Rule 19
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Battle Lines Drawn
I previously reported on a case involving a missing patent assignment from an employee. The missing document didn’t prevent the Patent Office from issuing the patent though; the successor to the rights of the other co-inventors submitted the inventor’s employment agreement to the Patent Office and it thereafter issued the patent. However, the district court… Continue reading
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There Is Just No Way Around the Absent Patent Owner
I’m writing about an inventorship case mostly because I have to bone up before I speak at the AIPLA Mid-Winter Institute in a talk rivetingly titled “The Backlash from Mismanagement of Inventorship in Multi-Party Deals.” If you’re attending, consider Speedfit LLC v. Woodway USA, Inc. your homework assignment. The plaintiffs are an inventor, Aurel Astilean,… Continue reading
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STC.UNM v. Intel Stands
I’ve written in the past about a patent ownership stand-off, where, because of a mix-up in assignments and a disinterested possible co-owner, the interested owner cannot enforce the patent (original decision here and en banc decision here). The Supreme Court has refused to review the decision, so Ethicon, Inc. v. United States Surgical Corp., 135… Continue reading
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How to Put a Dead Stop to a Patent Infringement Suit … For Now
I previously wrote about a Federal Circuit decision with a bit of an odd fact pattern. There was some kind of joint development between the University of New Mexico (UNM) and Sandia. A Sandia inventor assigned a resulting patent, the ‘998 patent, to UNM instead of his employer, Sandia. UNM then assigned the patent to… Continue reading
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Joinder of an Unwilling Co-owner
On the left we have a disinterested patent owner; there was a mixup about the status of an inventor, Bruce Draper, so he assigned his rights in what ultimately became the ‘321 patent to the University of New Mexico (UNM) rather than his employer, Sandia. UNM realized the mistake and assigned to Sandia “those rights… Continue reading
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An Indispensable Owner
We know from Florida Prepaid that a State has sovereign immunity in federal intellectual property cases, so that it can only be required to appear in federal court if it has waived the immunity. This principle has ended a trademark infringement case before it got started. It’s an odd fact pattern. Plaintiff Richard Diaz, of… Continue reading
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