyright in toy action figures first manufactured by Louis Marx & Co. Defendant Toytrackerz, LLC made replicas and was sued. In its original decision (blogged here and here), the court found that there were two defects in American Plastic’s chain of title. The first break was...
Read more →Intellectual property specialists may not be involved in the preparation of merger and acquisition documents, and a couple of recent cases show what can go wrong when the form is missing something important. In one case the patentee won, but in the other the patentee didn’t. In Carotek, Inc. v. Kobayashi Ventures, LLC, the...
Read more →In the past few years John Welch at the TTABlog has organized a Boston road trip for the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. They’re great events and I highly recommend that anyone nearby make it there. This past October, the TTAB held an inter partes hearing in Iron Man Magazine versus the Ironman Triathalon...
Read more →Positive Technologies whiffed the first patent infringement complaint by filing in the name of the wrong entity, Positive-California, when it should have been filed in the name of Positive-Nevada. Positive calls a mulligan and refiles in the correct entity’s name, then the two companies merge into Positive Technologies, Inc. The standing problems aren’t over...
Read more →Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
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