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Library: Opinions

All Good Things Must Come to an End: Kimble v Marvel

Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2401 (2015). Kimble evaluates whether a patent owner can collect any kind of patent royalty (e.g., royalty under a license or royalty for an assignment) for activity occurring after a patent expires. ...

Attorney Client Privilege for Patents

Why is this important? What is it? Outside counsel v. inside counsel. Waiver. Special Topics Download the Presentation

Joint Owners who Fight over Ownership and Use of Joint Research.

Joint development research often results in the joint creation of an invention. In the patent world, this makes the creators not just joint inventors, but also joint owners of that invention. The provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 262 expressly state that ...

Patent Exhaustion: Outcomes are hard to predict.

The Supreme Court emphasizes the importance of preserving the sanctity of stare decisis to guide judicial decisions. See Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2401 (2015). Yet, cases in the area of patent exhaustion appear to lose sight of ...

Pitfalls under the implied license doctrine 

A myriad of law and fact circumstances create implied licenses. Scholars have commented that the law is a morass of doctrines that overlap and/or conflict.1 Nonetheless, a substantial majority of implied license cases fall into one or more of the ...

Pitfalls under the Repair v Reconstruction Doctrine

The repair v. reconstruction doctrine (RRD) also limits patent scope. You are significantly impacted by the RRD if you sell patented items, such as capital equipment, for which there is a sizeable used equipment or repair markets. You also are ...

Strategic IP Planning

Myth v. truth, Planning scope, Strategic patenting plan, Sample IP harvesting plan. Download the Presentation

The hidden risk of joint research and other agreements

Helsinn Healthcare S. A. v. Teva Pharms. United States, Inc., 139 S. Ct. 628 (2019) This decision addresses the question of whether secret sales trigger the on sale bar under the new Section 102(a)(1) of the AIA. The lesson is that activities under ...