In our December post “A FRANDlier Realm” we discussed emerging law relating to patents that are essential to technological standards, like 3G wireless telecommunications. What happens when patent owners and product makers cannot agree on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms? We said then that, rather than issuing injunctions, American courts “are more likely to attempt… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Intellectual Property
Subscribe to Intellectual Property RSS FeedSharing an Umbrella
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Big Pharma and academia cement big deals in the quest for bigger prizes With the patents of many highly profitable blockbuster drugs expiring over the course of a few years, the search is on for new drugs to fill large pharmaceutical companies’ shrinking product portfolios. For years, Big Pharma has turned to smaller biotech companies… Continue Reading
Patent Reform: The Process Is New, But Is It Improved?
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012In 2011, the sweeping patent reform legislation sought to reduce litigation by creating a new process for challenging patent validity. But the new process will look more like litigation than the old process, says Matthew Kreeger, chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Patent Interferences Group. Under the old opposition proceedings, challenges were decided by U.S. Patent & Trademark Office patent examiners based on the parties’… Continue Reading
Watch That Incubator
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Make sure you’re protected before diving into academic collaboration Today, many universities operate business incubators, and some are seeing significant success. Since 2006, for example, the University of California’s QB3 bioscience incubator program has helped launch 65 companies that have raised more than $230 million in capital. Tapping into university resources can be a big… Continue Reading
A FRANDlier Realm
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Europe’s courts take sides in standards patent disputes When a patent becomes essential for a product to operate according to industry standards—say, for a cellphone to connect to a 3G network—patent protection can start looking a bit like monopoly power. To avoid antitrust trouble, holders of these patents regularly pledge to license them on fair,… Continue Reading
Jumping the Line
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Generic drug makers aren’t waiting until patents expire Since passage of the Hatch-Waxman Act in 1984, generic drug companies have used its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) process to bring cheaper versions of brand-name drugs to market after their patents expire. In the past decade or so, generic drug companies have commonly applied for the… Continue Reading
A Breed Apart
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Crop inventors are seeking to protect their work, even if they don’t use GMOs When international seed supplier Enza Zaden bred a delicious and juicy new tomato in the 1990s, the world was introduced to the now famous Campari. The globe-shaped vegetable soon became a supermarket staple, but the Dutch company did not patent its… Continue Reading
Read Before Clicking
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2012Click-wrap agreements, where the user has to click “I Accept” prior to downloading software, accessing information, or performing any number of tasks online, are typically approached with casualness in consumer-to-business transactions. But with B2B click-wrap agreements increasing, Morrison & Foerster partner John Delaney cautions against such a nonchalant approach. “These are take-it-or-leave-it agreements,” he warns…. Continue Reading
What Do Yoga Poses and Big Data Have in Common?
Posted on by Timothy Denny GreeneThe U.S. Copyright Office recently issued a policy statement clarifying its approach to examining registrations of compilations, including claims for the selection and arrangement of independently uncopyrightable subject matter. Going forward, the Copyright Office will no longer register compilations of uncopyrightable subject matter—for example, “a compilation of yoga poses” or a “compilation of rocks.” While… Continue Reading
ICANN’s gTLD Protection Policies
Posted on by Debbie RosenbaumAs we wrote about previously, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accepted applications during the first part of 2012 for the next generation of Internet domains – customized extensions, known as generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. Until this time, gTLDs have been limited to the ICANN-approved gTLDs, including .com, .org, and .edu as well as several… Continue Reading
To Catch a Thief
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012Trade secrets: now more enforceable— and more important When Bloomberg released its list of the 10 biggest intellectual property verdicts of 2011, the most noteworthy thing about it may have been that the jury award total was twice that of 2010. The second-most noteworthy: the two largest verdicts weren’t for patent infringement but trade secret… Continue Reading
The End of Fishing Season
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012For companies daunted by the high cost of intellectual property litigation, some relief may be at hand in the form of proposed limits on the discovery process. A council that advises the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year decried the use of discovery as a “tactical weapon.” It pinpointed the increasing… Continue Reading
From .com to .younameit
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012As a semiconductor manufacturer, how would you—or your competitor— like the exclusive right to the Web domain suffix “.chip”? The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is accepting applications for new generic top-level domains that can be comprised of virtually any name or number string. Top trademarks and brands have taken notice. “Some trademark… Continue Reading
Patent Pending: Shifts in patent law, and their impact extend beyond the America Invents Act
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012Once upon a time, patents were supposed to reward—and protect—innovation. That was before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (or PTO) got snowed under with applications, slowing the patent process to a crawl. Before the PTO started issuing streams of patents that many viewed as vague and overly broad. And before so-called nonpracticing entities, or… Continue Reading
FAQs: The America Invents Act
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012Could the America Invents Act help reduce the backlog of patents pending before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office? The PTO has long suffered from budgetary shortfalls, resulting in a backlog of some 670,000 applications. The AIA gives the PTO the right to boost its fees and keep at least some of its own funding. … Continue Reading
China: Innovation for Sale
Posted on from MoFo Tech Spring/Summer 2012The Chinese government has been encouraging overseas pharmaceutical companies to outsource R&D to Chinese firms—part of an effort to move into more high-value work. The draw: a growing, cost-effective bioscience talent pool made up of both local graduates and “sea turtles” who went to U.S. universities and returned, according to Morrison & Foerster partner Gordon… Continue Reading
Biotech’s Reprieve: A federal panel rules that isolated DNA really are different
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2011The biotech industry has been built on three decades of gene patenting, so it was thrown for a loop a year ago when a federal judge ruled that DNA isolated from the body were “products of nature” and therefore could not be patented. On July 29 a federal appeals court overturned that ruling against Myriad… Continue Reading
Could seaweed be the ideal biofuel source?
Posted on from MoFo Tech Fall/Winter 2011For decades, biofuel companies have turned to food crops, especially corn, to make the bioethanol that is added to gasoline to power trucks and cars. But the resulting price pressures on food, coupled with the large tracts of land needed to produce the fuel in a meaningful way, has led to a hunt for next-generation… Continue Reading