News and Commentary
The USPTO is proposing an across the board hike in all its fees. The increases are rather moderate, and their goal is simply to keep pace with expected costs. They did not choose to shift more of the schedule toward pre-grant fees instead of the current heavy reliance on post-grant fees. Some have suggested this change would discourage both low-quality applications and improper granting.
Have you ever wanted an explanation of copyright law that a five-year-old could understand? You may be interested in this congressional testimony. (Yes, there are puppets.)
The science publisher Elsevier issued a legal warning to an online citation service who was linking to Sci-Hub. However, many of Elsevier’s own articles link to Sci-Hub. These online publishers exercise no editorial function and give the actual scholars none of the profits. They exist solely to limit the public’s exposures to research.
Generally, we are familiar with Utility patents for novel technologies. However, there is a growing interest on the part of lawyers in supplementing their normal utility applications with design patent applications. This additional protection guards a product’s aesthetic features. Upward of 99% of design patents applications are granted, but the incredibly narrow scope of protection offered has tended to lower creators’ interest in them.
The Department of Justice just filed an amicus brief supporting Led Zeppelin in their multi-year copyright suit. They are supporting the district court’s interpretation against a Ninth Circuit decision, which took a more expansive view of what copyright protects. The DOJ may be responding to worries that a spate of recent court rulings have so expanded copyright protection as to criminalize music for merely sharing a few notes with a previous song.
With growing fears of Chinese infringement, our universities’ exchange of talented students and ideas might be the next victim of overzealous intellectual property protection.
CNN shut down other live streams of their democratic debate. While they did offer the stream for free, they included advertisements.
IBM was awarded by far the most patents of any US company in 2018. You can find the list of the top twelve here.
A new analysis shows the power of competition in drug markets. A biosimilar is an alternative formulation of a biologically-derived pharmaceutical with identical clinical properties. The entry of a biosimilar tends to reduce the net price a patient pays.
The Philadelphia Phillies are locked in a high-stakes legal skirmish over the ownership of the beloved, shamrock-hued Philly Phanatic.
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