Monday, January 27, 2014

Design Patent Links - Jan. 27, 2014

Most of the exciting news in the design patent space in the last few weeks has been coming from the Federal Circuit.  But there have beet some smaller items in the news lateley,

Tracy-Gene Durkin and David K.S. Cornwell authored a summary of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's decision to deny inter partes review in ATAS Int'l, Inc. v. Centria.  This decision is the first IPR decision regarding a design patent, and the denial seems to suggest that design patent defendants should seek to assert only a few solid references when seeking IPR.

PC World authored an article last Thursday about the preliminary injunction that Blackberry is seeking against Typo in the Northern District of California.  It will be interesting to see how the court handles the issue of contributory design patent infringement, which is not a common issue in design patent cases.

Kenyon and Kenyon issued a design patent notice about a finding of non-infringement in Cohen Harel v. KK Int’l Trading Co. in the Eastern District of New York.  The case involved refillable lighters and the court found on summary judgment that no reasonable trier of fact could find the designs of the two lighters substantially similar.

Finally, for those who may have missed it, Professors Andrew Torrance and Mark Janis participated in an "Evil Twin" debate regarding the scope, purpose, and value of design patents back in November at the University of Richmond School of Law.  The debate was unofficially titled  "Design Patents - Great Idea or Greatest Idea?"

Finally, it's not every day that a local design patent case makes the 5:00 news, but the latest design patent case by Alex & Ani against North Attleboro's Northeast Jewelers sounds like it is gearing up to be an interesting case!

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