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Don’t Count Your Lamborghinis Before Your Trademark is in Use

by | Jul 22, 2021 |

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a grant of summary judgment, finding that a trademark registrant had alleged infringement of its trademark without having engaged in bona fide use of the trademark in commerce, as required by the Lanham Act. The Court found no material issue of fact as to whether the registrant had used the mark in commerce in a manner to properly secure registration, and the alleged infringer therefore was entitled to cancellation of the registration. Social Technologies LLC v. Apple Inc., Case No. 320-15241 (9th Cir. July 13, 2021) (Restani, J., sitting by designation)

This dispute traces back to a 2016 intent-to-use US trademark application filed by Social Technologies for the mark MEMOJI in connection with a mobile phone software application. After filing its application, Social Technologies engaged in some early-stage activities to develop a business plan and seek investors. On June 4, 2018, Apple announced its own MEMOJI software, acquired from a third party, that allowed users to transform images of themselves into emoji-style characters. At that date, Social Technologies had not yet written any code for its own app and had engaged only in promotional activities for the planned software.

Apple’s MEMOJI announcement triggered Social Technologies to rush to develop its MEMOJI app, which it launched three weeks later (although system bugs caused the app to be removed promptly from the Google Play Store). Social Technologies then used that app launch to submit a statement of use for its trademark application in order to secure registration of the MEMOJI trademark. The record also showed that over the course of those three weeks, Social Technologies’ co-founder and president sent several internal emails urging acceleration of the software development in preparation to file a trademark infringement lawsuit against Apple, writing to the company’s developers that it was “[t]ime to get paid, gentlemen,” and to “[g]et your Lamborghini picked out!”

By September 2018, Apple had initiated a petition before the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board to cancel Social Technologies’ MEMOJI registration. Social Technologies responded by filing a lawsuit for trademark infringement and seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement and validity of its MEMOJI registration. When both parties moved for summary judgement, the district court determined that Social Technologies had not engaged in bona fide use of the MEMOJI trademark and held that Apple was entitled to cancellation of Social Technologies’ registration. Social Technologies appealed.

Reviewing the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, the Ninth Circuit framed its analysis under the Lanham Act’s use in commerce requirement, which requires bona fide use of a mark in the ordinary course of trade and “not merely to reserve a right” in the mark. The issue on appeal was whether Social Technologies used the MEMOJI mark in commerce in such a manner to render its trademark registration valid.

The Ninth Circuit then explained the Lanham Act’s use in commerce requirement, which requires “use of a genuine character” determined by the totality of the circumstances (including “non-sales [...]

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Unified at Last? Germany’s Constitutional Court Removes UPC Hurdle

by and | Jul 22, 2021 | ,

On July 9, 2021, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court rejected a pair of applications for a preliminary injunction directed against the German Approval Act on the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) (decision of June 23, 2021, 2 BvR 2216/20). Thus, German ratification of the Agreement now only requires a presidential signature of the Approval Act and the subsequent deposition of the ratification.

The Constitutional Court’s press release can be found here (in English and German). The text of the decision itself is available here (in German only).

BACKGROUND

So far, 15 EU Member States have ratified the 2013 Agreement on a UPC. In recent years, the ratification process has faced several unexpected hurdles and proved to be cumbersome. Last year, post-Brexit, the United Kingdom formally revoked its ratification (as of July 20, 2020). Since then, of the ratifications required for entry into force, only Germany’s remained pending.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court annulled a first national ratification Approval Act on February 13, 2020, after a successful constitutional complaint. Now, following an apparently unsuccessful second round of constitutional complaints, nothing remains to prevent the second Approval Act, which was redrafted and approved by the German legislator in fall 2020, from being formally signed by the German president.

GROUNDS FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT’S DECISION

The Constitutional Court stated that the constitutional complaints were inadmissible on the merits because the complainants had not sufficiently substantiated the possibility of a violation of their fundamental rights.

