Intellectual Property

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For over 70 years, the Lanham Trademark Act has banned the federal registration of any trademark comprised of “immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter” or matter which may “disparage. . . or bring [persons, institutions, beliefs or national symbols] into contempt or disrepute.”  Over the years, the application of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (“PTO”)…

In its recent campaign, Bud Light recognizes true friends of the Crown by raising a cold adult malted beverage and chanting Dilly Dilly.  The marketing slogan was created apparently coming out of nonsense and fun.  In its campaign, Bud Light seems to want people to celebrate with a lighthearted toast of Dilly Dilly and escape…

Trademarks and service marks (collectively, “trademarks”) are source identifiers or brand names. For example, JUST DO IT ® identifies a brand of athletic clothing and gear by Nike. A trademark is essentially a word, phrase, symbol, design or combination thereof that is used to identify and distinguish the source of one party’s goods or services…

Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. Although the phrase may seem complicated, copyrights are perhaps the most basic and widespread of the intellectual property rights. Copyright law affects our daily lives. However, copyright’s effects are most apparent in the way they negatively impact everyday life – as in the…

  1. You obtain copyright protection in a work simply by creating it. In order to sue for copyright infringement, however, you must register the work with the Copyright Office. The timing of your registration can greatly impact your rights against a potential infringer.
  2. If a work is registered prior to the alleged infringement, the copyright owner

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The City of Baton Rouge and the surrounding areas have been struck by devastating floods.  Thousands were stranded. The roadways to their homes are flooded and most impassable.  Flooding is not new to Louisiana.  Just over ten years ago, the state experienced one of the most devastating natural disasters on record with Hurricane Katrina.  Since…

On May 11, 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”). Through the DTSA, claims for trade secret misappropriation will now have a basis in Federal law and Federal Courts will have jurisdiction over such claims. In addition to the new federal cause of action, the DTSA adds…

The question as to whether isolated strands of human DNA are patent eligible subject matter has finally been answered. The Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc (1), on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Confirming what many patent practitioners anticipated, the Court held that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and therefore is not patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 merely because it has been isolated. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the Court ruled that complementary DNA (cDNA), which is synthetically constructed from a DNA segment by removing the introns (the non-coding DNA segments in a gene), can constitute patent eligible subject matter because the cDNA is not naturally occurring. It is important to note that this carved-out exception protects universities, biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other research institutions; without the carved-out exception, the ability for such entities to recuperate resources devoted to research and development may have been lost.
Continue Reading You Can’t Patent My DNA: A brief on Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.

On May 10, 2013, the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, handed down its opinion in CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp., No. 2011-1301, slip op. (Fed. Cir. May 10, 2013). The majority of the Federal Circuit judges agreed on little other than that the method and computer-readable medium claims involved in the dispute were patent ineligible. Essentially, Alice Corporation owned patents that the Federal Circuit found to be nothing more than abstract ideas based on use of escrow accounts and record keeping associated with the settling of transactions. However, the Court failed to agree on the reasoning as to why such claims were ineligible subject matter with the judges evenly split regarding the eligibility of comparable computer systems claims.
Continue Reading CLS Bank: Software Patents at Risk?