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PROPOSED BILL ATTEMPTS TO PROTECT FASHION INDUSTRY FROM KNOCK-OFFS

After a year of negotiations with fashion industry members, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has introduced the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act which would extend copyright protection to design of apparel, footwear, and accessories and protect such works from being copied and reproduced.  To qualify for protection under the proposed Act, the design must be “a unique, distinguishable, non-trivial and non-utilitarian variation over prior designs” and the copy must be “substantially identical” to the original so as to be mistaken for it. The design need not be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.  The proposed Act provides an exception for home sewers who will be permitted to copy a protected design for personal use or the use of a family member.  If passed, the Bill would provide protection to new and original designs for three years after they were first introduced to the market.

To view the proposed Bill, click here.

THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT TAKES ON BIOTECHNOLOGY & PATENTABLE SUBJECT MATTER

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has its hands full with biotechnology patent matters lately.  Particularly, the Court will analyze patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §101 regarding biotechnology patents in their consideration of the following three cases: (1)Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v . Mayo Collaborative Services, (2) Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. v. Biogen Idec, and (3) Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office et al. (also known as “Myriad”).  The first of these cases, Prometheus, concerns a method of treatment involving the steps of administering an amount of a drug to a subject and determining levels of 6-thioguinine (6-TG) and 6-methylmercaptopurine (6-MMP) in the subject.  In Classen, patent claims are directed to a method of evaluating whether an immunization schedule affects a chronic immune-mediated disorder. These cases will be decided in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision of Bilski v. Kappos, No. 08-964 slip op. (U.S. June 28, 2010).   The Federal Circuit will also decide the highly publicized Myriad case on appeal, which involves patents claiming isolated DNA molecules that code for a polypeptide of BRCA1 or BRCA2, as well as various diagnostic methods relating to these sequences. 

The Federal Circuit recently decided another biotechnology case, Intervet, Inc. v. Merial Limited, on a separate issue. In that case, the court construed several claim terms (such as “porcine circovirus type II” and “ORFs 1-13”) and one full claim, which was directed to an isolated DNA molecule of a particular sequence. Although the issue of patentable subject matter was not before the Court, one judge nevertheless wrote at length in the dissent about whether the term “isolated DNA” is patentable subject matter. Ostensibly, these comments are in the wake of theMyriad case and the buzz it has created.

MICROSOFT’S ALLEN TROLLS FOR INFRINGERS. HIS TARGETS … SEEMINGLY EVERY MAJOR INTERNET PLAYER

In what could turn into a patent battle of epic proportions, Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen has sued a who’s who of Internet giants for patent infringement.  The suit, filed by Allen’s Interval Licensing, which names Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and eBay, among others, cites core Internet technology developed in the 90’s by another Allen project, the now defunct technology company, Interval Research, LLC.  Microsoft is, of course, conspicuously absent from the suit which can be read here.

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