Under German constitutional law, national legal acts may only transfer sovereign rights to the European Union or EU-related institutions under certain conditions. In particular, in order for a national act to be deemed unconstitutional, it must be established that the transfer of rights would undermine the German constitution or, in the words of German constitutional law, would affect the integral core or identity of the German constitution. In its 2020 decision, the Federal Constitutional Court recognized that the first Approval Act lacked the two-thirds majority in parliament required for such a significant transfer of sovereign rights. The first Approval Act was adopted unanimously, but only 35 of the approximately 600 German members of parliament were present for the vote, which was found to be too few for such a far-reaching piece of legislation.

In principle, the hurdles for a successful constitutional complaint are high. The Approval Act represents a democratically legitimized majority decision by a constitutional body. Now 570 members of parliament have voted in favor of the second Approval Act. Therefore, in the present decision, the Federal Constitutional Court (for the first time) considered the merits of the law rather than the formalities of passage.

In the present case, the complainants argued that Articles 6 et seq. of the UPC Agreement violated the independence of judges established in the German constitution and the constitutionally guaranteed principle of the rule of law due to the appointment of the judges of the UPC for six years, their possible reappointment and the [...]

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Ninth Circuit Still Signals Shift in Arbitration Landscape for Non-Signatories

by and | Jul 15, 2021 |

In a decision substantively the same as the now-withdrawn opinion entered on January 20, 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit once again affirmed denial of a non-signatory’s motion to compel arbitration. Setty v. Shrinivas Sugandhalaya LLP, Case No.18-35573 (9th Cir. July 7, 2021) (Nelson, J.) (Bea, J., dissenting).

Following the June 8, 2021, withdrawal of its original decision, the Ninth Circuit again found that federal rather than Indian law should apply, this time focusing on the New York Convention and its implementing legislation’s emphasis on “the need for uniformity in the application of international arbitration agreements.” The Court further reasoned that it applies “federal substantive law” in cases involving the New York Convention when determining the arbitrability of federal claims by or against non-signatories. The Ninth Circuit then pointed back to GE Energy, the decision that prompted the initial remand, stating that although the Supreme Court of the United States “specifically concluded” that “the New York Convention does not conflict with enforcement of arbitration agreements by non-signatories under domestic-law equitable estoppel doctrines,” the Supreme Court did not determine whether GE Energy could enforce the arbitration clauses under principles of equitable estoppel, nor did it determine which body of law governed.

The Ninth Circuit concluded that while “a non-signatory could compel arbitration in a New York Convention case,” the facts presented here did not implicate the agreement that contained the arbitration clause. Clarifying its prior holding, the Ninth Circuit stated explicitly that the claims here had “no relationship with the partnership deed containing the arbitration agreement at issue in this appeal.” Repeating its earlier ruling, the Court reasoned that the subject matter of the dispute was not intertwined and thus the doctrine of equitable estoppel was not applicable.

Judge Carlos Bea again dissented on the choice of law issue. Although most of his opinion was similar to his prior analysis, Judge Bea indicated that he disagreed with the majority’s notion that federal substantive law is applied in cases involving the arbitrability of federal claims by or against non-signatories under the New York Convention. Judge Bea argued that there was no basis to make such a choice of law analysis for a motion to compel dependent on whether the plaintiff’s claims sounded in federal or state law, and that whether an arbitration agreement is otherwise governed by the New York Convention is irrelevant to the choice of law for an equitable estoppel claim.

Practice Note: The Setty decision appears to demonstrate a shift in the US arbitration landscape, and parties may begin to see an increase in the use of equitable estoppel theories by non-signatories. Practitioners should keep in mind that non-signatories may use this theory affirmatively to attempt to compel arbitration, but it may open the door to enforcement of an obligation to arbitrate against non-signatories as well.



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USPTO Conducting Patent Eligibility Jurisprudence Study

by | Jul 15, 2021 |

At the request of Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Marie Hirono (D-HI), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Chris Coons (D-DE), the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) is undertaking a study on the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States and how the current jurisprudence has impacted investment and innovation, particularly in critical technologies like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, precision medicine, diagnostic methods and pharmaceutical treatments. On July 9, 2021, the USPTO issued a Federal Register Notice seeking public input on these matters to assist in preparing the study. The deadline for submitting written comments is September 7, 2021.

