Retooling Intellectual Property Strategies To Weather Bear Markets

As economists warn of an imminent economic recession, companies should take the time now to consider their Intellectual Property (IP) strategies and determine how to preserve legal spend while simultaneously adding value to their IP portfolio.

With these considerations in mind, there are a few strategies that can be put in place early on to help recession-proof an IP strategy. This should include evaluating the company’s product roadmap to identify high-value assets, managing legal spend […]

By | September 5th, 2022 ||

Assignor Estoppel: When Can A Party Challenge A Patent They Sold?

In patent law, the doctrine of “assignor estoppel” refers to barring a party who assigned a patent from later challenging the validity of the patent. Assignor estoppel is an equitable doctrine that has been relied upon in order to prevent someone who has assigned the rights to a patent (or patent application) from later contending that what was assigned was, in fact, worthless. The doctrine has been applied to not just inventors, but also […]

By | July 13th, 2021 ||

Google v. Oracle – Supreme Court Issues Landmark Opinion On Fair Use; Sidesteps Interface Copyrightability

On April 5, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Google’s copying of Oracle code was fair use, putting an end to a $9 billion infringement suit, clarifying or revising several important points of copyright law, and significantly altering the legal rules for software interoperability.

The dispute between Oracle and Google stemmed from Google’s desire to (1) make its Android smartphone platform similar enough to Oracle’s Java programming language that the significant existing population of Java […]

By | July 9th, 2021 ||