Imagine That IP Law Blog

Tesla CEO Elon Musk once explained that “in certain sectors like automotive, solar, and space, you don’t see new entrants.”¹ The auto industry, in particular, rebuffs new startups with a host of ominous caveats: the inability to appraise the future of the industry, the protracted history of broken manufacturers – thousands of them, in fact – and the calculated entry of the major tech companies, like Apple and Google, that seek to challenge the incumbents for market share. Building and delivering cars to the end user has always been a battle of attrition. So the emerging ... Read More ›

In Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., Arthrocare Corp., No. 2019-2140 (Fed. Cir. October 31, 2019), the Federal Circuit raised Patent Owners’ hopes that inter partes review (IPR) of patents could potentially be constitutionally defective, based on how Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges are appointed. But the court then dashed those hopes by curing the constitutional defect in the statute controlling Administrative Patent Judge (APJ) appointment. For those accused of patent infringement, breathe easy; IPRs survive and can be used to minimize the threat of patents.Read More ›