The Federal Register Notice included 13 concerns on which comments were requested:

  1. Explain how the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence affects the conduct of business in your technology areas, and identify your technology areas.
  2. Explain what impacts you have experienced as a result of the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States. Include impacts on as many of the following areas as you can, identifying concrete examples and supporting facts when possible:
    1. patent prosecution strategy and portfolio management;
    2. patent enforcement and litigation;
    3. patent counseling and opinions;
    4. research and development;
    5. employment;
    6. procurement;
    7. marketing;
    8. ability to obtain financing from investors or financial institutions;
    9. investment strategy;
    10. licensing of patents and patent applications;
    11. product development;
    12. sales, including downstream and upstream sales;
    13. innovation and
    14. competition.
  3. Explain how the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States impacts particular technological fields, including investment and innovation in any of the following technological areas:
    1. quantum computing;
    2. artificial intelligence;
    3. precision medicine;
    4. diagnostic methods;
    5. pharmaceutical treatments and
    6. other computer-related inventions (e.g., software, business methods, computer security, databases and data structures, computer networking, and graphical user interfaces).
  4. Explain how your experiences with the application of subject matter eligibility requirements in other jurisdictions, including China, Japan, Korea, and Europe, differ from your experiences in the United States.
  5. Identify instances where you have been denied patent protection for an invention in the United States solely on the basis of patent subject matter ineligibility, but obtained protection for the same invention in a foreign jurisdiction, or vice versa. Provide specific examples, such as the technologies and jurisdictions involved, and the reason the invention was held ineligible in the United States or other jurisdiction.
  6. Explain whether the state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States has caused you to modify or shift investment, research and development activities, or jobs from the United States to other jurisdictions, or to the United States from other jurisdictions. Identify the relevant modifications and their associated impacts.
  7. Explain whether the state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States has caused you to change business strategies for protecting your intellectual property (e.g., shifting from patents to trade secrets, or vice versa). Identify the changes and their associated impacts.
  8. Explain whether you have changed your behavior with regard to filing, purchasing, licensing, selling, or maintaining patent applications and patents in the United States as a result of [...]

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Virtual Event | USIPA’s Increasing Diversity in Innovation – Capturing America’s Lost Inventors

by | Jul 13, 2021 |

McDermott is sponsoring the United States Intellectual Property Alliance’s (USIPA) Increasing Diversity in Innovation conference, which is taking place July 26-29, 2021. This virtual event will offer attendees four half-days of programming from leading experts on how to affect meaningful change in your organization. Partner Ahsan A. Shaikh will be presenting his research and moderating a panel at the conference, on the topic of “Reaching Diverse Inventors Using Brainstorm Techniques.”

Click here for more information and to register.



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Venue Manipulation Obviates Geographically Bounded Claims in Venue Analysis

by | Jul 8, 2021 |

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a rare grant of two mandamus petitions directing the US District Court for the Western District of Texas to transfer the underlying patent infringement actions to the US District Court for the Northern District of California pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). In re: Samsung Elecs. Co., Ltd., Case Nos. 21-139, -140 (Fed. Cir. June 30, 2021) (Dyk, J.)

Ikorongo Technology owned four patents directed to functionalities allegedly performed by applications run on the accused mobile products sold by Samsung and LG. Ikorongo Technology assigned to Ikorongo Texas—an entity formed only weeks before—exclusive rights to sue for infringement of those patents within specified parts of the state of Texas, including certain counties in the Western District of Texas, while retaining the rights to the patents in the rest of the United States.

Ten days later, Ikorongo Texas sued Samsung and LG in the Western District of Texas. Although Ikorongo Texas claimed to be unrelated to Ikorongo Technology, the operative complaints indicated that the same five individuals owned both Ikorongo Texas and Ikorongo Technology, and that both entities shared office space in North Carolina.

The day after filing the initial complaints, Ikorongo Texas and Ikorongo Technology filed first amended complaints, this time naming both Ikorongo Technology and Ikorongo Texas as co-plaintiffs, noting that together Ikorongo Texas and Ikorongo Technology owned the entire right, title and interest in the asserted patents, including the right to sue for past, present and future damages throughout the United States and the world.

