Commercial Roundup has some catching up to do this week. See the jumbo installment below.
- Multiple terms in speech-recognition patent deserved broader construction.
- Allowing any discovery on arbitrability amounts to denial of stay and authorizes immediate appeal.
- Internet service provider’s failure to boot subscribers it knew often pirated music online made it a contributory copyright infringer.
- FTC sues in Oregon to block $24.6 billion “supermarket mega merger” between Kroger and Albertsons, noting loss of competition on price and quality and harm to workers.
- Racing board’s ruling on horse naming against didn’t preclude owner’s first amendment challenge.
- Failure to object to mention of patent applications’ filing dates before jury dooms bid for new trial.
- Settling with a defendant for a big amount it can’t/won’t/doesn’t pay reduces non-settling defendants’ liability for the full amount.
- All plaintiffs must incur their “principal injuries” in the forum state for CAFA’s “local controversy” exception to federal jurisdiction to apply.
- Certificates for car dealer loyalty programs qualified for copyright law protection.
- Death of witness before parties could complete his deposition barred use of his testimony.
- Briefs can’t incorporate other briefs if incorporation results in brief that exceeds word count limit.
- Judge’s email to lawyers didn’t count as rendition of judgment.
- Insurance didn’t cover losses from closure of restaurants due to COVID-19 because virus didn’t materially alter property or deprive owner of its possession.
- Law of Venezuela governed validity of notes its national oil company issued.
- Patent on method for serving online ads recited abstract idea and lacked enough inventiveness to pass muster under Alice’s Section 101 test for patent eligibility.
- Prior art made claims in patent on strep vaccine obvious.
- Claims in battery patent didn’t contain contradiction and therefore didn’t fail for indefiniteness.
- Ruling on all “issues” but not all “claims” made final judgment non-final.
- Antitrust Division would lose automatic funding boost from increase in merger filings.
- How do tech giants stay on top? By coopting people and things that would disrupt their dominance.
- White House calls for $823 million to antitrust enforcers–more than 50 percent boost over 2021 levels.
- Drug makers didn’t show grounds for halting release of in-house lawyers’ writings about sham patent lawsuit under crime/fraud
- Airline could enforce arbitration clause in booking site’s terms and conditions.
- Patent Act bars use of oral testimony in proceeding to oppose registration of trademark and therefore precludes subpoena for an oral deposition.
- FAA Section 1 exempted worker whose job made him a link in movement of goods from abroad to places in U.S. from arbitration.
- New York tour bus firm pleaded enough basis for its claim that bigger firms arranged to shut it out of the hop-on, hop-off market.
- Watch maker’s use of “red gold” to describe time pieces’ color made “fair use” of “RED GOLD” trademark.
- Exemption in federal Arbitration Act for “class of workers” didn’t apply to LLC.
- Former director of company that went belly up failed to show he couldn’t afford a defense without D&O insurance money.
- The Complaint in United States v. Apple Inc. (D.N.J.).
- Matt Stoller explains U.S. v. Apple Inc.
- “New use” that releases cancer-causing agents doesn’t include use the EPA just learned about.
- Laches barred Rolex’s claim for profits of firm that fixed Rolex watches with non-Rolex parts.
- Refusal to order specific performance of “best efforts” clause didn’t justify interlocutory appeal.
- Context made report of “cure” for COVID-19 not false or misleading.
- Safe harbor kept import of heart valve devices from providing basis for patent infringement claim.
- Non-parody use of video failed Warhol test for copyright law’s fair-use doctrine.
- Prior art that disclosed all elements of invention without combining them didn’t render the invention invalid because obvious without proof that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have felt a reason to combine the elements.
- Lack of intent to use trademark in commerce provides basis for zapping registration.
- Error in reading limitations into patent claims caused error in analysis of defense that prior art made claims invalid because obvious.
- Details about firm’s scramble to hang onto stock exchange listing supported loss causation and falsity elements of securities fraud claims.
- Antitrust Division’s formal statement that it “closed” a probe didn’t bar it from starting a new one or reopening the old one.
- Party that claimed cost of arbitrating arbitrability put any remedy for harmful conduct out of reach failed to present proof that action in court would cost less.
- For want of an expert report, a (copyright infringement) case was lost.