News & Publications

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Vidal v. Elster, 602 U. S. ____ (2024), a case involving a plaintiff's attempt to register the trademark "Trump too small" (a reference to a key political issue in the 2016 Republican primary—the size of the former President's hands). The mark was rejected by the USPTO under the "names clause" of the Lanham Act, which prohibits registration of marks containing the name of a living person without that person's [...]

On May 21, 2024, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (in a proceeding known as an en banc rehearing) issued a decision in LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Technology Operations LLC, No. 2021-2348 (Fed. Cir. 2024). The Federal Circuit overruled earlier cases that dictated the long-standing, rigid two-part test for determining the obviousness of designs in the context of design patents. Instead, it adopted a more flexible four-part test applicable to utility patents. One Circuit [...]

On 16 February 2024, the Supreme Court of Alabama published its opinion, "Supreme Court of Alabama, SC-2022-0515,"1 regarding whether embryos located outside the biological uterus are considered unborn children pursuant to Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act2 (the Act). The court held that the Act applies to all born and unborn children regardless of their location, which includes embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Therefore, under the Act, the court concluded a civil wrongful death [...]