Samsung and LG separately moved under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to transfer the suits to the Northern District of California, arguing that “three of the five accused third-party applications were developed in Northern California, where those third parties conduct significant business activities and no application was developed or researched in Western Texas.” Samsung and LG also argued that potential witnesses and sources of proof were located in the Northern District of California.

The district court first concluded that Samsung and LG failed to establish § 1404(a)’s threshold requirement that the complaints “might have been brought” in the Northern District of California. Because Ikorongo Texas’s rights under the asserted patents were limited to the state of Texas and could not have been infringed in the Northern District of California, the district court held that venue over the entirety of the actions was improper under § 1400(b), which governs venue in patent infringement cases. Alternatively, the district court analyzed the traditional public- and private-interest factors, finding that defendants had not met their burden to show cause for transfer. Samsung filed for mandamus to the Federal Circuit.

The Federal Circuit found that the district court erroneously disregarded Ikorongo Technology and Ikorongo Texas’s attempts to manipulate venue when analyzing venue under § 1404(b). While no act of infringement of Ikorongo Texas’s geographically bounded rights took place in the Northern District of California, the Federal Circuit determined that “the presence of Ikorongo Texas is plainly recent, ephemeral, and [...]

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Unsigned, Sealed, Delivered: PTO Eliminates Handwritten Signatures for Certain OED Correspondence and Credit Card Payments

by | Jul 8, 2021 |

The US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) eliminated the requirement for original handwritten signatures on certain correspondence with the Office of Enrollment and Discipline (OED) and on certain payments made to the PTO by credit card. The handwritten signature requirements of 37 CFR § 1.4(e) were deleted effective July 2, 2021.

37 CFR § 1.4(e)(1) previously required correspondence related to registration to practice before the PTO in patent cases, enrollment and disciplinary investigations, and disciplinary proceedings to be submitted with an original handwritten signature personally signed in permanent dark ink or its equivalent. 37 CFR § 1.4(e)(2) required the same for payments by credit cards where the payment was not made via the electronic filing system. Elimination of the entirety of § 1.4(e) allows the use of facsimile transmissions and S-signatures in enrollment and disciplinary matters before the OED, and for payments by credit card.



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Don’t Let Prophetic Examples Work Against You

by | Jul 8, 2021 |

On July 1, 2021, the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) issued a notice reminding patent applicants that when their applications contain both prophetic and working examples, they must make a clear distinction between the two.

Prophetic examples illustrate reasonably expected results or anticipated results. They stem from experiments that have not been actually performed and are instead hypothetical simulations. In contrast, working examples result from experiments that were actually performed. In order to aid in distinguishing between the two example types within a patent application, prophetic examples should be written only in the future or present tense—not in the past tense. Prophetic examples cannot be used to meet the written description and enablement requirements for a patent application.

The PTO’s recent notice underscores the importance of the applicant’s duty to clearly distinguish between prophetic and working examples: “[k]nowingly asserting in a patent application that a certain result ‘was run’ or an experiment ‘was conducted’ when, in fact, the experiment was not conducted or the result was not obtained is fraud.”



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Diehr Alice, Yu are Superimposing Novelty onto Patent Eligibility. Love, Newman.

by | Jun 24, 2021 |

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss on the basis that, under the two-step Alice analysis, the patent claims—directed to a digital camera—were directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. Yu, et al. v. Apple Inc., et al., Case Nos. 20-1760; -1803 (Fed. Cir. June 11, 2021) (Prost, J.) (Newman, J., dissenting)

The patent claim under consideration recited an “improved digital camera” that has two lenses, two image sensors, an analog-to-digital converter, a memory and a digital image processor for “producing a resultant digital image from said first digital image enhanced with said second digital image.” Yu conceded that “the idea and practice of using multiple pictures to enhance each other has been known by photographers for over a century” and that the components recited in the claim “are themselves generic and conventional.”

Applying the Supreme Court’s two-step Alice v. CLS Bank test for determining patent eligible subject matter, the Federal Circuit determined at step one that the claim was “directed to the abstract idea of taking two pictures . . . and using one picture to enhance the other in some way.” At step two, the Court held that the claim failed to otherwise define a patent eligible invention because the digital camera “is recited at a high level of generality and merely invokes well-understood, routine, conventional components to apply the abstract idea of [using one picture to enhance the other in some way].” The Court rejected Yu’s attempts to use portions of the patent’s specification to support eligibility, explaining that the eligibility analysis is limited to the literal recitations of the asserted claims.

