Intellectual Property, Patent and Trademark The Connecticut Law Tribune
10-08-2012
Intellectual Property, Patent and Trademark Special Section
By LEAH M. REIMER
You might think that once a copyrighted work enters the public domain, you're free to use it unconditionally from there on out. But you would be wrong. In one of the most eagerly anticipated intellectual property cases of 2012 — Golan v. Holder — the U.S. Supreme Court held that Congress can restore copyright protection to works that had been in the public domain.
By MICHAEL J. RYE and MICHELE C. PERINO
Sept. 16, 2012 marked the first anniversary of President Barack Obama's signing of the America Invents Act (AIA), one of the most extensive changes to patent legislation in decades. It is also the date many of the reforms enacted by the AIA actually went into effect.
By JONATHAN B. TROPP and RICHARD H. BROWN
Yogi Berra is famously said to have said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." In its recent en banc decision in Akamai Technologies Inc. v. Limelight Networks Inc., Nos. 2009-1372, -1380, -1416 and -1417, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit demonstrated how deeply a court can split without taking the fork in front of it at all.
By ERIC OSTERBERG
Even after winning a patent infringement case, a plaintiff still may not get an injunction prohibiting ongoing infringement by the defendant. In ActiveVideo v. Verizon, Case No. 2011-1538 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 24, 2012) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit further explained why that is, illustrated how various factors should be weighed to determine whether to issue an injunction, and offered guidance concerning how to calculate an appropriate royalty in the event an injunction does not issue.
By NED McMAHON
The famous fable by Aesop, "The Tortoise and the Hare," is often thought of as describing a race between unequal partners. Design patents are also often thought of as being the unequal, lesser partner of utility patents. While design patents provide protection of a more narrow scope than their utility patent brethren, much like Aesop's tortoise, the steady rights provided by design patents can be very formidable when used properly.
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