Mealey's Intellectual Property : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Intellectual Property

October 08, 2025
Anthropic Must Face Copyright Claims As It Fights For Damages Disclosures

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California said music publishers’ artificial intelligence copyright claims against Anthropic PBC may proceed just days after the company asked for relief from a magistrate judge’s conclusion that the case’s novelty and complexity permitted delaying the disclosure of potential damages.
October 08, 2025
Judge Tosses Athletics Fansite Copyright Suit Against Sports Fan Page Company

ABERDEEN, Miss. — A Mississippi federal judge on Oct. 7 dismissed without prejudice a copyright infringement suit alleging that a company that maintains Facebook fan pages for U.S. professional and college sports violated the intellectual property rights of a Mississippi State University internet fansite, finding that the court lacks personal jurisdiction over the suit because the fansite failed to show that the fan page company is “subject to personal jurisdiction” in Mississippi.
October 08, 2025
Panel: Patent Organizations Lacked Standing To Sue PTO For Rules Change

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a District of Columbia federal judge’s decision to dismiss a complaint brought against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) by two organizations that represent patent holders, agreeing with the judge that the organizations lacked standing because they could not show they were injured by the PTO’s decision to deny their petition for rulemaking.
October 08, 2025
Judge: Brief Correcting AI Errors May Not Contain New Arguments

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California in a contract and copyright infringement case granted an administrative request to withdraw a summary judgment motion containing artificial intelligence-generated errors, but said that as a sanction, the refiled brief cannot contain new arguments or authorities.
October 08, 2025
Federal Circuit Vacates $20M Patent Award Because Plaintiff Didn’t Own Patents

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a medical device company lacked standing to bring infringement claims against another device maker because it did not own the patents at issue when the suit was filed; the panel vacated a Massachusetts federal judge’s findings of infringement and remanded with instructions to dismiss.
October 08, 2025
High Court Won’t Consider If Federal Circuit Erred On Hip Implant Color Mark

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a medical ceramics company’s petition for a writ of certiorari, leaving in place a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals holding that the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) correctly canceled its marks because the pink color of its artificial hip parts was a functional element of an expired patent.
October 07, 2025
Supreme Court Denies Certiorari To Crocs In Sprawling Patent, False Ad Row

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 denied Crocs Inc.’s petition for a writ of certiorari in which the company argued that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals improperly expanded the federal false advertising statute to include intangible concepts, including statements about whether a product is patented.
October 07, 2025
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Device Maker’s Patent Discovery Arguments

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected a medical product company’s petition for a writ of certiorari in which it told the court that a North Carolina federal court violated its due process rights by changing both the time to trial and the time for discovery in a patent infringement case for which the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has already ordered a new trial.
October 07, 2025
Supreme Court Denies Certiorari For Floor Tape Patent, False Ad Row

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari from entities that make floor-marking tape and argued that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals should not have affirmed an Ohio federal judge’s finding that the patent at issue was anticipated by prior art.
October 07, 2025
High Court Won’t Consider Obviousness Of Oxycontin Patent Claims

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected a petition for a writ of certiorari from Purdue Pharma LP and related entities, which told the justices that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has created a rigid nexus test when considering evidence of nonobviousness in a dispute over patents controlling Purdue’s OxyContin drug.
October 07, 2025
Supreme Court Rejects USAA’s Petition In Patent Row With PNC Bank

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 denied the United Services Automobile Association’s (USAA) petition for a writ of certiorari, leaving in place the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ affirmation of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) decision to invalidate USAA’s mobile banking patents; USAA contended that PTAB arbitrarily rendered opposing decisions on its patents in inter partes review (IPR) proceedings sought by different IPR petitioners.
October 07, 2025
High Court Won’t Review $95M Verdict In E-Cigarette Patent Row

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by e-cigarette company R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. (RJR), which sought review of a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel’s ruling upholding a more than $95 million jury verdict against RJR for infringing three Altria Client Services LLC patents for pod-based e-cigarettes.
October 07, 2025
High Court Invites U.S. Input On 2nd Circuit’s Trademark Similarity Analysis

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 invited the U.S. government to participate in briefing while the justices consider whether to grant a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a coffee brewing company that argues the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “stands alone” in considering a trademark’s strength a question of law and not a question of fact.
October 07, 2025
No High Court Consideration Of PTO’s ‘Space Force’ Mark Rejection

