Steven Heinrich

3 weeks ago | mondaq.com | Brendan Bement |Steven Heinrich |Sylvia Turner |Alex Weidner

While the average person may only consider reading patents whenthey have difficulty sleeping, U.S. Pat. No. 6,368,227 ("the'227 patent") proves that anyone can be an innovator andthat patents can occasionally be an amusing read.

4 weeks ago | mondaq.com | Brendan Bement |Steven Heinrich |Sylvia Turner |Alex Weidner

In a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court highlighted the importance of naming the correct defendant(s) in trademark infringement cases.1 Under the federal statute governing trademarks, the Lanham Act, a prevailing plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit may be entitled to an award of the "defendant's profits." In the Dewberry opinion, the Supreme Court determined whether a district court may total the profits of a named corporate defendant with those of separately...

4 weeks ago | mondaq.com | Brendan Bement |Steven Heinrich |Sylvia Turner |Alex Weidner

The United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, occupies a unique role within the federal government because it is entirely fee-funded and, along with the Internal Revenue Service, is one of the few cashflow positive agencies.1 Additionally, unlike many agencies that only began to permit remote work in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the USPTO adopted telework and remote work in the early 2000s and approximately 96% of the agency works remotely.2 Perhaps because its fee-funded...

1 month ago | mondaq.com | Brendan Bement |Steven Heinrich |Sylvia Turner |Alex Weidner

Post-pandemic, the fitness bug took off. After almost two yearsof feeling trapped indoors, people began flocking to the gym forstrength training, to the studios for Pilates, to the trails forrunning, and to the courts for pickleball. With the surge inphysical activity, sportswear companies are competing to producecutting-edge designs that are functional, comfortable, andaesthetically pleasing. In previous decades, house names, such asNike, Adidas, and Puma, dominated the market.

1 month ago | mondaq.com | Brendan Bement |Steven Heinrich |Sylvia Turner |Alex Weidner

The Copyright Office recently released part two of a three part report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence.1 This second part addressed the copyrightability of works created using Generative AI.2 There are two fundamental requirements of copyright protection especially relevant to copyright protection over works that have elements created by Generative AI: (1) the requirement of human authorship and (2) copyright law does not protect ideas but...