On May 10, 2024, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding terminal disclaimer practice. The proposed rule would have required any terminal disclaimer filed to obviate...more
The advice to practitioners faced with marginally relevant prior art has long been "when in doubt, cite it." There was a small cost for the applicant (or practitioner) to cite such art by filing an information disclosure...more
Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) company OpenAI recently published its “approach to patents,” which includes what might appear to be a promise not to assert its own patents against other parties except in...more
In the lawsuit brought against them for using visual artists' work to teach their large language model, and producing near-identical copies in response to prompts, Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI moved to...more
8/30/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Artificial Reproduction ,
Breach of Contract ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
DMCA ,
False Endorsements ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Lanham Act ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Trade Dress ,
Unjust Enrichment
On August 20, 2024, Judge Ada E. Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued an order granting summary judgment to the plaintiffs in Ryan LLC v. Federal Trade Commission, a lawsuit challenging...more
Following in the footsteps of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the state bars of California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, the American Bar Association has weighed in on attorneys' ethical use of...more
8/20/2024
/ American Bar Association (ABA) ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
Disclosure ,
Duty of Competence ,
Duty of Confidentiality ,
Ethics ,
Machine Learning ,
Popular ,
State Bar Associations ,
Technology Sector ,
USPTO
After floating a discussion draft last fall, a bipartisan group of Senators formally introduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2024 ("the NO FAKES Act" or "the Act") on July 31, 2024. ...more
8/6/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Attorney's Fees ,
Cause of Action Accrual ,
Copyright ,
Damages ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Machine Learning ,
Name and Likeness ,
Punitive Damages ,
Screen Actors Guild ,
The Copyright Act
As discussed previously on this blog (see "USPTO Proposed Rule Change to Terminal Disclaimer Practice" and "The USPTO's Proposed Terminal Disclaimer Rule: A Litigator's Perspective") and elsewhere, the U.S. Patent and...more
It seems like every week brings a new dispute over artificial intelligence (AI), mostly focused around new features and uses of generative AI. Last week was no exception, with OpenAI unveiling human-like voices soon being...more
As discussed at length in a previous post on this blog (see "USPTO Proposed Rule Change to Terminal Disclaimer Practice"), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has proposed amending the form of terminal disclaimer to be used...more
The Federal Trade Commission, voting 3-2 along party lines, adopted a Final Rule banning non-compete agreements. The Final Rule allows some narrow exceptions (based both on time and circumstances) but prospectively prohibits...more
4/24/2024
/ Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Federal Bans ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Final Rules ,
FTC Act ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Memorandum of Understanding ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Non-Disclosure Agreement ,
Non-Solicitation Agreements ,
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
U.S. Commerce Department
Since President Biden issued his Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been investigating the potential pitfalls of...more
4/16/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Compliance ,
Confidential Information ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Electronic System for Trademark Trials and Appeals (ESTTA) ,
Executive Orders ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Export Controls ,
Filing Requirements ,
ITAR ,
New Guidance ,
Patent Applications ,
Patents ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO
In a Federal Register notice dated March 29, 2024, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is updating the required method for serving it with a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a notice of...more
As discussed in our earlier post, Microsoft opened its motion to dismiss portions of the New York Times's OpenAI case pled against it with an extended analogy to the Betamax case. It argued that the Times was acting like the...more
Responding to the OpenAI brief that read more like a press release than a traditional motion to dismiss, the New York Times attacked OpenAI's approach from the very first sentence, calling the factual background of OpenAI's...more
Like OpenAI before it, Microsoft has sought to dismiss portions of the lawsuit the New York Times has brought against it over ChatGPT. While raising some of the same arguments, Microsoft takes a more traditional path with...more
3/8/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Contributory Infringement ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Fair Use ,
Machine Learning ,
Microsoft ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
New York Times ,
Popular ,
Training ,
Transformative Use
In response to the lawsuit the New York Times has filed against it, OpenAI has sought to dismiss portions of the complaint. But instead of filing a traditional motion to dismiss that argues that the allegations of the...more
3/6/2024
/ Affirmative Defenses ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Direct Infringement ,
DMCA ,
Fair Use ,
Machine Learning ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
New York Times ,
Popular ,
Training
Aside from the actual games on the field, the college football press has been fixated on one story over the past several weeks: the Michigan "sign stealing" controversy. Michigan head coach (and former Chicago Bears...more
On June 22, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued two documents regarding the Patent Trial and Appeals Board's discretionary denials of post-grant challenges based on parallel litigation: a retrospective study of...more
The Supreme Court, speaking through a five-justice majority, has reaffirmed the equitable principle of assignor estoppel while at the same time limiting its application in Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc. Assignor...more
Patent law is replete with arcane (and often judge-made) doctrines, such as the doctrine of equivalence and obviousness-type double patenting. In addition, long having been considered a property right (Oil States to the...more
In Van Buren v. United States, the Supreme Court faced the difficult task of determining whether the opaquely-written Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) would apply to situations in which a person who was authorized to...more
Supreme Court Narrows Federal "Anti-Hacking" Law to Exclude Enforcement Against Those Who Use Otherwise Authorized Access for Improper Purpose -
There is a well-worn legal maxim that "hard cases make bad law." In deciding...more
Although the Federal Circuit faced obviousness issues that were simple to resolve in Adidas AG v. Nike, Inc., it saw an opportunity to continue to clarify its jurisprudence regarding standing on appeal from an adverse final...more
6/29/2020
/ Adidas ,
Appeals ,
Evidence ,
Final Written Decisions ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Nike ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Post-Grant Review ,
Prior Art ,
Remand ,
Reversal ,
SAS Institute Inc. v Iancu ,
Standing
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA") is a Federal criminal statute intended to protect government and other "protected computers" from hacking. Among other things, the CFAA serves as the basis for punishing anyone who...more