Revisiting McGirt: New Legal Developments Challenge Oklahoma’s Landmark Ruling
In April 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to a pair of cases dealing with the intersection of free speech, social media, and governmental liability. Both cases deal with § 1983 actions against governmental...more
On March 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court decided Houston Community College System v. Wilson, holding that an elected official does not possess an actionable First Amendment retaliation claim arising from a purely...more
Summer in Washington, D.C., is usually a quiet time. D.C.'s summer of 2020 has been anything but quiet, to put it mildly. While there are several existential pulls on our attention this season, we should still take a moment...more
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA") has been the subject of significant class and consumer litigation risk exposure for many industries, including financial institutions. In a July 6 ruling, the United States...more
Earlier today the Supreme Court released its decision in Barr v. Political Consultants, a case which attempted to end the TCPA as we know it. Instead, the Court struck down a narrow exception to the TCPA, known as the...more
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) remains in place, but the exception permitting robocalls for government debt collection has fallen, in a decision by the US Supreme Court addressing the constitutionality of the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On May 6, 2020, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a First Amendment challenge to a 2015 amendment to the TCPA, which exempted calls regarding debts owed to the government from certain of its...more
It seems that the oral argument in Barr, Attorney General v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc. may become better known for the toilet flush that could be heard in the course of the argument, rather than the...more
Those of us who have been litigating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) have spent the better part of the last decade trying to determine what constitutes an automated telephone dialing system (“ATDS”). ...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the constitutionality of the exception to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) for government-backed debt, namely whether that exception violates the First Amendment...more
On January 10, 2020, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Fourth Circuit’s decision to strike the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) “government-debt exemption.” See Am. Ass’n of Political Consultants,...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari to review whether a 2015 amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) violates the First Amendment and/or if it perhaps renders the statute unconstitutional as a...more
The TCPA is off to an exciting start this new year. On Friday, January 10, 2020, the Supreme Court granted the Petition for Certiorari filed in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants Inc., to review the...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s exception from its automated call restriction for calls to collect government debts violates the First Amendment of the U.S....more
U.S. trademark attorneys received a New Year’s surprise last month when the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear Iancu v. Brunetti, the case that should determine the availability of federal trademark...more
The Supreme Court of the United States issued five decisions today: Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, No. 16-111: In 2012, a same-sex couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights...more
A Smooth Patch in a Rough Road? Governmental Transition and Intellectual Property - Whenever a new Congress convenes, some IP issues come to the fore while others take a back seat. Transition to a new administration in the...more
The Supreme Court granted the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s petition for certiorari in In re Tam, 117 USPQ2d 1101 (Fed. Cir. 2016). In that case, the USPTO denied registration of an application to register the...more
This week saw developments in the two cases challenging the application of Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act to their registration: In re Tam and Blackhorse v. Pro Football, Inc....more
As we noted here last week, the Director of the USPTO filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that it review the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision, In re Tam. That decision held Section...more
On April 20, 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Federal Circuit seeking Supreme Court review of that Court’s decision in In re Tam, 117 USPQ2d 1001...more
On April 20, 2016, the USPTO made it official: It formally requested the U.S. Supreme Court to review the en banc Federal Circuit decision that held Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act violated the First Amendment. At issue...more