Intellectual Property Report

Articles

If It's Sort Of In The Game, Is It In The Game?: New Complaint Challenges Uncompensated Use Of Video Game Virtual Athlete Representations

Jeffrey Sullivan

Artists in the modern era have debated at almost endless length the issue of whether art should serve a purely representational, or a more broadly figurative, purpose.

Today’s art scene contains no answers to this question. Some artists continue to espouse the virtues of abstract or expressionist modes of portrayal. Others have advocated hyper-realism. Read more...

Federal Circuit Warns Against Inference Of Intent To Deceive Patent Office, Stresses That Evidence Of Intent Is Always Necessary For Inequitable Conduct

Todd Cason

In Larson Manufacturing Company of South Dakota, Inc. v. Aluminart Products Limited, No. 2008-1096, -1174, 2009 WL 691322 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 18, 2009), a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently addressed the interrelationship between the necessary respective levels of intent and materiality of an inappropriate representation or omission by a patent applicant as required to justify a finding of inequitable conduct. Addressing a lower court’s finding of inequitable conduct, the Court reiterated that failure to disclose a material reference is not sufficient to establish deceptive intent. Even absent a good faith explanation for such a failure, non-disclosure of even a significantly material reference cannot, by itself, sustain an inequitable conduct finding without clear and convincing evidence of a threshold level of intent. Thus, according to the rationale of the Larson panel, materiality alone — even a high level of materiality — is not sufficient to establish inequitable conduct. Read more...