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As the current pandemic eviscerates jobs throughout our economy, Congress has a rare opportunity to improve the lot of one long-besieged group of workers: creators. Authors, songwriters, photographers, artists, filmmakers, and many other creative professionals are the lifeblood of American cultural innovation.

Patent applications filed at the European Patent Office (EPO) rose 4% to 181,406 in 2019, driven by substantial increases from Chinese, Korean and U.S. applicants, according to a report published by the Office yesterday.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: Fears over coronavirus tank stocks on Wall Street and trigger changes at the Federal Circuit, the closure of the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office, as well as move the location of oral arguments in the Ninth Circuit; Apple pays VirnetX after decade-long battle; INTA has had to reschedule its Annual Meeting for November and combine it with the Association’s Leadership Meeting due to the coronavirus; the Senate IP Subcommittee looks at the applicability of the European Union Copyright Directive for the U.S. copyright regime

Almost a third of the recently signed $8.3 billion bill to fund the United States response to the coronavirus outbreak is devoted directly to vaccine research and development.

week, Chrimar Systems, Inc. filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) and Representatives Hank Johnson (D-GA), Doug Collins (R-GA), Martha Roby (R-AL) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) yesterday introduced legislation to modernize the U.S. trademark system. The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 is in part a response to the surge in fraudulent trademark filings, largely originating from China, that both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Congress have been grappling with over the last year.

Senate IP Subcommittee Chair, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), yesterday led the second in a series of Subcommittee hearings addressing the possibility of updating the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The hearing, titled “Copyright Law in Foreign Jurisdictions: How are other countries handling digital piracy?”, was aimed at examining foreign copyright laws in order to consider what may or may not be beneficial if adopted by the United States.

Every week, Unified Patents compiles all Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and district court filings, lists them, and releases them daily to subscribers. Each Wednesday, IP Watchdog will post the list, with a handful of interesting cases highlighted with context.

Patent litigation and enforcing patents can be cost prohibitive for many individual inventors and smaller businesses. Hourly rates at large firms may be out of reach for those with “not so deep pockets,” and most litigation funding companies either avoid patent litigation altogether or require a case valuation in the tens of millions of dollars.

We have great news to share with all of our readers and our IPWatchdog CON2020 Speakers, Sponsors, Exhibitors and registrants. We have finally worked out an amicable resolution with the Renaissance Dallas Richardson hotel.