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This week in tech and innovation hearings in Washington D.C., the House of Representatives explores issues related to emerging cyber threats, Facebook’s cryptocurrency and its impact on the financial sector, space weather research and supporting clean automobile developments.

If an inventor wants to patent selling two or more items together that are brought together at the time of use (as a “kit”), they will often patent what is known as a “kit” claim. You will frequently see kit claims used in biotechnology industries, for example.

On Monday, June 24, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling, struck down a provision of federal law that prohibits the registration of “immoral” or “scandalous” trademarks as a violation of the First Amendment. The ruling, which unanimous in part and 6-3 in part, could open the flood gate to trademark applications seeking to register words or phrases that were considered vulgar, a concern that the court’s minority feared.

We believe that the proposed amendment fixes most of the problems battled by the courts, the USPTO and the patent community in general in the past years. However, the proposed amendment does not address two categories of claims that should be patent eligible under 35 USC Section 101, which the courts have deemed patent ineligible.

Court have held that Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act entitles celebrities to sue for trademark infringement when others use their persona, without permission, to suggest a false endorsement or affiliation with goods or services. This may seem quite similar to the right of publicity, but there is a salient difference.

A lawsuit that managed to make it all the way to the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) involves the Apple App Store and whether or not Apple can be forced to make other distribution avenues available to purchasers of App Store Apps and developers.

The House subcommittee on intellectual property convened a meeting to oversee the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Among two of the most important discussions were Section 101 regarding patent eligibility and registration of fraudulent trademarks.

For science fiction fans, this may sound like an overplayed trope. However, science fiction has taken the place of prophecy in the collective imagination and, as such, overplayed tropes are becoming realities with alarming regularity.

Today, April 3, the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing titled Trailblazers and Lost Einsteins: Women Inventors and the Future of American Innovation—a topic that also was considered last Wednesday by the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet in their first hearing of the term.

The Federal Circuit recently vacated a district court decision which found a patent for the antipsychotic drug “Saphris,” belonging to Forest Laboratories (Forest), valid as nonobvious, but not infringed by ANDA filers Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.