Articles

04.06.23

The US Patent Office Examination Needs Revamping. Here’s How.

Irah Donner published an article inBloomberg Law outlining a way to change the USPTO’s current procedures to prioritize resources by eliminating the initial ex parte examination and only reviewing patents after an owner files an intent to enforce notification against an alleged ...


09.23.20

Circuit Courts Issue Two Important Trade Dress Decisions

Intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner wrote an article for Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal on two notable trade dress decisions recently issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the ...


08.21.20

PTAB Issues Precedent

Manatt intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner wrote an article for Bloomberg Law on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s precedential decision in DTN, LLC v. Farms Technology, LLC, which clarified what must be disclosed alongside settlement agreements. ...


08.19.20

Pencil thin: Lanard Toys Ltd v Dolgencorp LLC

Intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner authored an article forIntellectual Property Magazine discussing the Federal Circuit’s decision in Lanard Toys Ltd. v. Dolgencorp LLC, which held that the scope of claimed design was limited by the prior art.


07.28.20

Assignment of Inventions/Patents Must Be in Writing; No Specific Format/Content Required

Manatt intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner wrote an article for Law360 on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Schwendimann v. Arkwright Advanced Coating Inc., which held that a patent assignment must be documented in writing ...


02.13.20

INSIGHT: Federal Circuit Helps Clarify Patent Eligibility for Tech Improvements

Intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner authored an article for Bloomberg Law on the Federal Court’s recent ruling in Koninklijke KPN N.V. v. Gemalto M2M GmbH for an improved data transmission error detection system. In this article, Donner analyzes how the ...


10.16.19

Donner Authors Article for Law360 on the PTAB’s Discretion to Hear IPRs

Intellectual property protection and enforcement partner Irah Donner wrote an article for Law360 on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s recent decision to designate several opinions as precedential or informative with respect to inter partes reviews under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.


07.30.19

Supreme Court: Ban on Immoral/Scandalous Trademarks Held Unconstitutional

In Iancu v. Brunetti,1 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal ban on the registration of immoral or scandalous trademarks like FUCT (pronounced as F-U-C-T) violated the First Amendment. By a 6–3 vote, the Court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional because it discriminated based on ...


07.10.19

Supreme Court: Government Not a ‘Person’ and Cannot File Invalidity Petition

In Return Mail Inc. v. U.S. Postal Service,1 in a 6-to-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held a federal agency is not a “person” authorized to petition for review of the validity of a patent, and therefore a federal agency cannot utilize the three types of administrative review proceedings ...


06.26.19

Invention That Monitored and Analyzed Network Activity Found Patent Eligible

In SRI International, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc.,1 the Federal Circuit held a claimed invention that used network monitors to detect suspicious network activity by analyzing network traffic data, generating and integrating reports of that suspicious activity using hierarchical monitors, was ...