The Supreme Court has resolved a Circuit split and held that willfulness is not a prerequisite to disgorgement of defendant’s profits in a trademark infringement case. Willfulness remains a factor to consider, but is no longer a threshold to obtaining profits. You can read my summary of the case on the L&A website here.
This was not the Supreme Court’s only recent foray into the IP world. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court determined that the decision of the Patent Office on the timeliness of a petition for inter partes review is not appealable. An IPR petition must be filed within one year of the service of a complaint alleging patent infringement of the subject patent. Should the PTO accept a petition that the patent holder considers to have been untimely, the patent holder has no recourse through the courts as a result of this ruling. My colleagues Craig Smith and Peter Evangelatos provide more detail here. Also, a reminder that we at Lando & Anastasi are tracking the impact of COVID on the USPTO, prominent foreign patent offices, and the Copyright Office, as well as the impact on civil litigation in the Federal Courts of New England and the state courts of Massachusetts. You can find this information, updated as new information becomes available, here.
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