Then, along came Judge Pauline Newman. With a chainsaw.

In dissent, Judge Newman argued that the majority was improperly enlarging the § 101 analysis to include other “substantive requirements of patentability.” Judge Newman emphasized (twice) that the claim literally recited an electromechanical camera, not an abstract idea. In her view, the camera recited in the claim met the requirements of § 101 as a new and useful machine, without regard to whether the claimed camera also met the novelty requirements of §§ 102 and 103. Referring to the Supreme Court’s 1981 holding in Diamond v. Diehr, Judge Newman wrote that “[i]n contravention of [Diehr‘s] explicit distinction between Section 101 and Section 102, the majority now holds that the [claimed] camera is an abstract idea because the camera’s components were well-known and conventional and perform only their basic functions.” Judge Newman further proclaimed that “the principle that the majority today invokes was long ago discarded.”

Judge Newman also admonished the majority for the destabilizing effects that similar holdings have already had on US patent policy. She noted that “[i]n the current state of Section 101 jurisprudence, inconsistency and unpredictability of adjudication have destabilized technologic development in important fields of commerce,” and that “[t]he fresh uncertainties engendered by the majority’s revision of Section 101 are contrary to the statute and [...]

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Second Circuit Rejects FTC Challenge of 1-800 Contacts, Highlighting Procompetitive Trademark Policy

by and | Jun 24, 2021 | ,

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a final order of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had found that agreements to refrain from bidding on keyword search terms for internet advertisements violated Section 5 of the FTC Act. The Court made clear that although trademark agreements are not necessarily immune from antitrust scrutiny, they are entitled to significant deference. 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, Case No. 18-3848 (2d Cir. June 11, 2021) (Per Curium). The Second Circuit held that the FTC applied an incorrect analytical framework and incorrectly concluded that the agreements were an unfair method of competition under the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts and its competitors advertise online through search advertising. They bid on search engine keywords, which help display their websites in response to consumer searches. They also bid on negative keywords, which prevent their ads from being displayed when consumers search for specified terms.

Between 2004 and 2013, 1-800 Contacts entered into a series of settlement agreements to resolve trademark disputes with competitors, as well as one commercial agreement with a competitor, all of which included terms prohibiting the parties from using each other’s trademarks, URLs and similar terms as search advertising keywords. The agreements also required the parties to use negative keywords so that a search including one party’s trademarks would not trigger a display of the other party’s ads. 1-800 Contacts enforced these agreements when it believed them to be breached.

The FTC challenged the agreements, alleging that they “unreasonably restrain truthful, non-misleading advertising as well as price competition in search advertising auctions,” violating Section 5 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45. An administrative law judge (ALJ) subsequently found the agreements to violate Section 5. 1-800 Contacts appealed to the full Commission, which affirmed the ALJ’s decision. 1-800 Contacts appealed.

The Second Circuit vacated the FTC’s decision but noted that the FTC was correct to reject 1-800 Contacts’ argument that trademark settlement agreements are necessarily immune from antitrust scrutiny. Citing the Supreme Court decision in Actavis, the Second Circuit held, “the mere fact that an agreement implicates intellectual property rights does not immunize an agreement from antitrust attack.”

The Second Circuit disagreed with the FTC’s specific antitrust analysis, however. The Court held that the FTC erred by applying an “inherently suspect” analysis—also known as a “quick-look” analysis—rather than the rule of reason. The Court focused on the fact that “the restraints at issue here could plausibly be thought to have a net procompetitive effect because they are derived from trademark settlement agreements,” and the fact that the FTC acknowledged as much by finding that the company’s justifications were “cognizable and, at least, facially plausible.” The Second Circuit also noted that courts have limited experience with these types of agreements. The Court concluded that “[w]hen, as here, not only are there cognizable procompetitive justifications but also the type of restraint has not been widely condemned in our judicial experience . . . . [w]e are bound . . [...]

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