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected an attorney’s petition for a writ of certiorari, declining to hear his argument that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals inappropriately deferred to the interpretation used by the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of a section of the Lanham Act when affirming the TTAB’s rejection of his application for a mark for US SPACE FORCE filed only days after President Donald J. Trump’s first proposals regarding the branch.
October 07, 2025
Anthropic Pushes Back On Ruling Delaying AI Copyright Damages

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Anthropic PBC told a federal judge in California that music publishers already have all the information they need to calculate damages and neither the novelty nor the complexity of an artificial intelligence copyright case requires delaying the disclosure.
October 06, 2025
High Court Won’t Consider Obviousness Of Oxycontin Patent Claims

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected a petition for a writ of certiorari from Purdue Pharma LP and related entities, which told the justices that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has created a rigid nexus test when considering evidence of nonobviousness in a dispute over patents controlling Purdue’s Oxycontin drug.
October 06, 2025
High Court Rejects Writer’s Claim That Copyright Expert Was Wrongly Excluded

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 rejected a petition for a writ of certiorari from a playwright who contended that the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals was wrong to affirm a California federal judge’s grant of summary judgment to film production entities the writer accused of copying elements of her work.
October 06, 2025
Federal Circuit Affirms Slashing Of Medical Staple Patent Damages To $1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A panel in the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a Delaware federal jury’s finding that a medical technology company and affiliated entities infringed a single claim of a competitor’s patent on a surgical stapling product and also affirmed the judge’s decision to reduce the jury’s damages award from $10 million to only $1.
October 03, 2025
AI Copyright Plaintiffs Blocked From Expanded Discovery For 3rd Time

OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal magistrate judge in California on Oct. 2 declined to expand the datasets subject to discovery in an artificial intelligence copyright suit, relying on her previous conclusion that discovery should be limited to The Pile dataset, which contains the copyrighted works and was used to train Nvidia Corp.’s NeMo Megatron large language model.
October 03, 2025
Judge Tosses Temu’s Antitrust Claims Against Shein But Lets IP Claims Survive

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed much of a suit brought by the company behind online store Temu against the company behind competitor Shein, tossing claims of trade secret misappropriation, antitrust violations and others, but the judge will allow claims of copyright and trade dress infringement, along with other intellectual property claims, to proceed.
October 02, 2025
4th Circuit Rejects Petition To Reconsider Injunction For Dance Team’s Mark Use

RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a charter school and its parent-teacher organization’s petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel’s September ruling that affirmed a North Carolina judge’s decision to deny the school entities’ request for a preliminary injunction against a local dance company in the parties’ dispute over a trademark on a logo using the name “Inspire.”
October 02, 2025
D.C. Circuit Won’t Reconsider Copyright Register Job Interference Ruling

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued two per curiam orders Oct. 1 denying reconsideration and en banc reconsideration of a Sept. 10 order enjoining various federal government parties from interfering with Shira Perlmutter’s service as the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office pending appeal.
October 02, 2025
Judge Grants Summary Judgment On Some Counterclaims In ‘Vampire’ Wine Mark Row

TAMPA, Fla. — In a dispute over imported Romanian wine bearing marks related to the vampire Dracula, a federal judge in Florida partly granted a motion for partial summary judgment, setting aside counterclaims and affirmative defenses that suggested that the plaintiff entity committed fraud on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to obtain its marks.
October 02, 2025
Federal Circuit Vacates PTAB Obviousness Finding For Social Media Map Patent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled Oct. 1 that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) correctly held that a technology company’s substitute claims in a patent related to displaying social media posts on a geographic map satisfy the written description requirement under the Patent Act; however, the panel also decided that PTAB erred in its consideration of the obviousness of those substitute claims.
October 01, 2025
Federal Circuit: Multiple Errors In Hookless Curtain Infringement Findings

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel issued a mixed opinion Sept. 30 in a long-running intellectual property dispute over hookless shower curtains, affirming a New York federal judge’s findings that one appellant company infringed multiple patents but vacating or reversing findings that another appellant company infringed the patents; the panel also vacated trademark and trade dress infringement findings against the appellant companies and set aside attorney fees.