The United States Patents Quarterly (U.S.P.Q.) is a United States legal reporter published by the Bloomberg Industry Group [1] in Washington, D.C. The U.S.P.Q. covers intellectual property cases including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets, from 1913 to the present. The publisher stopped the sequence of volume numbers and restarted with a second series, cited as U.S.P.Q. 2d (BNA), in 1987.
The U.S.P.Q. reports case law from the United States Supreme Court and most federal appeals courts, including the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, United States Court of Federal Claims, and United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. It also includes cases from United States District Courts, and certain decisions from administrative tribunals, such as the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the United States International Trade Commission and the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, and opinions from state courts. [2]
The reporter is published with a digest in cumulative and annual volumes. The digests have headnotes from the opinions and are organized according to a classification scheme. The digests are published with cases of tables organized alphabetically and by tribunal, and with a topical index. [3]
A trade secret is an intellectual property that has inherent economic value because it is not generally known or readily ascertainable by others, and which the owner takes reasonable measures to keep secret. Types of trade secret include includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information.
Trade dress is the characteristics of the visual appearance of a product or its packaging that signify the source of the product to consumers. Trade dress is an aspect of trademark law, which is a form of intellectual property protection law.
Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is a United States court of appeals that has special appellate jurisdiction over certain types of specialized cases in the U.S. federal court system. It has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal cases involving patents, trademarks, government contracts, veterans' benefits, public safety officers' benefits, Federal employees' benefits, and various other categories. Unlike other federal courts, the Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over cases involving criminal, bankruptcy, immigration, or U.S. state law.
Business method patents are a class of patents which disclose and claim new methods of doing business. This includes new types of e-commerce, insurance, banking and tax compliance etc. Business method patents are a relatively new species of patent and there have been several reviews investigating the appropriateness of patenting business methods. Nonetheless, they have become important assets for both independent inventors and major corporations.
Law reports or reporters are series of books that contain judicial opinions from a selection of case law decided by courts. When a particular judicial opinion is referenced, the law report series in which the opinion is printed will determine the case citation format.
The United States is considered to have the most favorable legal regime for inventors and patent owners in the world. Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limited time from profiting of a patented technology without the consent of the patent-holder. Specifically, it is the right to exclude others from: making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, inducing others to infringe, applying for an FDA approval, and/or offering a product specially adapted for practice of the patent.
A colour trade mark or color trademark is a non-conventional trade mark where at least one colour is used to perform the trade mark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services.
Giles Sutherland Rich was an associate judge of the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) and later on was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), and had enormous impact on patent law. He was the first patent attorney appointed to any federal court since Benjamin Robbins Curtis was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1851.
Disparagement, in United States trademark law, was a statutory cause of action which permitted a party to petition the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to cancel a trademark registration that "may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt or disrepute". In 2017, the Supreme Court struck down the disparagement provision as unconstitutional in Matal v. Tam.
A quasi-judicial body is a non-judicial body which can interpret law. It is an entity such as an arbitration panel or tribunal board, which can be a public administrative agency but also a contract- or private law entity, which has been given powers and procedures resembling those of a court of law or judge and which is obliged to objectively determine facts and draw conclusions from them so as to provide the basis of an official action. Such actions are able to remedy a situation or impose legal penalties, and they may affect the legal rights, duties or privileges of specific parties.
The Federal Reporter is a case law reporter in the United States that is published by West Publishing and a part of the National Reporter System. It begins with cases decided in 1880; pre-1880 cases were later retroactively compiled by West Publishing into a separate reporter, Federal Cases. The fourth and current Federal Reporter series publishes decisions of the United States courts of appeals and the United States Court of Federal Claims; prior series had varying scopes that covered decisions of other federal courts as well. Though the Federal Reporter is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the United States that legal professionals, including judges, uniformly cite to the Federal Reporter for included decisions. Approximately 30 new volumes are published each year.
In the United States, an Office action is a document written by an examiner in a patent or trademark examination procedure and mailed to an applicant for a patent or trademark. The expression is used in many jurisdictions.
The Federal Supplement is a case law reporter published by West Publishing in the United States that includes select opinions of the United States district courts since 1932, and is part of the National Reporter System. Although the Federal Supplement is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the U.S. that legal professionals uniformly cite the Federal Supplement for included decisions. Approximately 40 new volumes are published per year.
Pauline Newman is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She has been called "the heroine of the patent system", "the Federal Circuit's most prolific dissenter", and "the greatest ally to inventors with respect to [calling out] the ignorance of the CAFC, district courts, and at times even the Supreme Court". Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore commented of Newman that "many of her dissents have later gone on to become the law—either the en banc law from our court or spoken on high from the Supremes".
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees. Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, especially in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers. An owner of a trademark may commence civil legal proceedings against a party which infringes its registered trademark. In the United States, the Trademark Counterfeiting Act of 1984 criminalized the intentional trade in counterfeit goods and services.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is an administrative law body of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which decides issues of patentability. It was formed on September 16, 2012, as one part of the America Invents Act. Prior to its formation, the main judicial body in the USPTO was the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI).
The Trademark Reporter is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering trademark law and related topics. It was first established in 1911 and is published by the International Trademark Association. Articles published by the journal have been cited by different courts.
Peter v. NantKwest Inc., 589 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2019 term.